The Project Gutenberg eBook of Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate

Author: Nathaniel Parker Willis

Release date: February 15, 2015 [eBook #48264]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Marcia Brooks, Cindy Beyer and the Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE *** 









SUMMER CRUISE


IN


THE MEDITERRANEAN.




 

SUMMER CRUISE


 


IN


 


THE MEDITERRANEAN


 


ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.


 


BY


N. PARKER WILLIS.


 


LONDON:


T. BOSWORTH, 215, REGENT STREET.


1853.


 



 

LONDON:


BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS


 



PREFACE.




Of one of the most delicious episodes in a long period of
foreign travel, this volume is the imperfect and hastily
written transcript. Even at the time it was written, the
author felt its experience to be a dream—so exempt was it
from the interrupting and qualifying drawbacks of happiness
in common and working life—but, now, after an interval of
many years, it seems indeed like a dream, and one so full of
unmingled pleasure, that its telling almost wants the contrast
of a sadness. Of the noble ship, whose summer cruise is
described, and her kind and hospitable officers, the recollection
is as fresh and grateful now, as when, (twenty years
ago,) the author bade them farewell in the port of Smyrna.
Of the scenes he passed through, while their guest, he has a
less perfect remembrance—relying indeed on these chance
memoranda, for much that would else be forgotten. It is
with a mingled sense of the real and the unreal, therefore,
that the book is offered, in a new shape, to the Public,
whose approbation has encouraged its long existence, and
the author trusts that his thanks to the surviving officers of
that ship may again reach them, and that the kind favour
of the reading Public may be again extended to this his
record of what he saw in the company of these officers, and
by their generous hospitality.


Highland Terrace,


October, 1852.




CONTENTS.




LETTER I.




Cruise in the Frigate “United States”—Elba—Piombino—Porto
Ferrajo—Appearance of the Bay—Naval Discipline—Visit to the
Town Residence of Napoleon—His Employment during his Confinement
on the Island—His sisters Eliza and Pauline—His Country
House—Simplicity of the Inhabitants of Elba      1




LETTER II.




Visit to Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii      7




LETTER III.




Account of Vesuvius—The Hermitage—The famous Lagrima Christi—Difficulties
of the Path—Curious Appearance of the Old Crater—Odd
Assemblage of Travellers—The New Crater—Splendid
Prospect—Mr. Mathias, Author of the Pursuits of Literature—The
Archbishop of Tarento      16




LETTER IV.




The Fashionable World of Naples at the Races—Brilliant Show of
Equipages—The King and his Brother—Rank and Character of the
Jockeys—Description of the Races—The Public Burial Ground at
Naples—Horrid and inhuman Spectacles—The Lazzaroni—The
Museum at Naples—Ancient Relics from Pompeii—Forks not used
by the Ancients—The Lamp lit at the time of our Saviour—The
antique Chair of Sallust—The Villa of Cicero—The Balbi Family—Bacchus
on the Shoulders of a Faun—Gallery of Dians, Cupids,
Joves, Mercuries, and Apollos, Statue of Aristides, &c.      23




LETTER V.




Pæstum—Temple of Neptune—Departure from Elba—Ischia—Bay of
Naples—The Toledo—The Young Queen—Conspiracy against the
King—Neapolitans Visiting the Frigates—Leave the Bay—Castellamare      32




LETTER VI.




Baiæ—Grotto of Posilipo—Tomb of Virgil—Pozzuoli—Ruins of the
Temple of Jupiter Serapis—The Lucrine Lake—Late of Avernus,
the Tartarus of Virgil—Temple of Proserpine—Grotto of the
Cumæan Sybil—Nero’s villa—Cape of Misenum—Roman villas—Ruins
of the Temple of Venus—-Cento Camerelle—The Stygian
Lake—The Elysian Fields—Grotto del Cane—Villa of Lucullus      38




LETTER VII.




Island of Sicily—Palermo—Saracenic appearance of the town—Cathedral—The
Marina—Viceroy Leopold—Monastery of the
Capuchins—Celebrated Catacombs—Fanciful Gardens      45




LETTER VIII.




The Lunatic Asylum at Palermo      51




LETTER IX.




Palermo—Fête given by Mr. Gardiner, the American Consul—Temple
of Clitumnus—Cottage of Petrarch—Messina—Lipari Islands—Scylla
and Charybdis      57




LETTER X.




The Adriatic—Albania—Gay Costumes and Beauty of the Albanese—Capo
d’Istria—Trieste resembles an American Town—Visit to
the Austrian Authorities of the Province—Curiosity of the Inhabitants—Gentlemanly
Reception by the Military Commandant—Visit
to Vienna—Singular Notions of the Austrians respecting
the Americans—Similarity of the Scenery to that of New England—Meeting
with German Students—Frequent Sight of Soldiers and
Military Preparation—Picturesque Scenery of Styria      63




LETTER XI.




Gratz—Vienna      70




LETTER XII.




Vienna—Magnificence of the Emperor’s Manège—The Young Queen of
Hungary—The Palace—Hall of Curiosities, Jewelry, &c.—The
Polytechnic School—Geometrical Figures described by the Vibrations
of Musical Notes—Liberal Provision for the Public
Institutions—Popularity of the Emperor      76




LETTER XIII.




Vienna—Palaces and Gardens—Mosaic Copy of Da Vinci’s “Last
Supper”—Collection of Warlike Antiquities; Scanderburg’s
Sword, Montezuma’s Tomahawk, Relics of the Crusaders, Warriors
in Armour, the Farmer of Augsburg—Room of Portraits of Celebrated
Individuals—Gold Busts of Jupiter and Juno—The Glacis,
full of Gardens, the General Resort of the People—Universal Spirit
of Enjoyment—Simplicity and Confidence in the Manners of the
Viennese—Baden      82




LETTER XIV.




Vienna—The Palace of Liechstenstein      87




LETTER XV.




The Palace of Schoenbrunn—Hietzing, the Summer Retreat of the
Wealthy Viennese—Country-House of the American Consul—Specimen
of Pure Domestic Happiness in a German Family—Splendid
Village Ball—Substantial Fare for the Ladies—Curious
Fashion of Cushioning the Windows—German Grief—The Upper
Belvidere Palace—Endless Quantity of Pictures      92




LETTER XVI.




Departure from Vienna—The Eil-Wagon—Motley quality of the
passengers—Thunderstorm in the Mountains of Styria—Trieste—Short
Beds of the Germans—Grotto of Adelsburgh—Curious Ball-Room
in the Cavern—Nautical preparations for a Dance on board
the “United States” swept away by the Bora—Its successful
Termination      98




LETTER XVII.




Trieste, its Extensive Commerce—Hospitality of Mr. Moore—Ruins of
Pola—Immense Amphitheatre—Village of Pola—Coast of Dalmatia,
of Apulia and Calabria—Otranto—Sails for the Isles of
Greece      106




LETTER XVIII.




The Ionian Isles—Lord and Lady Nugent—Corfu—Greek and English
Soldiers—Cockneyism—The Gardens of Alcinous—English
Officers—Albanians—Dionisio Salomos, the Greek Poet—Greek
Ladies—Dinner with the Artillery Mess      110




LETTER XIX.




Corfu—Unpopularity of British Rule—Superstition of the Greeks—Accuracy
of the Descriptions in the Odyssey—Advantage of the
Greek Costume—The Paxian Isles—Cape Leucas, or Sappho’s
Leap—Bay of Navarino, Ancient Pylos—Modon—Coran’s Bay—Cape
St. Angelo—Isle of Cythera      115




LETTER XX.




The Harbour of Napoli—Tricoupi and Mavrocordato, Otho’s Cabinet
Councillors—Colonel Gordon—King Otho—The Misses Armanspergs—Prince
of Saxe—Miaulis, the Greek Admiral—Excursion
to Argos, the ancient Terynthus      122




LETTER XXI.




Visit from King Otho and Miaulis—Visit an English and Russian
Frigate—Beauty of the Greek men—Lake Lerna—The Hermionicus
Sinus—Hydra—Ægina      129




LETTER XXII.




The Maid of Athens—Romance and Reality—American Benefactions to
Greece—A Greek Wife and Scottish Husband—School of Capo
d’Istrias—Grecian Disinterestedness—Ruins of the most Ancient
Temple—Beauty of the Grecian Landscape—Hope for the Land of
Epaminondas and Aristides      134




LETTER XXIII.




Athens—Ruins of the Parthenon—The Acropolis—Temple of Theseus—The
Oldest of Athenian Antiquities—Burial-Place of the Son of
Miaulis—Reflections on Standing where Plato taught, and
Demosthenes harangued—Bavarian Sentinel—Turkish Mosque,
erected within the Sanctuary of the Parthenon—Wretched
Habitations of the Modern Athenians      139




LETTER XXIV.




The “Lantern of Demosthenes”—Byron’s Residence in Athens—Temple
of Jupiter Olympus, Seven Hundred Years in Building—Superstitious
Fancy of the Athenians respecting its Ruins—Hermitage
of a Greek Monk—Petarches, the Antiquary and
Poet, and his Wife, Sister to the “Maid of Athens”—Mutilation
of a Basso Relievo by an English Officer—The Elgin Marbles—The
Caryatides—Lord Byron’s Autograph—Attachment of the
Greeks to Dr. Howe—The Sliding Stone—A Scene in the Rostrum
of Demosthenes      145




LETTER XXV.




The Prison of Socrates—Turkish Stirrups and Saddles—Plato’s
Academy—The American Missionary School at Athens—The Son
of Petarches, and Nephew of “Mrs. Black of Ægina”      150




LETTER XXVI.




The Piræus—The Sacra Via—Ruins of Eleusis—Gigantic Medallion—Costume
of the Athenian Women—The Tomb of Themistocles—The
Temple of Minerva—Autographs      155




LETTER XXVII.




Mytilene—The Tomb of Achilles—Turkish Burying Ground—Lost
Reputation of the Scamander—Asiatic Sunsets—Visit to a Turkish
Bey—The Castles of the Dardanelles—Turkish Bath, and its
Consequences      160




LETTER XXVIII.




A Turkish Pic-Nic on the plain of Troy—Fingers v. Forks—Trieste—The
Boschetto—Graceful Freedom of Italian Manners—A Rural
Fête—Fireworks—Amateur Musicians      166




LETTER XXIX.




The Dardanelles—Visit from the Pacha—His Delight at hearing the
Piano—Turkish Fountains—Caravan of Mules laden with Grapes—Turkish
Mode of Living—Houses, Cafés, and Women—The
Mosque and the Muezzin—American Consul of the Dardanelles,
another “Caleb Quotem”      171




LETTER XXX.




Turkish Military Life—A Visit to the Camp—Turkish Music—Sunsets—The
Sea of Marmora      179




LETTER XXXI.




Gallipoli—Aristocracy of Beards—Turkish Shopkeepers—The Hospitable
Jew and his lovely Daughter—Unexpected Rencontre—Constantinople—The
Bosphorus, the Seraglio, and the Golden
Horn      184




LETTER XXXII.




Constantinople—An Adventure with the Dogs of Stamboul—The
Sultan’s Kiosk—The Bazaars—Georgians—Sweetmeats—Hindoostanee
Fakeers—Turkish Women and their Eyes—The Jews—A
Token of Home—The Drug Bazaar—Opium Eaters      190




LETTER XXXIII.




The Sultan’s Perfumer—Etiquette of Smoking—Temptations for
Purchasers—Exquisite Flavour of the Turkish Perfumes—The
Slave Market of Constantinople—Slaves from various Countries,
Greek, Circassian, Egyptian, Persian—African Female Slaves—An
Improvisatrice—Exposure for Sale—Circassian Beauties prohibited
to Europeans—First sight of one, eating a Pie—Shock to
Romantic Feelings—Beautiful Arab Girl chained to the Floor—The
Silk Merchant—A cheap Purchase      196




LETTER XXXIV.




The Bosphorus—Turkish Palaces—The Black Sea—Buyukdere      201




LETTER XXXV.




The Golden Horn and its Scenery—The Sultan’s Wives and Arabians—The
Valley of Sweet Waters—Beauty of the Turkish Minarets—The
Mosque of Sulymanye—Mussulmans at their Devotions—The
Muezzin—The Bazaar of the Opium-eaters—the Mad House of
Constantinople, and Description of its inmates—Their Wretched
Treatment—The Hippodrome and the Mosque of Sultan Achmet—The
Janizaries—Reflections on the Past, the Present, and the
Future      207




LETTER XXXVI.




Sultan Mahmoud at his Devotions—Comparative Splendour of Papal,
Austrian, and Turkish Equipages—The Sultan’s Barge or Caïque—Description
of the Sultan—Visit to a Turkish Lancasterian
School—The Dancing Dervishes—Visit from the Sultan’s Cabinet—The
Seraskier and the Capitan Pacha—Humble Origin of
Turkish Dignitaries      215




LETTER XXXVII.




The Grand Bazaar of Constantinople, and its infinite Variety of
Wonders—Silent Shopkeepers—Female Curiosity—Adventure
with a Black-Eyed Stranger—The Bezestein—The Stronghold of
Orientalism—Picture of a Dragoman—The Kibaub-Shop—A
Dinner without Knives, Forks, or Chair—Cistern of the
Thousand and One Columns      223




LETTER XXXVIII.




Belgrade—The Cottage of Lady Montagu—Turkish Cemeteries—Natural
Taste of the Moslems for the Picturesque—A Turkish
Carriage—Washerwomen Surprised—Gigantic Forest Trees—The
Reservoir—Return to Constantinople      229




LETTER XXXIX.




Scutari—Tomb of the Sultana Valide—Mosque of the Howling
Dervishes—A Clerical Shoemaker—Visit to a Turkish Cemetery—Bird’s-Eye
View of Stamboul and its Environs—Seraglio Point—The
Seven Towers      234




LETTER XL.




Beauties of the Bosphorus—Summer-Palace of the Sultan—Adventure
with an old Turkish Woman—The Feast of Bairam—The Sultan
his own Butcher—His Evil Propensities—Visit to the Mosques—A
Formidable Dervish—Santa Sophia—Mosque of Sultan
Achmet—Traces of Christianity      240




LETTER XLI.




Unerring Detection of Foreigners—A Cargo of Odalisques—The Fanar,
or Quarter of the Greeks—Street of the Booksellers—Aspect of
Antiquity—Purchases—Charity for Dogs and Pigeons—Punishment
of Canicide—A Bridal Procession—Turkish Female
Physiognomy      245




LETTER XLII.




The Perfection of Bathing—Pipes—Downy Cushions—Coffee—Rubbing
Down—“Circular Justice,” as displayed in the Retribution of
Boiled Lobsters—A Deluge of Suds—The Shampoo—Luxurious
Helps to the Imagination—A Pedestrian Excursion—Story of an
American Tar, burdened with Small Change—-Beauty of the Turkish
Children—A Civilised Monster—Glimpse of Sultan Mahmoud in
an Ill-Humour      251




LETTER XLIII.




Punishment of Conjugal Infidelity—Drowning in the Bosphorus—Frequency
of its occurrence accounted for—A Band of Wild
Roumeliotes—Their Picturesque Appearance—Ali Pacha, of
Yanina—A Turkish Funeral—Fat Widow of Sultan Selim—A
Visit to the Sultan’s Summer Palace—A Travelling Moslem—Unexpected
Token of Home      257




LETTER XLIV.




Farewell to Constantinople—Europe and the East compared—The
Departure—Smyrna, the great Mart for Figs—An Excursion into
Asia Minor—Travelling Equipments—Character of the Hajjis—Encampment
of Gipsies—A youthful Hebe—Note—Horror of
the Turks for the “Unclean Animal”—An Anecdote      263




LETTER XLV.




Natural Statue of Niobe—The Thorn of Syria and its Tradition—Approach
to Magnesia—Hereditary Residence of the Family of
Bey-Oglou—Character of its present Occupant—The Truth about
Oriental Caravanserais—Comforts and Appliances they yield to
Travellers—Figaro of the Turks—The Pilaw—Morning Scene at
the Departure—Playful familiarity of a Solemn old Turk—Magnificent
Prospect from Mount Sypilus      268




LETTER XLVI.




The Eye of the Camel—Rocky Sepulchres—Virtue of an old Passport,
backed by Impudence—Temple of Cybele—Palace of Crœsus—Ancient
Church of Sardis—Return to Smyrna      274




LETTER XLVII.




Smyrna—Charms of its Society—Hospitality of Foreign Residents—The
Marina—The Casino—A narrow Escape from the Plague—Departure
of the Frigate—High Character of the American Navy—A
Tribute of Respect and Gratitude—The Farewell      279






SUMMER CRUISE in THE MEDITERRANEAN.






LETTER I.




Cruise in the Frigate “United States”—Elba—Piombino—Porto Ferrajo—Appearance
of the Bay—Naval Discipline—Visit to the Town Residence
of Napoleon—His Employment during his Confinement on the Island—His
sisters Eliza and Pauline—His Country House—Simplicity of the
Inhabitants of Elba.




I had come from Florence to join the “United States,” at the
polite invitation of the officers of the ward-room, on a cruise up
the Mediterranean. My cot was swung immediately on my
arrival, but we lay three days longer than was expected in the
harbour, riding out a gale of wind, which broke the chain cables
of both ships, and drove several merchant vessels on the rocks.
We got under way on the 3rd of June, and the next morning
were off Elba, with Corsica on our quarter, and the little island
of Capreja just ahead.


The firing of guns took me just now to the deck. Three
Sardinian gun-boats had saluted the commodore’s flag in passing,
and it was returned with twelve guns. They were coming home
from the affair at Tunis. It is a fresh, charming morning, and
we are beating up against a light head-wind, all the officers on
deck looking at the island with their glasses, and discussing the
character of the great man to whom this little barren spot was a
temporary empire. A bold fortification just appears on the
point, with the Tuscan flag flying from the staff. The sides of
the hills are dotted with desolate looking buildings, among which
are one or two monasteries, and in rounding the side of the
island, we have passed two or three small villages, perched below
and above on the rocks. Off to the east, we can just distinguish
Piombino, the nearest town of the Italian shore, and very
beautiful it looks, rising from the edge of the water like Venice,
with a range of cloudy hills relieving it in the rear.


Our anchor is dropped in the bay of Porto Ferrajo. As we
ran lightly in upon the last tack, the walls of the fort appeared
crowded with people, the whole town apparently assembled to
see the unusual spectacle of two ships-of-war entering their now
quiet waters. A small curving bay opened to us, and as we
rounded directly under the walls of the fort, the tops of the
houses in the town behind appeared crowded with women, whose
features we could easily distinguish with a glass. By the
constant exclamations of the midshipmen, who were gazing
intently from the quarter-deck, there was among them a fair
proportion of beauty, or what looked like it in the distance.
Just below the summit of the fort, upon a terrace commanding
a view of the sea, stood a handsome house, with low windows
shut with Venetian blinds and shaded with acacias, which the
pilot pointed out to us as the town residence of Napoleon. As
the ship lost her way, we came in sight of a gentle amphitheatre
of hills rising away from the cove, in a woody ravine of which
stood a handsome building, with eight windows, built by the
exile as a country-house. Twenty or thirty, as good or better,
spot the hills around, ornamented with avenues and orchards of
low olive-trees. It is altogether a rural scene, and disappoints
us agreeably after the barren promise of the outer sides of
the isle.


The “Constellation” came slowly in after us, with every sail
set, and her tops crowded with men; and as she fell under the
stern of the commodore’s ship, the word was given, and her vast
quantity of sail was furled with that wonderful alacrity which
so astonishes a landsman. I have been continually surprised in
the few days that I have been on board, with the wonders of
sea discipline; but for a spectacle, I have seen nothing more
imposing than the entrance of these two beautiful frigates into
the little port of Elba, and their magical management. The
anchors were dropped, the yards came down by the run, the
sails disappeared, the living swarm upon the rigging slid below,
all in a moment, and then struck up the delightful band on our
quarter-deck, and the sailors leaned on the guns, the officers on
the quarter railing, and boats from the shore, filled with ladies,
lay off at different distances, the whole scene as full of repose
and enjoyment, as if we had lain idle for a month in these glassy
waters. How beautiful are the results of order!




We had made every preparation for a pic-nic party to the
country-house of Napoleon yesterday—but it rained. At sunset,
however, the clouds crowded into vast masses, and the evening
gave a glorious promise, which was fulfilled this morning in
freshness and sunshine. The commodore’s barge took off the
ladies for an excursion on horseback to the iron mines, on the
other side of the island—the midshipmen were set ashore in
various directions for a ramble, and I, tempted with the beauty
of the ravine which enclosed the villa of Napoleon, declined all
invitations with an eye to a stroll thither.


We were first set ashore at the mole to see the town. A
medley crowd of soldiers, citizens, boys, girls, and galley-slaves,
received us at the landing, and followed us up to the town-square,
gazing at the officers with undisguised curiosity. We
met several gentlemen from the other ship at the café, and
taking a cicerone together, started for the town-residence of the
emperor. It is now occupied by the governor, and stands on
the fine summit of the little fortified city. We mounted by clean,
excellent pavements, getting a good-natured buon giorno! from
very female head thrust from beneath the blinds of the houses.
The governor’s aide received us at the door, with his cap in his
hand, and we commenced the tour of the rooms with all the
household, male and female, following to gaze at us. Napoleon
lived on the first floor. The rooms were as small as those of a
private house, and painted in the pretty fresco common in Italy.
The furniture was all changed, and the fire-places and two
busts of the emperor’s sisters (Eliza and Pauline) were all that
remained as it was. The library is a pretty room, though very
small, and opens on a terrace level with his favourite garden.
The plants and lemon-trees were planted by himself, we were
told, and the officers plucked souvenirs on all sides. The officer
who accompanied us was an old soldier of Napoleon’s and a
native of Elba, and after a little of the reluctance common to the
teller of an oft-told tale, he gave us some interesting particulars
of the emperor’s residence at the island. It appears that he
employed himself, from the first day of his arrival, in the
improvement of his little territory, making roads, &c., and
behaved quite like a man who had made up his mind to relinquish
ambition, and content himself with what was about him.
Three assassins were discovered and captured in the course of
the eleven months, the first two of whom he pardoned. The
third made an attempt upon his life, in the disguise of a beggar,
at a bridge leading to his country-house, and was condemned
and executed. He was a native of the emperor’s own birthplace
in Corsica.


The second floor was occupied by his mother and Pauline.
The furniture of the chamber of the renowned beauty is very
much as she left it. The bed is small, and the mirror opposite
its foot very large, and in a mahogany frame. Small mirrors
were set also into the bureau, and in the back of a pretty cabinet
of dark wood standing at the head of the bed. It is delightful to
breathe the atmosphere of a room that has been the home of the
lovely creature whose marble image by Canova thrills every
beholder with love, and is fraught with such pleasing associations.
Her sitting-room, though less interesting, made us linger and
muse again. It looks out over the sea to the west, and the prospect
is beautiful. One forgets that her history could not be
written without many a blot. How much we forgive to beauty!
Of all the female branches of the Bonaparte family, Pauline bore
the greatest resemblance to her brother Napoleon: but the grand
and regular profile which was in him marked with the stern air
of sovereignty and despotic rule, was in her tempered with an
enchanting softness and fascinating smile. Her statue, after the
Venus de’ Medicis, is the chef d’œuvre of modern sculpture.


We went from the governor’s house to the walls of the town,
loitering along and gazing at the sea; and then rambled through
the narrow streets of the town, attracting, by the gay uniforms
of the officers, the attention and courtesies of every smooched
petticoat far and near. What the faces of the damsels of Elba
might be, if washed, we could hardly form a conjecture.


The country-house of Napoleon is three miles from the town,
a little distance from the shore, farther round into the bay.
Captain Nicholson proposed to walk to it, and send his boat
across—a warmer task for the mid-day of an Italian June than
a man of less enterprise would choose for pleasure. We reached
the stone steps of the imperial casino, after a melting and toilsome
walk, hungry and thirsty, and were happy to fling ourselves upon
broken chairs in the denuded drawing-room, and wait for an
extempore dinner of twelve eggs and a bottle of wine as bitter as
criticism. A farmer and his family live in the house, and a couple
of bad busts and the fire-places, are all that remain of its old
appearance. The situation and the view, however, are superb.
A little lap of a valley opens right away from the door to the
bosom of the bay, and in the midst of the glassy basin lies the bold
peninsular promontory and fortification of Porto Ferrajo, like a
castle in a loch, connected with the body of the island by a mere
rib of sand. Off beyond sleeps the main-land of Italy, mountain
and vale, like a smoothly-shaped bed of clouds; and for the foreground
of the landscape, the valleys of Elba are just now green
with fig-trees and vines, speckled here and there with fields of
golden grain, and farm-houses shaded with all the trees of this
genial climate.


We examined the place, after our frugal dinner, and found a
natural path under the edge of the hill behind, stretching away
back into the valley, and leading, after a short walk, to a small
stream and a waterfall. Across it, just above the fall, lay the
trunk of an old and vigorous fig-tree, full of green limbs, and
laden with fruit half ripe. It made a natural bridge over the
stream, and as its branches shaded the rocks below, we could
easily imagine Napoleon, walking to and fro in the smooth path,
and seating himself on the broadest stone in the heat of the
summer evenings he passed on the spot. It was the only walk
about the place, and a secluded and pleasant one. The groves of
firs and brush above, and the locust and cherry-trees on the
edges of the walk, are old enough to have shaded him. We sat
and talked under the influence of the “genius of the spot,” till
near sunset, and then, cutting each a walking-stick from the
shoots of the old fig-tree, returned to the boats and reached the
ship as the band struck up their exhilarating music for the
evening on the quarter-deck.




We have passed two or three days at Elba most agreeably.
The weather has been fine, and the ships have been thronged
with company. The common people of the town come on board
in boat-loads, men, women, and children, and are never satisfied
with gazing and wondering. The inhabitants speak very pure
Tuscan, and are mild and simple in their manners. They all
take the ships to be bound upon a mere voyage of pleasure;
and, with the officers in their gay dresses, and the sailors in their
clean white and blue, the music morning and evening, and
the general gaiety on board, the impression is not much to be
wondered at.


Yesterday, after dinner, Captain Nicholson took us ashore in
his gig, to pass an hour or two in the shade. His steward
followed, with a bottle or two of old wine, and landing near the
fountain to which the boats are sent for water, we soon found a
spreading fig-tree, and, with a family of the country people from
a neighbouring cottage around us, we idled away the hours till
the cool of the evening. The simplicity of the old man and his
wife, and the wonder of himself and several labourers in his
vineyard, to whom the captain gave a glass or two of his
excellent wines, would have made a study for Wilkie. Sailors
are merry companions for a party like this. We returned over
the unruffled expanse of the bay, charmed with the beauty of
the scene by sunset, and as happy as a life, literally sans souci,
could make us. What is it, in this rambling absence from all to
which we look forward to in love and hope, that so fascinates the
imagination?




I went, in the commodore’s suite, to call upon the governor
this morning. He is a military, commanding-looking man, and
received us in Napoleon’s saloon, surrounded  by his officers. He
regretted that his commission did not permit him to leave the
shore, even to visit a ship, but offered a visit on the part of his
sister, and a company of the first ladies of the town. They came
off this morning. She was a lady-like woman, not very pretty,
of thirty years perhaps. As she spoke only Italian, she was
handed over to me, and I waited on her through the ship,
explaining a great many things of which I knew as much as
herself. This visit over, we get under way to-morrow morning
for Naples.






LETTER II.




Visit to Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii.




I have passed my first day in Naples in wandering about,
without any definite object. I have walked around its famous
bay, looked at the lazzaroni, watched the smoke of Vesuvius,
traversed the square where the young Conradine was beheaded
and Masaniello commenced his revolt, mounted to the castle of
St. Elmo, and dined on macaroni in a trattoria, where the Italian
I had learned in Tuscany was of little more use to me than
Greek.


The bay surprised me most. It is a collection of beauties,
which seems more a miracle than an accident of nature. It is a
deep crescent of sixteen miles across, and a little more in length,
between the points of which lies a chain of low mountains, called
the island of Capri, looking, from the shore, like a vast heap of
clouds brooding at sea. In the bosom of the crescent lies
Naples. Its palaces and principal buildings cluster around the
base of an abrupt hill crowned by the castle of St. Elmo, and its
half million of inhabitants have stretched their dwellings over
the plain towards Vesuvius, and back upon Posilipo, bordering
the curve of the shore on the right and left, with a broad white
band of city and village for twelve or fourteen miles. Back from
this, on the southern side, a very gradual ascent brings your eye
to the base of Vesuvius, which rises from the plain in a sharp
cone, broken in at the top, its black and lava-streaked sides
descending with the evenness of a sand-hill, on one side to the
disinterred city of Pompeii, and on the other to the royal palace
of Portici, built over the yet unexplored Herculaneum. In the
centre of the crescent of the shore projecting into the sea by a
bridge of two or three hundred feet in length, stands a small
castle built upon a rock, on one side of which lies the mole with
its shipping. The other side is bordered, close to the beach,
with the gardens of the royal villa, a magnificent promenade of a
mile, ornamented with fancy temples and statuary, on the smooth
alleys of which may be met, at certain hours, all that is brilliant
and gay in Naples. Farther on, toward the northern horn of the
bay, lies the mount of Posilipo, the ancient coast of Baiæ, Cape
Mysene, and the mountain isles of Procida and Ischia, the last
of which still preserves the costumes of Greece, from which it
was colonised centuries ago. The bay itself is as blue as the sky,
scarcely ruffled all day with the wind, and covered by countless
boats fishing or creeping on with their picturesque lateen sails
just filled: while the atmosphere over sea, city, and mountain,
is of a clearness and brilliancy which is inconceivable in other
countries. The superiority of the sky and climate of Italy is no
fable in any part of this delicious land—but in Naples, if the
day I have spent here is a fair specimen, it is matchless even for
Italy. There is something like a fine blue veil of a most dazzling
transparency over the mountains around, but above and between
there seems nothing but viewless space—nothing like air that a
bird could rise upon. The eye gets intoxicated almost with
gazing on it.


We have just returned from our first excursion to Pompeii.
It lies on the southern side of the bay, just below the volcano
which overwhelmed it, about twelve miles from Naples. The
road lay along the shore, and is lined with villages, which are
only separated by name. The first is Portici, where the king has
a summer palace, through the court of which the road passes.
It is built over Herculaneum, and the danger of undermining it
has stopped the excavations of unquestionably the richest city
buried by Vesuvius. We stopped at a little gate in the midst of
the village, and taking a guide and two torches, descended to the
only part of it now visible, by near a hundred steps. We found
ourselves at the back of an amphitheatre. We entered the
narrow passage, and the guide pointed to several of the upper
seats for the spectators which had been partially dug out. They
were lined with marble, as the whole amphitheatre appears to
have been. To realise the effect of these ruins, it is to be
remembered that they are imbedded in solid lava, like rock, near
a hundred feet deep, and that the city, which is itself ancient, is
built above them. The carriage in which we came, stood high
over our heads, in a time-worn street, and ages had passed and
many generations of men had lived and died over a splendid
city, whose very name had been forgotten! It was discovered
in sinking a well, which struck the door of the amphitheatre.
The guide took us through several other long passages, dug
across and around it, showing us the orchestra, the stage, the
numerous entrances, and the bases of several statues which are
taken to the museum at Naples. This is the only part of the
excavation that remains open, the others having again been
filled with rubbish. The noise of the carriages overhead in the
streets of Portici was like a deafening thunder.


In a hurry to get to Pompeii, which is much more interesting,
we ascended to daylight, and drove on. Coasting along the
curve of the bay, with only a succession of villas and gardens
between us and the beach, we soon came to Torre del Greco, a
small town which was overwhelmed by an eruption thirty-nine
years ago. Vesuvius here rises gradually on the left, the crater
being at a distance of five miles. The road crossed the bed of
dry lava, which extends to the sea in a broad, black mass of
cinders, giving the country the most desolate aspect. The town
is rebuilt just beyond the ashes, and the streets are crowded with
the thoughtless inhabitants, who buy and sell, and lounge in the
sun, with no more remembrance or fear of the volcano, than the
people of a city in America.


Another half-hour brought us to a long, high bank of earth
and ashes, thrown out from the excavations; and passing on, we
stopped at the gate of Pompeii. A guide met us, and we
entered. We found ourselves in the ruins of a public square,
surrounded with small low columns of red marble. On the
right were several small prisons, in one of which was found the
skeleton of a man with its feet in iron stocks. The cell was very
small, and the poor fellow must have been suffocated without
even a hope of escape. The columns just in front were scratched
with ancient names, possibly those of the guard stationed at the
door of the prison. This square is surrounded with shops, in
which were found the relics and riches of tradesmen, consisting
of an immense variety. In one of the buildings was found the
skeleton of a new-born child, and in one part of the square the
skeletons of sixty men, supposed to be soldiers, who, in the
severity of Roman discipline, dared not fly, and perished at their
post. There were several advertisements of gladiators on the
pillars, and it appears that at the time of the eruption, the
inhabitants of Pompeii were principally assembled in the great
amphitheatre, at a show.


We left the square, and visiting several small private houses
near it, passed into a street with a slight ascent, the pavement
of which was worn deep with carriage-wheels. It appeared to
have led from the upper part of the city directly to the sea, and
in rainy weather must have been quite a channel for water, as
high stones at small distances were placed across the street,
leaving open places between for the carriage-wheels. (I think
there is a contrivance of the same kind in one of the streets of
Baltimore.)


We mounted thence to higher ground, the part of the city not
excavated. A peasant’s hut and a large vineyard stand high
above the ruins, and from the door the whole city and neighbourhood
are seen to advantage. The effect of the scene is strange
beyond description. Columns, painted walls, wheel-worn streets,
amphitheatres, palaces, all as lonely and deserted as the grave,
stand around you, and behind is a poor cottage and a vineyard
of fresh earth just putting forth its buds, and beyond, the broad,
blue, familiar bay, covered with steamboats and sails, and populous
modern Naples in the distance—a scene as strangely mingled,
perhaps, as any to be found in the world. We looked around
for a while, and then walked on through the vineyard to the
amphitheatre which lies beyond, near the other gate of the city.
It is a gigantic ruin, completely excavated, and capable of
containing twenty thousand spectators. The form is oval, and
the architecture particularly fine. Besides the many vomitories
or passages for ingress and egress, there are three smaller alleys,
one used as the entrance for wild beasts, one for the gladiators,
and the third as that by which the dead were taken away. The
skeletons of eight lions and a man, supposed to be their keeper,
were found in one of the dens beneath, and those of five other
persons near the different doors. It is presumed that the greater
proportion of the inhabitants of Pompeii must have escaped by
sea, as the eruption occurred while they were nearly all assembled
on this spot, and these few skeletons only have been found.[1]


We returned through the vineyard, and stopping at the
cottage, called for some of the wine of the last vintage (delicious,
like all those in the neighbourhood of Vesuvius), and producing
our basket of provisions, made a most agreeable dinner. Two
parties of English passed while we were sitting at our out-of-doors
table. Our attendant was an uncommonly pretty girl of
sixteen, born on the spot, and famous just now as the object of a
young English nobleman’s particular admiration. She is a fine,
dark-eyed creature, but certainly no prettier than every fifth
peasant girl in Italy. Having finished our picturesque meal, we
went down into the ancient streets once more, and arrived at the
small temple of Isis, a building in excellent preservation. On
the altar stood, when it was excavated, a small statue of Isis, of
exquisite workmanship (now in the museum, to which all the
curiosities of the place are carried), and behind this we were
shown the secret penetralia, where the priests were concealed,
who uttered the oracles supposed to be pronounced by the goddess.
The access was by a small secret flight of stairs, communicating
with the apartments of the priests in the rear. The
largest of these apartments was probably the refectory, and here
was found a human skeleton near a table, upon which lay dinner
utensils, chicken bones, bones of fishes, bread and wine, and a
faded garland of flowers. In the kitchen, which we next visited,
were found cooking utensils, remains of food, and the skeleton
of a man leaning against the wall with an axe in his hand, and
near him a considerable hole, which he had evidently cut to
make his escape when the door was stopped by cinders. The
skeleton of one of the priests was found prostrate, near the
temple, and in his hand three hundred and sixty coins of silver,
forty-two of bronze, and eight of gold, wrapped strongly in a
cloth. He had probably stopped before his flight to load himself
with the treasures of the temple, and was overtaken by the
shower of cinders and suffocated. The skeletons of one or two
were found upon beds, supposed to have been smothered while
asleep or ill. The temple is beautifully paved with mosaic (as
indeed are all the better private houses and public buildings of
Pompeii), and the open inner court is bordered with a quadrilateral
portico. The building is of the Roman Doric order.
(I have neither time nor room to enumerate the curiosities found
here and in the other parts of the city, and I only notice those
which most impressed my memory. The enumeration by Madame
Stark, will be found exceedingly interesting to those who have
not read her laconic guide-book.)


We passed next across a small street to the tragic theatre, a
large handsome building, where the seats for the vestals, consuls,
and other places of honour, are well preserved, and thence up
the hill to the temple of Hercules, which must have been a noble
edifice, commanding a superb view of the sea.


The next object was the triangular forum, an open space
surrounded with three porticoes, supported by a hundred Doric
columns. Here were found several skeletons, one of which was
that of a man who had loaded himself with plunder. Gold and
silver coins, cups, rings, spoons, buckles, and other things, were
found under him. Near here, under the ruins of a wall, were
discovered skeletons of a man and a woman, and on the arms of
the latter two beautiful bracelets of gold.


We entered from this a broad street, lined with shops, against
the walls of which were paintings in fresco, and inscriptions in
deep-red paint, representing the occupations and recording the
names of the occupants. In one of them was found a piece of
salt-fish, smelling strongly after seventeen centuries! In a small
lane leading from this street, the guide led us to a shop, decorated
with pictures of fish of various kinds, and furnished with a stove,
marble dressers, and earthern jars, supposed to have belonged
to a vender of fish and olives. A little further on was a
baker’s shop, with a well-used oven, in which was found a batch
of bread burnt to a cinder. Near this was the house of a midwife.
In it were found several instruments of a simple and excellent
construction, unknown to the moderns, a forceps, remains of
medicines in a wooden box, and various pestles and mortars. The
walls were ornamented with frescoes of the Graces, Venus, and
Adonis, and similar subjects.


The temple of the pantheon is a magnificent ruin, and must
have been one of the choicest in Pompeii. Its walls are
decorated with exquisite paintings in fresco, arabesques, mosaics,
&c., and its court is one hundred and eighty feet long, and two
hundred and thirty broad, and contains an altar, around which
are twelve pedestals for statues of the twelve principal deities
of the ancients. Gutters of marble are placed at the base of
the triclinium, to carry away the blood of the victims. A
thousand coins of bronze, and forty or fifty of silver, were found
near the sanctuary.


We passed on to the Curea, a semi-circular building, for the
discussion of matters of religion by the magistrates; a temple
of Romulus; the remains of a temple of Janus; a splendid
building called the chalcidicum, constructed by the priestess
Eumachea and her son, and dedicated as a temple of concord,
and came at last, by a regular ascent, into a large and spacious
square, called the forum civile. This part of the city of Pompeii
must have been extremely imposing. Porticoes, supported by
noble columns, encompassed its vast area; the pedestals of
colossal statues, erected to distinguished citizens, are placed at
the corners; at the northern extremity rose a stately temple of
Jupiter: on the right was another temple to Venus; beyond,
a large public edifice, the use of which is not known; across
the narrow street which bounds it stood the Basilica, an
immense building, which served as a court of justice and an
exchange.


We passed out at the gate of the city and stopped at a sentry-box,
in which was found a skeleton in full armour—a soldier who
had died at his post! From hence formerly the road descended
directly to the sea, and for some distance was lined on either
side with the magnificent tombs of the Pompeians. Among
them was that of the Vestal virgins, left unfinished when the
city was destroyed; a very handsome tomb, in which was found
the skeleton of a woman, with a lamp in one hand and jewels in
the other (who had probably attempted to rob before her flight),
and a very handsome square monument, with a beautiful relievo
on one of the slabs, representing (as emblematic of death) a ship
furling her sails on coming into port. Near one of the large
family sepulchres stands a small semi-circular room, intended for
the funeral feast after a burial; and here were found the remains
of three men around a table, scattered with relics of a meal.
They were overwhelmed ere their feast was concluded over
the dead!


The principal inn of Pompeii was just inside the gate. We
went over the ruins of it. The skeleton of an ass was found
chained to a ring in the stable, and the tire of a wheel lay in
the court-yard. Chequers are painted on the side of the door
as a sign.


Below the tombs stands the “suburban villa of Diomed,” one
of the most sumptuous edifices of Pompeii. Here was found
everything that the age could furnish for the dwelling of a man
of wealth. Statues, frescoes, jewels, wine, household utensils of
every description, skeletons of servants and dogs, and every kind
of elegant furniture. The family was large, and in the first
moment of terror, they all retreated to a wine vault under the
villa, where their skeletons (eighteen grown persons and two
children) were found seventeen centuries after! There was
really something startling in walking through the deserted
rooms of this beautiful villa—more than one feels elsewhere in
Pompeii, for it is more like the elegance and taste of our own
day; and with the brightness of the preserved walls, and the
certainty with which the use of each room is ascertained, it
seems as if the living inhabitant would step from some corner
and welcome you. The figures on the walls are as fresh as if
done yesterday. The baths look as if they might scarce be dry
from use. It seems incredible that the whole Christian age has
elapsed since this was a human dwelling—occupied by its last
family while our Saviour was walking the world!


It would be tedious to enumerate all the curious places to
which the guide led us in this extraordinary city. On our
return through the streets, among the objects of interest was the
house of Sallust, the historian. I did not think, when reading
his beautiful Latin at school, that I should ever sit down in his
parlour! Sallust was rich, and his house is uncommonly handsome.
Here is his chamber, his inner court, his kitchen, his
garden, his dining-room, his guest-chamber, all perfectly distinguishable
by the symbolical frescoes on the wall. In the court
was a fountain of pretty construction, and opposite, in the rear,
was a flower-garden, containing arrangements for dining in open
air in summer. The skeleton of a female (supposed to be the
wife of the historian) and three servants, known by their different
ornaments, were found near the door of the street.


We passed a druggist’s shop and a cook-shop, and entered,
treading on a beautiful mosaic floor, the “house of the dramatic
poet,” so named from the character of the paintings with which
it is ornamented throughout. The frescoes found here are the
finest ancient paintings in the world, and from some peculiarity
in the rings upon the fingers of the female figures, they are
supposed to be family portraits. With assistance like this, how
easily the imagination repeoples these deserted dwellings.


A heavy shower drove us to the shelter of the wine-vaults of
Diomed, as we were about stepping into our carriage to return to
Naples. We spent the time in exploring, and found some thirty
or forty earthen jars still half-buried in the ashes which drifted
through the loop-holes of the cellar. In another half-hour the
black cloud had passed away over Vesuvius, and the sun set
behind Posilipo in a flood of splendour. We were at home soon
after dark, having had our fill of astonishment for once. I have
seen nothing in my life so remarkable as this disentombed city.
I have passed over, in the description, many things which were
well worth noting, but it would have grown into a mere catalogue
else. You should come to Italy. It is a privilege to realise
these things which could not be bought too dearly, and they
cannot be realised but by the eye. Description conveys but a
poor shadow of them to the fancy.














“The number of skeletons hitherto disinterred in Pompeii and its
suburbs is three hundred.”—Stark.










LETTER III.




Account of Vesuvius—The Hermitage—The famous Lagrima Christi—Difficulties
of the Path—Curious Appearance of the Old Crater—Odd
Assemblage of Travellers—The New Crater—Splendid Prospect—Mr.
Mathias, Author of the Pursuits of Literature—The Archbishop
of Tarento.




Mounted upon asses much smaller than their riders, and with
each a bare-legged driver behind, we commenced the ascent of
Vesuvius. It was a troublesome path worn through the rough
scoria of old eruptions, and after two hours’ toiling, we were glad
to dismount at “the hermitage.” Here lives a capuchin friar on
a prominent rib in the side of the volcano, the red-hot lava
dividing above his dwelling every year or two, and coursing away
to the valley in two rivers of fire on either side of him. He has
been there twelve years, and supports himself, and probably half
the brotherhood at the monastery, by selling Lagrima Christi to
strangers. It is a small white building with a little grass and a
few trees about it, and looks like an island in the black waste of
cinders and lava.


A shout from the guide was answered by the opening of a
small window above, and the shaven crown of the old friar was
thrust forth with a welcome and a request that we would mount
the stairs to the parlour. He received us at the top, and gave us
chairs around a plain board table, upon which he set several
bottles of the far-famed wine of Vesuvius. One drinks it, and
blesses the volcano that warmed the roots of the grape. It is a
ripe, rich, full-bodied liquor, which “ascends me into the brain”
sooner than any continental wine I have tasted. I never drank
anything more delicious.


We remounted our asses and rode on, much more indifferent
than before, to the roughness of the path. It strikes one like the
road to the infernal regions. No grass, not a shrub, nothing but
a wide mountain of cinders, black and rugged, diversified only by
the deeper die of the newer streaks of lava. The eye wearied of
gazing on it. We mounted thus for an hour or more, arriving at
last at the base of a lofty cone whose sides were but slopes of
deep ashes. We left our donkeys here in company with those of
a large party that had preceded us, and made preparations to
ascend on foot. The drivers unlaced their sashes, and passing
them round the waists of the ladies, took the ends over their
shoulders, and proceeded. Harder work could scarce be conceived.
The feet had no hold, sinking knee-deep at every step, and we
slipped back so much, that our progress was almost imperceptible.
The ladies were soon tired out, although more than half dragged
up by the guides. At every few steps there was a general cry
for a halt, and we lay down in the warm ashes, quite breathless
and discouraged.


In something more than an hour from the hermitage we
reached the edge of the old crater. The scene here was very
curious. A hollow, perhaps a mile round, composed entirely of
scoria (like the cinders under a blacksmith’s window) contained
in its centre the sharp new cone of the last eruption. Around
in various directions, sat some thirty groups of travellers, with
each their six or seven Italian guides, refreshing themselves with
a lunch after the fatigue of the ascent. There were English,
Germans, French, Russians, and Italians, each speaking their
own language, and the largest party, oddly enough, was from
the United States. As I was myself travelling with foreigners,
and found my countrymen on Vesuvius unexpectedly, the mixture
of nations appeared still more extraordinary. The combined
heat of the sun and the volcano beneath us, had compelled the
Italians to throw off half their dress, and they sat or stood
leaning on their long pikes, with their brown faces and dark eyes
glowing with heat, as fine models of ruffians as ever startled a
traveller in this land of bandits. Eight or ten of them were
grouped around a crack in the crater, roasting apples and
toasting bread. There were several of these cracks winding
about in different directions, of which I could barely endure the
heat, holding my hand at the top. A stick thrust in a foot or
more, was burnt black in a moment.


With another bottle or two of “lagrima Christi” and a roasted
apple, our courage was renewed, and we picked our way across
the old crater, sometimes lost in the smoke which steamed up
through the cracks, and here and there treading on beautiful
beds of crystals of sulphur. The ascent of the new cone was
shorter, but very difficult. The ashes were so new and light,
that it was like a steep sand-bank, giving discouragingly at the
least pressure, and sinking till the next step was taken. The
steams of sulphur as we approached the summit, were all but
intolerable. The ladies coughed, the guides sneezed and called
on the Madonna, and I never was more relieved than in
catching the first clear draught of wind on the top of the
mountain.


Here we all stood at last—crowded together on the narrow
edge of a crater formed within the year, and liable every
moment to be overwhelmed with burning lava. There was
scarce room to stand, and the hot ashes burnt our feet as they
sunk into it. The females of each party sunk to the ground,
and the common danger and toil breaking down the usual
stiff barrier of silence between strangers, the conversation
became general, and the hour on the crater’s edge passed very
agreeably.


A strong lad would just about throw a stone from one side to
the other of the new crater. It was about forty feet deep,
perhaps more, and one crust of sulphur lined the whole. It was
half the time obscured in smoke, which poured in volumes from
the broad cracks with which it was divided in every direction,
and occasionally an eddy of wind was caught in the vast bowl,
and for a minute its bright yellow surface was perfectly clear.
There had not been an eruption for four or five months, and the
abyss, which is, for years together, a pit of fire and boiling lava,
has had time to harden over, and were it not for the smoking
steams, one would scarce suspect the existence of the tremendous
volcano slumbering beneath.


After we had been on the summit a few minutes, an English
clergyman of my acquaintance, to our surprise, emerged from the
smoke. He had been to the bottom for specimens of sulphur
for his cabinet. Contrary to the advice of the guide, I profited
by his experience, and disappearing in the flying clouds, reached
the lowest depths of the crater with some difficulties of foothold
and breath. The cracks, which I crossed twice, were so brittle
as to break like the upper ice of a twice frozen pond beneath my
feet, and the stench of the exhaling gases was nauseating
beyond all the sulphuretted hydrogen I have ever known. The
sensation was painfully suffocating from the moment I entered
the crater. I broke off as many bits of the bright golden
crystals from the crust as my confusion and failing strength
would allow, and then remounted, feeling my way up through
the smoke to the summit.


I can compare standing on the top of Vesuvius and looking
down upon the bay and city of Naples, to nothing but mounting
a peak in the infernal regions overlooking paradise. The larger
crater encircles you entirely for a mile, cutting off the view of
the sides of the mountain, and from the elevation of the new cone,
you look over the rising edge of this black field of smoke and
cinders, and drop the eye at once upon Naples, lying asleep in
the sun, with its lazy sails upon the water, and the green hills
enclosing it clad in the indescribable beauty of an Italian
atmosphere. Beyond all comparison, by the testimony of every
writer and traveller, the most beautiful scene in the world, the
loveliest water, and the brightest land, lay spread out before us.
With the stench of hot sulphur in our nostrils, ankle deep in
black ashes, and a waste of smouldering cinders in every
direction around us, the enjoyment of the view certainly did not
want for the heightening of contrast.


We made our descent by jumps through the sliding ashes,
frequently tumbling over each other, and retracing in five
minutes the toil of an hour. Our donkeys stood tethered
together on the herbless field of cinders, and we were soon in
the clumsy saddles, and with a call at the hermitage, and a
parting draught of wine with the friar, we reached our carriages
at the little village of Resina in safety. The feet of the whole
troop were in a wretched condition. The ladies had worn shoes,
or slight boots, which were cut to pieces of course, and one very
fine-looking girl, the daughter of an elderly French gentleman,
had, with the usual improvidence of her nation, started in satin
slippers. She was probably lamed for a month, as she insisted
on persevering, and wrapped her feet in handkerchiefs to return.


We rode along the curve of the bay, by one of these
matchless sunsets of Italy, and arrived at Naples at dark.




I have had the pleasure lately of making the acquaintance of
Mr. Mathias, the distinguished author of the “Pursuits of
Literature,” and the translator of Spenser and other English
poets into Italian. About twenty years ago, this well-known
scholar came to Italy on a desperate experiment of health.
Finding himself better almost against hope, he has remained
from year to year in Naples, in love with the climate and the
language, until, at this day, he belongs less to the English than
the Italian literature, having written various original poems in
Italian, and translated into Italian verse, to the wonder and
admiration of the scholars of the country. I found him this
morning at his lodgings, in an old palace on the Pizzofalcone,
buried in books as usual, and good-humoured enough to give an
hour to a young man who had no claim on him beyond the
ordinary interest in a distinguished scholar. He talked a great
deal of America naturally, and expressed a very strong friendship
for Mr. Everett, whom he had met on his travels, requesting
me at the same time to take to him a set of his works as a
remembrance. Mr. Mathias is a small man, of perhaps sixty
years, perfectly bald, and a little inclined to corpulency. His
head is ample, and would make a fine picture of a scholar. His
voice is hurried and modest, and from long residence in Italy,
his English is full of Italian idioms. He spoke with rapture of
Da Ponte, calling me back as I shut the door, to ask for him. It
seemed to give him uncommon pleasure that we appreciated and
valued him in America.


I have looked over, this evening, a small volume, which he
was kind enough to give me. It is entitled “Lyric Poetry, by
T. I. Mathias; a new edition, printed privately.” It is dated
1832, and the poems were probably all written within the last
two years. The shortest extract I can make is a “Sonnet to the
Memory of Gray,” which strikes me as very beautiful.




 

“Lord of the various lyre! devout we turn


Our pilgrim steps to thy supreme abode,


And tread with awe the solitary road


To grace with votive wreaths thy hallowed urn.


Yet, as we wander through this dark sojourn,


No more the strains we hear, that all abroad


Thy fancy wafted, as the inspiring God


Prompted ‘the thoughts that breathe, the words that burn.’


 





 

“But hark! a voice in solemn accents clear


Bursts from heaven’s vault that glows with temperate fire;


Cease, mortal, cease to drop the fruitless tear;


Mute though the raptures of his full-strung lyre,


E’en his own warblings, lessened on his ear,


Lost in seraphic harmony expire.”


 



I have met also, at a dinner party lately, the celebrated
antiquary, Sir William Gell. He, too, lives abroad. His work
on Pompeii has become authority, and displays very great
learning. He is a tall, large-featured man, and very commanding
in his appearance, though lamed terribly with the gout.


A friend, whom I met at the same house, took me to see the
archbishop of Tarento yesterday. This venerable man, it is well
known, lost his gown for his participation in the cause of the
Carbonari (the revolutionary conspirators of Italy). He has
always played a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, and
now, at the age of ninety, unlike the usual fate of meddlers in
troubled waters, he is a healthy, happy, venerated old man, surrounded
in his palace with all that luxury can give him. The
lady who presented me took the privilege of intimate friendship
to call at an unusual hour, and we found the old churchman in
his slippers, over his breakfast, with two immense tortoise-shell
cats, upon stools, watching his hand for bits of bread, and purring
most affectionately. He looks like one of Titian’s pictures. His
face is a wreck of commanding features, and his eye seems less
to have lost its fire, than to slumber in its deep socket. His
hair is snowy white—his forehead of prodigious breadth and
height—and his skin has that calm, settled, and yet healthy
paleness, which carries with it the history of a whole life of
temperance and thought.


The old man rose from his chair with a smile, and came
forward with a stoop and a feeble step, and took my two hands,
as my friend mentioned my name, and looked me in the face very
earnestly. “Your country,” said he, in Italian, “has sprung
into existence like Minerva, full grown and armed. We look
for the result.” He went on with some comments upon the
dangers of republics, and then sent me to look at a portrait of
Queen Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo da Vinci, while he
sat down to talk with the lady who brought me. His secretary
accompanied me as a cicerone. Five or six rooms, communicating
with each other, were filled with choice pictures, every one a
gift from some distinguished individual. The present king of
France has sent him his portrait! Queen Adelaide has sent a
splendid set of Sèvres china, with the portraits of her family;
the Queen of Belgium had presented him with her miniature
and that of Leopold; the King and Queen of Naples had half-furnished
his house; and so the catalogue went on. It seemed
as if the whole continent had united to honour the old man.
While I was looking at a curious mosaic portrait of a cat,
presented to him on the death of the original, by some prince
whose name I have forgotten, he came to us, and said he had
just learned that my pursuits were literary, and would present
me with his own last work. He opened the drawer of a small
bureau and produced a manuscript of some ten pages, written
in a feeble hand. “This,” said he, “is an enumeration from
memory of what I have not seen for many years, the classic
spots about our beautiful city of Naples, and their associations.
I have written it in the last month to wile away the time, and
call up again the pleasure I have received many times in my life
in visiting them.” I put the curious document in my bosom
with many thanks, and we kissed the hand of the good old
priest and left him. We found his carriage, with three or four
servants in handsome livery, waiting for him in the court below.
We had intruded a little on the hour for his morning ride.


I found his account of the environs merely a simple catalogue,
with here and there a classic quotation from a Greek or Latin
author, referring to them. I keep the MS. as a curious memento
of one of the noblest relics I have seen of an age gone by.






LETTER IV.




The Fashionable World of Naples at the Races—Brilliant Show of
Equipages—The King and his Brother—Rank and Character of the
Jockeys—Description of the Races—The Public Burial Ground at
Naples—Horrid and inhuman Spectacles—The Lazzaroni—The
Museum at Naples—Ancient Relics from Pompeii—Forks not used
by the Ancients—The Lamp lit at the time of our Saviour—The
antique Chair of Sallust—The Villa of Cicero—The Balbi Family—Bacchus
on the Shoulders of a Faun—Gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves,
Mercuries, and Apollos, Statue of Aristides, &c.




I have been all day at “the races.” The King of Naples, who
has a great admiration for everything English, has abandoned
the Italian custom of running horses without riders through the
crowded street, and has laid out a magnificent course on the
summit of a broad hill overlooking the city on the east. Here
he astonishes his subjects with ridden races, and it was to see one
of the best of the season, that the whole fashionable world of
Naples poured out to the campo this morning. The show of
equipages was very brilliant, the dashing liveries of the various
ambassadors, and the court and nobles of the kingdom, showing
on the bright greensward to great effect. I never saw a more
even piece of turf, and it was fresh in the just-born vegetation of
spring. The carriages were drawn up in two lines, nearly half
round the course, and for an hour or two before the races, the
king and his brother, Prince Carlo, rode up and down between
with the royal suite, splendidly mounted, the monarch himself
upon a fiery grey blood-horse, of uncommon power and beauty.
The director was an Aragonese nobleman, cousin to the king,
and as perfect a specimen of the Spanish cavalier as ever figured
in the pages of romance. He was mounted on a Turkish horse,
snow-white, and the finest animal I ever saw; and he carried
all eyes with him, as he dashed up and down, like a meteor. I
like to see a fine specimen of a man, as I do a fine picture, or
an excellent horse, and I think I never saw a prettier spectacle
of its kind, than this wild steed from the Balkan and his handsome
rider.


The king is tall, very fat, but very erect, of a light complexion,
and a good horseman, riding always in the English style, trotting
and rising in his stirrup. (He is about twenty-three, and so
surprisingly like a friend of mine in Albany, that the people
would raise their hats to them indiscriminately I am sure.)
Prince Charles is smaller and less kingly in his appearance,
dresses carelessly and ill, and is surrounded always in public
with half a dozen young Englishmen. He is said to have been
refused lately by the niece of the wealthiest English nobleman
in Italy, a very beautiful girl of eighteen, who was on the ground
to-day in a chariot and four.


The horses were led up and down—a delicate, fine-limbed
sorrel mare, and a dark chestnut horse, compact and wiry—both
English. The bets were arranged, the riders weighed, and, at
the beat of a bell, off they went like arrows. Oh what a beautiful
sight! The course was about a mile round, and marked with
red flags at short distances; and as the two flying creatures
described the bright green circle, spread out like greyhounds,
and running with an ease and grace that seemed entirely without
effort, the king dashed across the field followed by the whole
court; the Turkish steed of Don Giovanni restrained with difficulty
in the rear, and leaping high in the air at every bound, his
nostrils expanded, and his head thrown up with the peculiar
action of his race, while his snow-white mane and tail flew with
every hair free to the wind. I had, myself, a small bet upon the
sorrel. It was nothing—a pair of gloves with a lady—but as the
horses came round, the sorrel a whip’s length ahead, and both
shot by like the wind, scarce touching the earth apparently, and
so even in their speed that the rider in blue might have kept his
hand on the other’s back, the excitement became breathless.
Away they went again, past the starting-post, pattering, pattering
on with their slender hoofs, the sorrel still keeping her
ground, and a thousand bright lips wishing the graceful creature
success. Half way round the blue jacket began to whip. The
sorrel still held her way, and I felt my gloves to be beyond peril.
The royal cortège within the ring spurred across at the top of
their speed to the starting-post. The horses came on—their
nostrils open and panting, bounding upon the way with the same
measured leaps a little longer and more eager than before; the
rider of the sorrel leaning over the neck of his horse with a loose
rein, and his whip hanging untouched from his wrist. Twenty
leaps more! With every one the rider of the chestnut gave the
fine animal a blow. The sorrel sprang desperately on, every
nerve strained to the jump, but at the instant that they passed
the carriage in which I stood, the chestnut was developing his
wiry frame in tremendous leaps, and had already gained on his
opponent the length of his head. They were lost in the crowd
that broke instantly into the course behind them, and in a moment
after a small red flag was waved from the stand. My favourite
had lost!


The next race was ridden by a young Scotch nobleman, and
the son of the former French ambassador, upon the horses with
which they came to the ground. It was a match made up on the
spot. The Frenchman was so palpably better mounted, that
there was a general laugh when the ground was cleared and the
two gentlemen spurred up and down to show themselves as
antagonists. The Parisian himself stuffed his white handkerchief
in his bosom, and jammed down his hat upon his head with a
confident laugh, and among the ladies there was scarce a bet
upon the grave Scotchman, who borrowed a stout whip, and rode
his bony animal between the lines with a hard rein and his feet
set firmly in the stirrups. The Frenchman generously gave him
every advantage, beginning with the inside of the ring. The bell
struck, and the Scotchman drove his spurs into his horse’s flanks
and started away, laying on with his whip most industriously.
His opponent followed, riding very gracefully, but apparently
quite sure that he could overtake him at any moment, and
content for the first round with merely showing himself off to
the best advantage. Round came Sawney, twenty leaps ahead,
whipping unmercifully still; the blood of his hired hack completely
up, and himself as red in the face as an alderman, and
with his eye fixed only on the road. The long-tailed bay of the
Frenchman came after, in handsome style, his rider sitting complacently
upright, and gathering up his reins for the first time
to put his horse to his speed. The Scotchman flogged on. The
Frenchman had disdained to take a whip, but he drove his heels
hard into his horse’s sides soon after leaving the post, and leaned
forward quite in earnest. The horses did remarkably well, both
showing much more bottom than was expected. On they came,
the latter gaining a little and working very hard. Sawney had
lost his hat, and his red hair streamed back from his redder face;
but flogging and spurring, with his teeth shut and his eyes
steadily fixed on the road, he kept the most of his ground and
rode away. They passed me a horse’s length apart, and the
Scotchman’s whip flying to the last, disappeared beyond me.
He won the race by a couple of good leaps at least. The king
was very much amused, and rode off laughing heartily, and the
discomfited Frenchman came back to his party with a very ill-concealed
dissatisfaction.


A very amusing race followed between two midshipmen from
an English corvette lying in the bay, and then the long lines of
splendid equipages wheeled into train, and dashed off the ground.
The road, after leaving the campo, runs along the edge of the
range of hills, enclosing the city, and just below, within a high
white wall, lies the public burial-place of Naples. I had read so
many harrowing descriptions of this spot, that my curiosity rose
as we drove along in sight of it, and requesting my friends to set
me down, I joined an American of my acquaintance, and we
started to visit it together.


An old man opened the iron door, and we entered a clean,
spacious, and well-paved area, with long rows of iron rings in
the heavy slabs of the pavement. Without asking a question,
the old man walked across to the farther corner, where stood a
moveable lever, and fastening the chain into the fixture, raised
the massive stone cover of a pit. He requested us to stand back
for a few minutes to give the effluvia time to escape, and then,
sheltering our eyes with our hats, we looked in. You have read,
of course, that there are three hundred and sixty-five pits in this
place, one of which is opened every day for the dead of the city.
They are thrown in without shroud or coffin, and the pit
is sealed up at night for a year. They are thirty or forty feet
deep, and each would contain perhaps two hundred bodies.
Lime is thrown upon the daily heap, and it soon melts into a
mass of garbage, and by the end of the year the bottom of the
pit is covered with dry white bones.


It was some time before we could distinguish anything in the
darkness of the abyss. Fixing my eyes on one spot, however,
the outlines of a body became defined gradually, and in a few
minutes, sheltering my eyes completely from the sun above, I
could see all the horrors of the scene but too distinctly. Eight
corpses, all of grown persons, lay in a confused heap together, as
they had been thrown in one after another in the course of the
day. The last was a powerfully made, gray old man, who had
fallen flat on his back, with his right hand lying across and half
covering the face of a woman. By his full limbs and chest, and
the darker colour of his legs below the knee, he was probably
one of the lazzaroni, and had met with a sudden death. His
right heel lay on the forehead of a young man, emaciated to the
last degree, his chest thrown up as he lay, and his ribs showing
like a skeleton covered with skin. The close black curls of the
latter, as his head rested on another body, were in such strong
relief that I could have counted them. Off to the right, quite
distinct from the heap, lay, in a beautiful attitude, a girl, as well
as I could judge, of not more than nineteen or twenty. She had
fallen on the pile and rolled or slid away. Her hair was very
long, and covered her left shoulder and bosom; her arm was
across her body, and if her mother had laid her down to sleep,
she could not have disposed her limbs more decently. The head
had fallen a little away to the right, and the feet, which were
small, even for a lady, were pressed one against the other, as if
she were about turning on her side. The sexton said that a
young man had come with the body, and was very ill for some
time after it was thrown in. We asked him if respectable people
were brought here. “Yes,” he said, “many. None but the
rich would go to the expense of a separate grave for their relations.
People were often brought in handsome grave-clothes,
but they were always stripped before they were left. The
shroud, whenever there was one, was the perquisite of the undertakers.”
And thus are flung into this noisome pit, like beasts,
the greater part of the population of this vast city—the young
and the old, the vicious and the virtuous together, without the
decency even of a rag to keep up the distinctions of life! Can
human beings thus be thrown away?—men like ourselves—women,
children, like our sisters and brothers? I never was so
humiliated in my life as by this horrid spectacle. I did not
think a man—a felon even, or a leper—what you will that is
guilty or debased—I did not think anything that had been
human could be so recklessly abandoned. Pah! It makes one
sick at heart! God grant I may never die at Naples!


While we were recovering from our disgust, the old man
lifted the stone from the pit destined to receive the dead on the
following day. We looked in. The bottom was strewn with
bones, already fleshless and dry. He wished us to see the dead
of several previous days, but my stomach was already tried to its
utmost. We paid our gratuity, and hurried away. A few steps
from the gate, we met a man bearing a coffin on his head.
Seeing that we came from the cemetery, he asked us if we wished
to look into it. He set it down, and the lid opening with a hinge,
we were horror-struck with the sight of seven dead infants!
The youngest was at least three months old, the eldest perhaps
a year; and they lay heaped together like so many puppies, one
or two of them spotted with disease, and all wasted to baby-skeletons.
While we were looking at them, six or seven noisy
children ran out from a small house at the road-side and
surrounded the coffin. One was a fine girl of twelve years of
age, and instead of being at all shocked at the sight, she lifted
the whitest of the dead things, and looked at its face very
earnestly, loading it with all the tenderest diminutives of the
language. The others were busy in pointing to those they
thought had been prettiest, and none of them betrayed fear or
disgust. In answer to a question of my friend about the marks
of disease, the man rudely pulled out one by the foot that lay
below the rest, and holding it up to show the marks upon it,
tossed it again carelessly into the coffin. He had brought them
from the hospital for infants, and they had died that morning.
The coffin was worn with use. He shut down the lid, and lifting
it again upon his head, went on to the cemetery, to empty it like
so much offal upon the heap we had seen!


I have been struck repeatedly with the little value attached to
human life in Italy. I have seen several of these houseless lazzaroni
literally dying in the streets, and no one curious enough to
look at them. The most dreadful sufferings, the most despairing
cries, in the open squares, are passed as unnoticed as the howling
of a dog. The day before yesterday, a woman fell in the Toledo,
in a fit, frothing at the mouth, and livid with pain; and though
the street was so crowded that one could make his way with
difficulty, three or four ragged children were the only persons even
looking at her.




I have devoted a week to the museum at Naples. It is a
world! Anything like a full description of it would tire even
an antiquary. It is one of those things (and there are many in
Europe) that fortunately compel travel. You must come abroad
to get an idea of it.


The first day I buried myself among the curiosities found at
Pompeii. After walking through the chambers and streets
where they were found, I came to them naturally with an intense
interest. I had visited a disentombed city, buried for seventeen
centuries—had trodden in their wheel-tracks—had wandered
through their dining-rooms, their chambers, their baths, their
theatres, their market-places. And here were gathered in one
place, their pictures, their statues, their cooking utensils, their
ornaments, the very food as it was found on their tables! I am
puzzled, in looking over my note-book, to know what to mention.
The catalogue fills a printed volume.


A curious corner in one of the cases was that containing the
articles found on the toilet of the wealthiest Pompeian’s wife.
Here were pots of rouge, ivory pins, necklaces, ear-rings,
bracelets, small silver mirrors, combs, ear-pickers, &c. &c.
In the next case were two loaves of bread, found in a baker’s
oven, and stamped with his name. Two large cases of precious
gems, cameos and intaglios of all descriptions, stand in the centre
of this room (among which, by the way, the most exquisitely
done are two which one cannot look at without a blush).
Another case is filled with eatables, found upon the tables—eggs,
fish-bones, honey-comb, grain, fruits, &c. In the repository for
ancient glass are several cinerary urns, in which the ashes of
the dead are perfectly preserved; and numerous small glass
lachrymatories, in which the tears of the survivors were
deposited in the tombs.


The brazen furniture of Pompeii, the lamps particularly, are
of the most curious and beautiful models. Trees, to which the
lamps were suspended like fruit, vines, statues holding them in
their hands, and numerous other contrivances, were among
them, exceeding far in beauty any similar furniture of our
time. It appears that the ancients did not know the use of
the fork, as every other article of table service except this has
been found here.


To conceive the interest attached to the thousand things in
this museum, one must imagine a modern city, Boston for
example, completely buried by an unexpected and terrific
convulsion of nature. Its inhabitants mostly escape, but from
various causes leave their city entombed, and in a hundred years
the grass grows over it, and its very locality is forgotten. Near
two thousand years elapse, and then a peasant, digging in the
field, strikes upon some of its ruins, and it is unearthed just as it
stands at this moment, with all its utensils, books, pictures,
houses, and streets, in untouched preservation. What a subject
for speculation! What food for curiosity! What a living and
breathing chapter of history were this! Far more interesting is
Pompeii. For the age in which it flourished and the characters
who trod its streets, are among the most remarkable in history.
This brazen lamp, shown to me to-day as a curiosity, was lit
every evening in the time of Christ. The handsome chambers
through which I wandered a day or two ago, and from which
were brought this antique chair, were the home of Sallust, and
doubtless had been honoured by the visits of Cicero (whose villa,
half-excavated, is near by,) and by all the poets and scholars and
statesmen of his time. One might speculate endlessly thus!
And it is that which makes these lands of forgotten empires so
delightful to the traveller. His mind is fed by the very air. He
needs no amusements, no company, no books except the history
of the place. The spot is peopled wherever he may stray, and
the common necessities of life seem to pluck him from a far-reaching
dream, in which he had summoned back receding ages,
and was communing, face to face, with philosophers and poets
and emperors, like a magician before his mirror. Pompeii and
Herculaneum seem to me visions. I cannot shake myself and
wake to their reality. My mind refuses to go back so far.
Seventeen hundred years!


I followed the cicerone on, listening to his astonishing enumeration,
and looking at everything as he pointed to it, in a kind
of stupor. One has but a certain capacity. We may be over-astonished.
Still he went on in the same every-day tone, talking
as indifferently of this and that surprising antiquity as a pedlar
of his two-penny wares. We went from the bronzes to the hall
of the papyri—thence to the hall of the frescoes, and beautiful
they were. Their very number makes them indescribable. The
next morning we devoted to the statuary—and of this, if I knew
where to begin, I should like to say a word or two.


First of all comes the Balbi family—father, mother, sons, and
daughters. He was pro-consul of Herculaneum, and by the
excellence of the statues, which are life itself for nature, he and
his family were worth the artist’s best effort. He is a fine old
Roman himself, and his wife is a tall, handsome woman, much
better-looking than her daughters. The two Misses Balbi are
modest-looking girls, and that is all. They were the high-born
damsels of Herculaneum, however; and, if human nature has
not changed in seventeen centuries, they did not want admirers
who compared them to the Venuses who have descended with
them to the “Museo Borbonico.” The eldest son is on horseback
in armour. It is one of the finest equestrian statues in the world.
He is a noble youth, of grave and handsome features, and sits the
superb animal with the freedom of an Arab and the dignity of a
Roman. It is a beautiful thing. If one had visited these Balbis,
warm and living, in the time of Augustus, he could scarcely feel
more acquainted with them than after having seen their statues
as they stand before him here.


Come a little farther on! Bacchus on the shoulders of a faun—a
child delighted with a grown-up playfellow. I have given
the same pleasure to just such another bright “picture in little”
of human beauty. It moves one’s heart to see it.


Pass now a whole gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries,
and Apollos, and come to the presence of Aristides—him whom
the Athenians exiled because they were tired of hearing him
called The Just. Canova has marked three spots upon the
floor where the spectator should place himself to see to the best
advantage this renowned statue. He stands wrapped in his toga,
with his head a little inclined, as if in reflection, and in his face
there is a mixture of firmness and goodness from which you read
his character as clearly as if it were written across his forehead.
It was found at Herculaneum, and is, perhaps, the simplest and
most expressive statue in the world.






LETTER V.




Pæstum—Temple of Neptune—Departure from Elba—Ischia—Bay of Naples—The
Toledo—The Young Queen—Conspiracy against the King—Neapolitans
Visiting the Frigates—Leave the Bay—Castellamare.




Salvator Rosa studied the scenery of La Cava—the country
between Pompeii and Salerno, on the road to Pæstum. It is a
series of natively abrupt glens, but gemmed with cottages and
hanging gardens, through which the wildness of every feature is
as apparent as those of a savage through his trinkets. I was
going to Pæstum with an agreeable party, and we came out upon
the bluffs overhanging Salerno and the sea, an hour before sunset.


We darted down upon the little city lying in the bend of the
bay, like a bird’s descent upon her nest. The road is cut through
the side of the precipice, and runs to the bottom with a single
sweep. We were to pass the night here, and go to Pæstum the
next morning, see the ruins, and return here to sleep once more
before returning to Naples.


We were five or six miles from Salerno before sunrise, and
entering upon the dreary wastes of Calabria. The people we
passed on the road were dressed in skins with the wool outside,
and the country looked abandoned by nature itself, scarce a
flourishing tree or a healthy plant within the range of the sight.
We turned from the main road after a while, crossed a ruinous
bridge, and tracked a broad, waste, gloomy plain, till my eyes
ached with its barrenness. In an hour more, three stately
temples began to rise in the distance, increasing in grandeur as
we approached. A cluster of ruined tombs on the right—a
grass-grown and broken city wall, through a rent of which passed
the road—and we stood among them, in the desert, amid temples
of inimitable beauty!


There seemed to be a general feeling in the party that silence
and solitude were the spirits of the place. We separated and
rambled about alone. The grand temple of Neptune stands in
the centre. A temple in the midst of the sea could scarce seem
more strangely placed. I stood on the high base of the altar
within and looked out between the columns on every side. The
Mediterranean slept in a broad sheet of silver on the west, and
on every other side lay the bare, houseless desert, stretching
away to the naked mountains on the south and east, with a
barrenness that made the heart ache, while it filled the imagination
with its singleness and grandeur. I descended to look at
the columns. They were eaten through and through with snails
and worms, and all of the same rich yellow so admirably represented
in the cork models. But their size, and their noble
proportion as they stand, cannot be represented. They seem the
conception and the work of giant minds and hands. One’s soul
rises among them.


We walked round the ruins for hours. A little towards the
sea, lie the traces of an amphitheatre, filled with fragments of
statuary, and parts of immense friezes and columns. We all
assembled at last in the great temple, and sat down on the
immense steps towards the east in the shadow of the pediment,
speculating on the wonderful fabric above us, till we were
summoned to start on our return. To think that these very
temples were visited as venerable antiquities in the time of
Christ! What events have these worm-eaten columns outlived!
What moths of an hour, in comparison, are we?


It is difficult to conceive how three such magnificent structures,
so near the sea, the remains of a great city, should have been
lost for ages. A landscape-painter, searching for the picturesque,
came suddenly upon them fifty years ago, and astonished the
world with his discovery! It adds to their interest now.


We turned our horses’ heads towards Naples. What an
extraordinary succession of objects were embraced in the fifty
miles between—Pæstum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Herculaneum!—and,
added to these, the thousand classic associations of the
lovely coast along Sorrento! The value of life deepens incalculably
with the privileges of travel.




Written on board the frigate “United States.”—We set
sail from Elba on the 3rd of June. The inhabitants, all of whom,
I presume, had been on board of the ships, were standing along
the walls and looking from the embrasures of the fortress to see
us off. It was a clear summer’s morning, without much wind,
and we crept slowly off from the point, gazing up at the windows
of Napoleon’s house as we passed under, and laying on our
course for the shore of Italy. We soon got into the fresher
breeze of the open sea, and the low white line of villages on the
Tuscan coast appeared more distant, till, with a glass, we could
see the people at the windows watching our progress. Fishing-boats
were drawn up on shore, and the idle sailors were leaning
in the half shadow which they afforded; but with the almost
total absence of trees, and the glaring white of the walls, we
were content to be out upon the cool sea, passing town after
town unvisited. Island after island was approached and left
during the day; barren rocks with only a lighthouse to redeem
their nakedness: and in the evening at sunset we were in sight
at Ischia, the towering isle in the bosom of the bay of Naples.
The band had been called as usual at seven, and were playing a
delightful waltz upon the quarter-deck; the sea was even, and
just crisped by the breeze from the Italian shore; the sailors
were leaning on the guns listening; the officers clustered in
their various places; and the murmur of the foam before the
prow was just audible in the lighter passages of the music.
Above and in the west glowed the eternal but untiring teints of
the summer sky of the Mediterranean, a gradually fading gold
from the edge of the sea to the zenith, and the early star soon
twinkled through it, and the air dampened to a reviving
freshness. I do not know that a mere scene like this, without
incident, will interest a reader, but it was so delightful to myself,
that I have described it for the mere pleasure of dwelling on it.
The desert stillness and loneliness of the sea, the silent motion
of the ship, and the delightful music swelling beyond the
bulwarks and dying upon the wind, were such singularly
combined circumstances! It was a moving paradise in the
waste of the ocean.




Sail was shortened last night, and we lay-to under the shore
of Ischia, to enter the bay of Naples by daylight. As the
morning mist lifted a little, the peculiar shape of Vesuvius, the
boldness of the island of Capri, the sweeping curves of Baiæ and
Portici, and the small promontory which lifts Naples toward the
sea, rose like the features of a familiar friend to my eye. It
would be difficult to have seen Naples without having a memory
steeped in its beauty. A fair wind set us straight into the bay,
and one by one the towns on its shore, the streaks of lava on the
sides of its volcano, and, soon after, the houses of friends on the
street of the Chiaga became distinguishable to the eye. There
had been a slight eruption since I was here; but now, as before,
there was scarce a puff of smoke to be seen rising from Vesuvius.
My little specimen of sulphur which I took from the just
hardened bosom of the crater now destroyed, lies before me on
the table as I write, more valued than ever, since its bed has
been melted and blown into the air. The new and lighter-coloured
streak on the right of the mountain, would have
informed me of itself that the lava had issued since I was here.
The sound of bells and the hum of the city reached our ears,
and running in between the mole and the castle, the anchor
was dropped, and the ship surrounded with boats from the
shore.




The heat kept us on board till the evening, and with several
of the officers I landed and walked up the Toledo as the lazzaroni
were stirring from their sleep under the walls of the houses.
With the exception of the absence of the English, who have
mostly flitted to the baths, Naples was the same place as ever,
busy, dirty, and gay. Her thousand beggars were still “dying of
hunger,” and telling it to the passenger in the same exhausted
tone; her gay carriages and skeleton hacks were still flying up
and down, and dashing at and over you for your custom; the
cows and goats were driven about to be milked in the street;
the lemonade-sellers stood in their stalls; the money changers
at their tables in the open squares; puncinello squeaked and
beat his mistress at every corner; the awnings of the cafés
covered hundreds of smokers and loungers; and this gay,
miserable, homeless, out-of-doors people, seemed as degraded
and thoughtless, and, it must be owned, as insensibly happy as
before. You would think, to walk through the Toledo of Naples,
that two-thirds of its crowd of wretches, and all its horses and
dogs, were at their last extremity, and yet they go on, and, I
was told by an Englishman resident here, who has been accustomed
to meet always the same faces, seem never to change or
disappear, suffering, and groaning, and dragging up and down,
shocking the eye and sickening the heart of the inexperienced
stranger for years and years.


We passed the prima sera, the first part of the evening, as most
men in Italy pass it, eating ices at the thronged café, and at nine
we went to the splendid theatre of San Carlo to see La Sonnambula.
The king and queen were present, with the dissolute
old queen-mother and her gray-headed lover. I was instantly
struck with the alteration in the appearance of the young queen.
When I was here three months ago, she was just married, and
appeared frequently in the public walks, and a fresher or brighter
face I never had seen. She was acknowledged the most beautiful
woman in Naples, and had, what is very much valued in this
land of pale brunettes, a clear rosy cheek, and lips as bright as
a child’s. She is now thin and white, and looks to me like a
person fading with a rapid consumption.


Several conspiracies have been detected within a month or
two, the last of which was very nearly successful. The day
before we arrived, two officers in the royal army, men of high
rank, had shot themselves, each putting a pistol to the other’s
breast, believing discovery inevitable. One died instantly, and
the other lingers to-day without any hope of recovery. The
king was fired at on parade the day previous, which was supposed
to have been the first step, but the plot had been checked by
partial disclosure, hence the tragedy I have just related.


The ships have been thronged with visitors during the two or
three days we have lain at Naples, among whom have been the
prime minister and his family. Orders are given to admit every
one on board that wishes to come, and the decks, morning and
evening, present the most motley scene imaginable. Cameo and
lava sellers expose their wares on the gun-carriages, surrounded
by the midshipmen—Jews and fruit-sellers hail the sailors
through the ports—boats full of chickens and pigs, all in loud
outcry, are held up to view with a recommendation in broken
English—contadini in their best dresses walk up and down,
smiling on the officers, and wondering at the cleanliness of the
decks, and the elegance of the captain’s cabin—Punch plays his
tricks under the gun-deck ports—bands of wandering musicians
sing and hold out their hats, as they row around, and all is
harmony and amusement. In the evening, it is pleasanter still,
for the band is playing, and the better class of people come off
from the shore, and boats filled with these pretty, dark-eyed
Neapolitans, row round and round the ship, eying the officers as
they lean over the bulwarks, and ready with but half a nod to
make acquaintance and come up the gangway. I have had a
private pride of my own in showing the frigate as American
to many of my foreign friends. One’s nationality becomes
nervously sensitive abroad, and in the beauty and order of
the ships, the manly elegance of the officers, and the general
air of superiority and decision throughout, I have found food
for some of the highest feelings of gratification of which I am
capable.


We weighed anchor yesterday morning (the twentieth of
June), and stood across the bay for Castellamare. Running
close under Vesuvius, we passed Portici, Torre del Greco, and
Pompeii, and rounded-to in the little harbour of this fashionable
watering-place soon after noon. Castellamare is about fifteen
miles from Naples, and in the summer months it is crowded with
those of the fashionables who do not make a northern tour. The
shore rises directly from the sea into a high mountain, on the
side of which the king has a country-seat, and around it hang,
on terraces, the houses of the English. Strong mineral springs
abound on the slope.


We landed directly, and mounting the donkeys waiting on the
pier, started to make the round of the village walks. English
maids with their prettily dressed and rosy children, and English
ladies and gentlemen, mounted, like ourselves on donkeys, met
us at every turn as we wound up the shady and zigzag roads to
the palace. The views became finer as we ascended, till we look
down into Pompeii, which was but four miles off, and away
toward Naples, following the white road with the eye along the
shore of the sea. The paths were in fine order, and as beautiful
as green trees, and shade, and living fountains, crossing the road
continually, could make them. In the neighbourhood of the
royal casino, the ground was planted more like a park, and the
walks were terminated with artificial fountains, throwing up
their bright waters amid statuary and over grottoes, and here
we met the idlers of the place of all nations, enjoying the sunset.
I met an acquaintance or two, and felt the yearning unwillingness
to go away which I have felt on every spot almost of this
“delicious land.”


We set sail again with the night-breeze, and at this moment
are passing between Ischia and Capri, running nearly on our
course for Sicily. We shall probably be at Palermo to-morrow.
The ship’s bell beats ten, and the lights are ordered out, and
under this imperative government, I must say, “good night!”






LETTER VI.




Baiæ—Grotto of Posilipo—Tomb of Virgil—Pozzuoli—Ruins of the
Temple of Jupiter Serapis—The Lucrine Lake—Lake of Avernus, the
Tartarus of Virgil—Temple of Proserpine—Grotto of the Cumæan
Sybil—Nero’s villa—Cape of Misenum—Roman villas—Ruins of the
Temple of Venus—Cento Camerelle—The Stygian Lake—The Elysian
Fields—Grotto del Cane—Villa of Lucullus.




We made the excursion to Baiæ on one of those premature
days of March common to Italy. A south wind and a warm sun
gave it the feeling of June. The heat was even oppressive as
we drove through the city, and the long echoing grotto of
Posilipo, always dim and cool, was peculiarly refreshing.
Near the entrance to this curious passage under the mountain,
we stopped to visit the tomb of Virgil. A ragged boy took us
up a steep path to the gate of a vineyard, and winding in among
the just budding vines, we came to a small ravine, in the mouth
of which, right over the deep cut of the grotto, stands the half-ruined
mausoleum which held the bones of the poet. An
Englishman stood leaning against the entrance, reading from
a pocket copy of the Æneid. He seemed ashamed to be caught
with his classic, and put the book in his pocket as I came
suddenly upon him, and walked off to the other side whistling an
air from the Pirata, which is playing just now at San Carlo.
We went in, counted the niches for the urns, stood a few minutes
to indulge in what recollections we could summon, and then
mounted to the top to hunt for the “myrtle.” Even its root
was cut an inch or two below the ground. We found violets,
however, and they answered as well. The pleasure of visiting
such places, I think, is not found on the spot. The fatigue of
the walk, the noise of a party, the difference between reality and
imagination, and, worse than all, the caprice of mood—one or
the other of these things disturbs and defeats for me the dearest
promises of anticipation. It is the recollection that repays us.
The picture recurs to the fancy till it becomes familiar; and as
the disagreeable circumstances of the visit fade from the memory,
the imagination warms it into a poetic feeling, and we dwell
upon it with the delight we looked for in vain when present. A
few steps up the ravine, almost buried in luxuriant grass, stands
a small marble tomb, covering the remains of an English girl.
She died at Naples. It is as lovely a place to lie in as the world
could show. Forward a little toward the edge of the hill some
person of taste has constructed a little arbour, laced over with
vines, whence the city and bay of Naples is seen to the finest
advantage. Paradise that it is!


It is odd to leave a city by a road piercing the base of a broad
mountain, in at one side and out at the other, after a subterranean
drive of near a mile! The grotto of Posilipo has
been one of the wonders of the world these two thousand years,
and it exceeds all expectation as a curiosity. Its length is stated
at two thousand three hundred and sixteen feet, its breadth
twenty-two, and its height eighty-nine. It is thronged with
carts and beasts of burden of all descriptions, and the echoing
cries of these noisy Italian drivers are almost deafening. Lamps,
struggling with the distant daylight as you near the end, just
make darkness visible, and standing in the centre and looking
either way, the far distant arch of daylight glows like a fire
through the cloud of dust. What with the impressiveness of the
place, and the danger of driving in the dark amid so many
obstructions, it is rather a stirring half-hour that is spent in its
gloom! One emerges into the fresh open air and the bright
light of day with a feeling of relief.


The drive hence to Pozzuoli, four or five miles, was extremely
beautiful. The fields were covered with the new tender grain,
and by the short passage through the grotto we had changed a
busy and crowded city for scenes of as quiet rural loveliness as
ever charmed the eye. We soon reached the lip of the bay, and
then the road turned away to the right, along the beach, passing
the small island of Nisida (where Brutus had a villa, and which
is now a prison for the carbonari).


Pozzuoli soon appeared, and mounting a hill we descended
into its busy square, and were instantly beset by near a hundred
guides, boatmen, and beggars, all preferring their claims and
services at the tops of their voices. I fixed my eye on the most
intelligent face among them, a curly-headed fellow in a red
lazzaroni cap, and succeeded, with some loss of temper, in getting
him aside from the crowd and bargaining for our boats.


While the boatmen were forming themselves into a circle to
cast lots for the bargain, we walked up to the famous ruins of the
temple of Jupiter Serapis. This was one of the largest and
richest of the temples of antiquity. It was a quadrangular
building, near the edge of the sea, lined with marble, and
sustained by columns of solid cipolino, three of which are still
standing. It was buried by an earthquake and forgotten for a
century or two, till in 1750 it was discovered by a peasant, who
struck the top of one of the columns in digging. We stepped
around over the prostrate fragments, building it up once more in
fancy, and peopling the aisles with priests and worshippers. In
the centre of the temple was the place of sacrifice, raised by
flights of steps, and at the foot still remain two rings of Corinthian
brass, to which the victims were fastened, and near them
the receptacles for their blood and ashes. The whole scene has
a stamp of grandeur. We obeyed the call of our red-bonnet
guide, whose boat waited for us at the temple stairs, very
unwillingly.


As we pushed off from the shore, we deviated a moment from
our course to look at the ruins of the ancient mole. Here
probably St. Paul set his foot, landing to pursue his way to
Rome. The great apostle spent seven days at this place, which
was then called Puteoli—a fact that attaches to it a deeper
interest than it draws from all the antiquities of which it is
the centre.


We kept on our way along the beautiful bend of the shore of
Baiæ, and passing on the right a small mountain formed in thirty-six
hours by a volcanic explosion, some three hundred years ago,
we came to the Lucrine Lake, so famous in the classics for its
oysters. The same explosion that made the Monte Nuovo, and
sunk the little village of Tripergole, destroyed the oyster-beds
of the poets.


A ten minutes’ walk brought us to the shores of Lake Avernus—the
“Tartarus” of Virgil. This was classic ground indeed,
and we hoped to have found a thumbed copy of the Æneid in
the pocket of the cicerone. He had not even heard of the poet.
A ruin on the opposite shore, reflected in the still dark water, is
supposed to have been a temple dedicated to Proserpine. If she
was allowed to be present at her own worship, she might have
been consoled for her abduction. A spot of more secluded
loveliness could scarce be found. The lake lay like a sheet of
silver at the foot of the ruined temple, the water looking unfathomably
deep through the clear reflection, and the fringes of
low shrubbery leaning down on every side, were doubled in the
bright mirror, the likeness even fairer than the reality.


Our unsentimental guide hurried us away as we were seating
ourselves upon the banks, and we struck into a narrow footpath
of wild shrubbery which circled the lake, and in a few minutes
stood before the door of a grotto sunk in the side of the hill.
Here dwelt the Cumæan sybil, and by this dark passage, the
souls of the ancients passed from Tartarus to Elysium. The
guide struck a light and kindled two large torches, and we
followed him into the narrow cavern, walking downward at a
rapid pace for ten or fifteen minutes. With a turn to the right,
we stood before a low archway which the guide entered, up to
his knees in water at the first step. It looked like the mouth of
an abyss, and the ladies refused to go on. Six or seven stout
fellows had followed us in, and the guide assured us we should be
safe on their backs. I mounted first myself to carry the torch,
and holding my head very low, we went plunging on, turning to
the right and left through a crooked passage, dark as Erebus,
till I was set down on a raised ledge called the Sibyl’s bed. The
lady behind me, I soon discovered by her screams, had not made
so prosperous a voyage. She had insisted on being taken up
something in the side-saddle fashion; and the man, not accustomed
to hold so heavy a burden on his hip with one arm, had stumbled
and let her slip up to her knees in water. He took her up
immediately, in his own homely but safer fashion, and she was
soon set beside me on the sibyl’s stony couch, dripping with
water, and quite out of temper with antiquities.


The rest of the party followed, and the guide lifted the torches
to the dripping roof of the cavern, and showed us the remains of
beautiful mosaic with which the place was once evidently
encrusted. Whatever truth there may be in the existence of the
sybil, these had been, doubtlessly, luxurious baths, and probably
devoted by the Roman emperors to secret licentiousness. The
guide pointed out to us a small perforation in the rear of the
sybil’s bed, whence, he said (by what authority I know not),
Caligula used to watch the lavations of the nymph. It communicates
with an outer chamber.


We reappeared, our nostrils edged with black from the smoke
of the torches, and the ladies’ dresses in a melancholy plight,
between smoke and water. It would be a witch of a sybil that
would tempt us to repeat our visit.


We retraced our steps, and embarked for Nero’s villa. It was
perhaps a half mile further down the bay. The only remains of
it were some vapour baths, built over a boiling spring which
extended under the sea. One of our boatmen waded first a few
feet into the surf, and plunging under the cold sea-water, brought
up a handful of warm gravel—the evidence of a submarine outlet
from the springs beyond. We then mounted a high and ruined
flight of steps, and entered a series of chambers dug out of the
rock, where an old man was stripping off his shirt, to go through
the usual process of taking eggs down to boil in the fountain.
He took his bucket, drew a long breath of fresh air, and rushed
away by a dark passage, whence he reappeared in three or four
minutes, the eggs boiled, and the perspiration streaming from his
body like rain. He set the bucket down, and rushed to the
door, gasping as if from suffocation. The eggs were boiled hard,
but the distress of the old man, and the danger of such sudden
changes of atmosphere to his health, quite destroyed our pleasure
at the phenomenon.


Hence to the cape of Misenum, the curve of the bay presents
one continuation of Roman villas. And certainly there was not
probably in the world, a place more adapted to the luxury of
which it was the scene. These natural baths, the many mineral
waters, the balmy climate, the fertile soil, the lovely scenery, the
matchless curve of the shore from Pozzuoli to the cape, and the
vicinity, by that wonderful subterranean passage, to a populous
capital on the other side of a range of mountains, rendered Baiæ
a natural paradise to the emperors. It was improved as we see.
Temples to Venus, Diana, and Mercury, the villas of Marius, of
Hortensius, of Cæsar, of Lucullus, and others whose masters are
disputed, follow each other in rival beauty of situation. The
ruins are not much now, except the temple of Venus, which is
one of the most picturesque fragments of antiquity I have ever
seen. The long vines hang through the rent in its circular roof,
and the bright flowers cling to the crevices in its still half-splendid
walls with the very poetry of decay. Our guide here proposed a
lunch. We sat down on the immense stone which has fallen
from the ceiling, and in a few minutes the rough table was spread
with a hundred open oysters from Fusaro (near Lake Avernus),
bottles at will of lagrima Christi from Vesuvius, boiled crabs
from the shore beneath the temple of Mercury, fish from the
Lucrine lake, and bread from Pozzuoli. The meal was not less
classic than refreshing. We drank to the goddess (the only one
in mythology, by the way, whose worship has not fallen into
contempt), and leaving twenty ragged descendants of ancient
Baiæ to feast on the remains, mounted our donkeys and started
over land for Elysium.


We passed the villa of Hortensius, to which Nero invited his
mother, with the design of murdering her, visited the immense
subterranean chambers in which water was kept for the Roman
fleet, the horrid prisons called the Cento Camerelle of the
emperors, and then rising the hill at the extremity of the cape,
the Stygian lake lay off on the right, a broad and gloomy pool,
and around its banks spread the Elysian fields, the very home
and centre of classic fable. An overflowed marsh, and an adjacent
corn-field will give you a perfect idea of it. The sun was
setting while we swallowed our disappointment, and we turned
our donkeys’ heads toward Naples.


We left the city again this morning by the grotto of Posilipo
to visit the celebrated Grotto del Cane. It is about three
miles off, on the borders of a pretty lake, once the crater of a
volcano. On the way there arose a violent debate in the party
on the propriety of subjecting the poor dogs to the distress of the
common experiment. We had not yet decided the point when
we stopped before the door of the keeper’s house. Two miserable-looking
terriers had set up a howl, accompanied with a ferocious
and half-complaining bark, from our first appearance around the
turn of the road, and the appeal was effectual. We dismounted
and walking toward the grotto, determined to refuse to see the
phenomenon. Our scruples were unnecessary. The door was
surrounded with another party less merciful, and as we approached,
two dogs were dragged out by the heels, and thrown
lifeless on the grass. We gathered round them, and while the
old woman coolly locked the door of the grotto, the poor animals
began to kick, and after a few convulsions, struggled to their
feet and crept feebly away. Fresh dogs were offered to our
party, but we contented ourselves with the more innocent experiments.
The mephitic air of this cave rises to a foot above the
surface of the ground, and a torch put into it was immediately
extinguished. It has been described too often, however, to need
a repetition. We took a long stroll around the lake, which was
covered with wild-fowl, visited the remains of a villa of Lucullus
on the opposite shore, and returned to Naples to dinner.






LETTER VII.




Island of Sicily—Palermo—Saracenic appearance of the town—Cathedral—The
Marina—Viceroy Leopold—Monastery of the Capuchins—Celebrated
Catacombs—Fanciful Gardens.




Frigate United States, June 25.—The mountain coast of
Sicily lay piled up before us at the distance of ten or twelve miles,
when I came on deck this morning. The quarter-master handed
me the glass, and running my eye along the shore, I observed
three or four low plains, extending between projecting spurs of
the hills, studded thickly with country-houses, and bright with
groves which I knew, by the deep glancing green, to be the orange.
In a corner of the longest of these intervals, a sprinkling of white,
looking in the distance like a bed of pearly shells on the edge of
the sea, was pointed out as Palermo. With a steady glass its
turrets and gardens became apparent, and its mole, bristling
above the wall with masts; and, running in with a free wind, the
character of our ship was soon recognised from the shore, and the
flags of every vessel in the harbour ran up to the mast, the customary
courtesy to a man-of-war entering port.


As the ship came to her anchorage, the view of the city was
very captivating. The bend of the shore embraced our position,
and the eastern half of the curve was a succession of gardens and
palaces. A broad street extended along in front, crowded with
people gazing at the frigates, and up one of the long avenues of
the public gardens, we could distinguish the veiled women
walking in groups, children playing, priests, soldiers, and all the
motley frequenters of such places in this idle clime, enjoying the
refreshing sea-breeze, upon whose wings we had come. I was
impatient to get ashore, but between the health-officer and some
other hindrances, it was evening before we set foot upon the pier.


With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked up to the
Toledo, as the still half-asleep tradesmen were opening their shops
after the siesta. The oddity of the Palermitan style of building
struck me forcibly. Of the two long streets, crossing each other
at right angles and extending to the four gates of the city, the
lower story of every house is a shop, of course. The second and
third stories are ornamented with tricksy-looking iron balconies,
in which the women sit at work universally, while from above
projects, far over the street, a grated enclosure, like a long birdcage,
from which look down girls and children (or, if it is a
convent, the nuns), as if it were an airy prison to keep the household
from the contact of the world. The whole air of Palermo
is different from that of the towns upon the continent. The peculiarities
are said to be Saracenic, and inscriptions in Arabic are
still found upon the ancient buildings. The town is poetically
called the concha d’oro, or “the golden shell.”


We walked on to the cathedral, followed by a troop of literally
naked beggars, baked black in the sun, and more emaciated and
diseased than any I have yet seen abroad. Their cries and
gestures were painfully energetic. In the course of five minutes
we had seen two or three hundred. They lay along the sidewalks,
and upon the steps of the houses and churches, men, women, and
children, nearly or quite naked, and as unnoticed by the inhabitants
as the stones of the street.


Ten or twenty indolent-looking priests sat in the shade of the
porch of the cathedral. The columns of the vestibule were
curiously wrought, the capitals exceedingly rich with fretted leaf-work,
and the ornaments of the front of the same wild-looking
character as the buildings of the town. A hunchback scarce three
feet high, came up and offered his services as a cicerone, and we
entered the church. The antiquity of the interior was injured
by the new white paint, covering every part except the more
valuable decorations, but with its four splendid sarcophagi
standing like separate buildings in the aisles, and covering the
ashes of Ruggiero and his kinsmen; the eighty columns of
Egyptian granite in the nave; the ciborio of entire lapis-lazuli
with its lovely blue, and the mosaics, frescoes, and relievos about
the altar, it could scarce fail of producing an effect of great richness.
The floor was occupied by here and there a kneeling beggar,
praying in his rags, and undisturbed even by the tempting
neighbourhood of strangers. I stood long by an old man, who
seemed hardly to have the strength to hold himself upon his
knees. His eyes were fixed upon a lovely picture of the virgin,
and his trembling hands loosed bead after bead as his prayer
proceeded. I slipped a small piece of silver between his palm and
the cross of his rosary, and without removing his eyes from the
face of the holy mother, he implored an audible blessing upon
me in a tone of the most earnest feeling. I have scarce been so
moved within my recollection.


The equipages were beginning to roll toward the “Marina,”
and the sea-breeze was felt even through the streets. We took
a carriage and followed to the corso, where we counted near two
hundred gay, well-appointed equipages, in the course of an hour,
What a contrast to the wretchedness we had left behind! Driving
up and down this half mile in front of the palaces on the sea,
seemed quite a sufficient amusement for the indolent nobility of
Palermo. They were named to us by their imposing titles as they
passed, and we looked in vain into their dull unanimated faces for
the chivalrous character of the once renowned knights of Sicily.
Ladies and gentlemen sat alike silent, leaning back in their carriages
in the elegant attitudes studied to such effect on this side
of the water, and gazing for acquaintances among those passing
on the opposite line.


Toward the dusk of the evening, an avant-courrier on horseback
announced the approach of the viceroy Leopold, the brother of
the King of Naples. He drove himself in an English hunting-wagon
with two seats, and looked like a dandy whip of the first
water from Regent Street. He is about twenty and quite handsome.
His horses, fine English bays, flew up and down the short
corso, passing and repassing every other minute, till we were
weary of touching our hats and stopping till he had gone by. He
noticed the uniform of our officers, and raised his hat with particular
politeness to them.


As it grew dark, the carriages came to a stand around a small
open gallery raised in the broadest part of the Marina. Rows
of lamps, suspended from the roof, were lit, and a band of forty
or fifty musicians appeared in the area, and played parts of the
popular operas. We were told they performed every night from
nine till twelve. Chairs were set around for the people on foot,
ices circulated, and some ten or twelve thousand people enjoyed
the music in a delicious moonlight, keeping perfect silence from
the first note to the last. These heavenly nights of Italy are
thus begun, and at twelve the people separate and go to visit, or
lounge at home till morning, when the windows are closed, the
cool night air shut in, and they sleep till evening comes again,
literally “keeping the hours the stars do.” It is very certain
that it is the only way to enjoy life in this enervating climate.
The sun is the worst enemy to health, and life and spirits sink
under its intensity. The English, who are the only people abroad
in an Italian noon, are constant victims to it.




We drove this morning to the monastery of the Capuchins.
Three or four of the brothers in long grey beards, and the heavy
brown sackcloth cowls of the order tied round the waist with
ropes, received us cordially, and took us through the cells and
chapels. We had come to see the famous catacombs of the
convent. A door was opened on the side of the main cloister,
and we descended a long flight of stairs into the centre of three
lofty vaults, lighted each by a window at the extremity of the
ceiling. A more frightful scene never appalled the eye. The
walls were lined with shallow niches, from which hung, leaning
forward as if to fall upon the gazer, the dried bodies of monks
in the full dress of their order. Their hands were crossed upon
their breasts or hung at their sides, their faces were blackened
and withered, and every one seemed to have preserved, in
diabolical caricature, the very expression of life. The hair lay
reddened and dry on the dusty skull, the teeth, perfect or
imperfect, had grown brown in their open mouths, the nose had
shrunk, the cheeks fallen in and cracked, and they looked more
like living men cursed with some horrid plague, than the
inanimate corpses they were. The name of each was pinned
upon his cowl, with his age and the time of his death. Below
in three or four tiers, lay long boxes painted fantastically, and
containing, the monk told us, the remains of Sicilian nobles.
Upon a long shelf above sat perhaps a hundred children of from
one year to five, in little chairs worn with their use while in life,
dressed in the gayest manner, with fanciful caps upon their little
blackened heads, dolls in their hands, and in one or two instances,
a stuffed dog or parrot lying in their laps. A more horribly
ludicrous collection of little withered faces, shrunk into expression
so entirely inconsistent with the gaiety of their dresses,
could scarce be conceived. One of them had his arm tied up,
holding a child’s whip in the act of striking, while the poor
thing’s head had rotted and dropped upon its breast; and a
leather cap fallen on one side, showed his bare skull, with the
most comical expression of carelessness. We quite shocked the
old monk with our laughter, but the scene was irresistible.


We went through several long galleries filled in the same
manner, with the dead monks standing over the coffins of nobles,
and children on the shelf above. There were three thousand
bodies and upward in the place, monks and all. Some of them
were very ancient. There was one, dated a century and a half
back, whose tongue still hangs from his mouth. The friar took
hold of it, and moved it up and down, rattling it against his
teeth. It was like a piece of dried fish-skin, and as sharp and
thin as a nail.


At the extremity of the last passage was a new vault appropriated
to women. There were nine already lying on white
pillows in the different recesses, who had died within the year,
and among them a young girl, the daughter of a noble family of
Palermo, stated in the inscription to have been a virgin of
seventeen years. The monk said her twin-sister was the most
beautiful woman of the city at this moment. She was laid upon
her back, on a small shelf faced with a wire grating, dressed in
white, with a large bouquet of artificial flowers on the centre of
the body. Her hands and face were exposed, and the skin,
which seemed to me scarcely dry, was covered with small
black ants. I struck with my stick against the shelf, and
startled by the concussion, the disgusting vermin poured from
the mouth and nostrils in hundreds. How difficult it is to
believe that the beauty we worship must come to this!


As we went toward the staircase, the friar showed us the
deeper niches, in which the bodies were placed for the first six
months. There were fortunately no fresh bodies in them at the
time of our visit. The stench, for a week or two, he told us,
was intolerable. They are suffered to get quite dry here, and
then are disposed of according to their sex or profession. A rope
passed round the middle, fastens the dead monk to his shallow
niche, and there he stands till his bones rot from each other,
sometimes for a century or more.


We hurried up the gloomy stairs, and giving the monk our
gratuity, were passing out of the cloister to our carriage, when
two of the brothers entered, bearing a sedan chair with the
blinds closed. Our friend called us back, and opened the door.
An old grey-headed woman sat bolt upright within, with a rope
around her body and another around her neck, supporting her by
two rings in the back of the sedan. She had died that morning,
and was brought to be dried in the capuchin catacombs. The
effect of the newly deceased body in a handsome silk dress and
plaited cap was horrible.


We drove from the monastery to the gardens of a Sicilian
prince, near by. I was agreeably disappointed to find the
grounds laid out in the English taste, winding into secluded
walks shaded with unclipped trees, and opening into glades of
greensward cooled by fountains. We strolled on from one sweet
spot to another, coming constantly upon little Grecian temples,
ruins, broken aqueducts, aviaries, bowers furnished with curious
seats and tables, bridges over streams, and labyrinths of shrubbery,
ending in hermitages built curiously of cane. So far, the
garden, though lovely, was like many others. On our return,
the person who accompanied us began to surprise us with
singular contrivances, fortunately selecting the coachman who
had driven us as the subject of his experiments. In the middle
of a long green alley he requested him to step forward a few
paces, and, in an instant, streams of water poured upon him
from the bushes around in every direction. There were seats in
the arbours, the least pressure of which sent up a stream beneath
the unwary visitor; steps to an ascent, which you no sooner
touched than you were showered from an invisible source; and
one small hermitage, which sent a jet d’eau into the face of a
person lifting the latch. Nearly in the centre of the garden
stood a pretty building, with an ascending staircase. At the
first step, a friar in white, represented to the life in wax, opened
the door, and fixed his eyes on the comer. At the next step,
the door was violently shut. At the third, it was half opened
again, and as the foot pressed the platform above, both doors
flew wide open, and the old friar made room for the visitor to
enter. Life itself could not have been more natural. The garden
was full of similar tricks. We were hurried away by an engagement
before we had seen them all, and stopping for a moment to
look at a magnificent Egyptian Ibis, walking around in an aviary
like a temple, we drove into town to dinner.






LETTER VIII.




The Lunatic Asylum at Palermo.




Palermo, June 28.—Two of the best conducted lunatic asylums
in the world are in the kingdom of Naples—one at Aversa, near
Capua, and the other at Palermo. The latter is managed by a
whimsical Sicilian baron, who has devoted his time and fortune
to it, and, with the assistance of the government, has carried it
to great extent and perfection. The poor are received gratuitously,
and those who can afford it enter as boarders, and are
furnished with luxuries according to their means.


The hospital stands in an airy situation in the lovely neighbourhood
of Palermo. We were received by a porter in a
respectable livery, who introduced us immediately to the old
baron—a kind-looking man, rather advanced beyond middle life,
of manners singularly genteel and prepossessing. “Je suis le
premier fou,” said he, throwing his arms out, as he bowed on
our entrance. We stood in an open court, surrounded with
porticoes lined with stone seats. On one of them lay a fat,
indolent-looking man, in clean gray clothes, talking to himself
with great apparent satisfaction. He smiled at the baron as he
passed, without checking the motion of his lips, and three others
standing in the doorway of a room marked as the kitchen,
smiled also as he came up, and fell into his train, apparently as
much interested as ourselves in the old man’s explanations.


The kitchen was occupied by eight or ten people, all at work,
and all, the baron assured us, mad. One man, of about forty,
was broiling a steak with the gravest attention. Another, who
had been furious till employment was given him, was chopping
meat with violent industry in a large wooden bowl. Two or
three girls were about, obeying the little orders of a middle-aged
man, occupied with several messes cooking on a patent stove. I
was rather incredulous about his insanity, till he took a small
bucket and went to the jet of a fountain, and getting impatient
from some cause or other, dashed the water upon the floor. The
baron mildly called him by name, and mentioned to him, as a
piece of information, that he had wet the floor. He nodded his
head, and filling his bucket quietly, poured a little into one of the
pans, and resumed his occupation.


We passed from the kitchen into an open court, curiously
paved, and ornamented with Chinese grottoes, artificial rocks,
trees, cottages, and fountains. Within the grottoes reclined
figures of wax. Before the altar of one, fitted up as a Chinese
chapel, a mandarin was prostrated in prayer. The walls on
every side were painted in perspective scenery, and the whole had
as little the air of a prison as the open valley itself. In one of
the corners was an unfinished grotto, and a handsome young man
was entirely absorbed in thatching the ceiling with strips of
cane. The baron pointed to him, and said he had been incurable
till he had found this employment for him. Everything about
us, too, he assured us, was the work of his patients. They had
paved the court, built the grottoes and cottages, and painted the
walls, under his direction. The secret of his whole system, he
said, was employment and constant kindness. He had usually
about one hundred and fifty patients, and he dismissed upon an
average two-thirds of them quite recovered.


We went into the apartments of the women. These, he said,
were his worst subjects. In the first room sat eight or ten
employed in spinning, while one infuriated creature, not more
than thirty, but quite gray, was walking up and down the floor,
talking and gesticulating with the greatest violence. A young
girl of sixteen, an attendant, had entered into her humour, and
with her arm put affectionately round her waist, assented to
everything she said, and called her by every name of endearment
while endeavouring to silence her. When the baron entered, the
poor creature addressed herself to him, and seemed delighted
that he had come. He made several mild attempts to check her,
but she seized his hands, and with the veins of her throat
swelling with passion, her eyes glaring terribly, and her tongue
white and trembling, she continued to declaim more and more
violently. The baron gave an order to a male attendant at the
door, and beckoning us to follow, led her gently through a small
court planted with trees, to a room containing a hammock. She
checked her torrent of language as she observed the preparations
going on, and seemed amused with the idea of swinging. The
man took her up in his arms without resistance, and laced the
hammock over her, confining everything but her head, and the
female attendant, one of the most playful and prepossessing little
creatures I ever saw, stood on a chair, and at every swing threw
a little water on her face, as if in sport. Once or twice, the
maniac attempted to resume the subject of her ravings, but the
girl laughed in her face and diverted her from it, till at last she
smiled, and dropping her head into the hammock, seemed
disposed to sink into an easy sleep.


We left her swinging and went out into the court, where eight
or ten women in the gray gowns of the establishment were walking
up and down, or sitting under the trees, lost in thought. One,
with a fine, intelligent face, came up to me and courtesied
gracefully without speaking. The physician of the establishment
joined me at the moment, and asked her what she wished.
“To kiss his hand,” said she, “but his looks forbade me.” She
coloured deeply, and folded her arms across her breast and walked
away. The baron called us, and in going out I passed her
again, and taking her hand, kissed it, and bade her good-bye.
“You had better kiss my lips,” said she, “you’ll never see me
again.” She laid her forehead against the iron bars of the gate,
and with a face working with emotion, watched us till we turned
out of sight. I asked the physieian for her history. “It was a
common case,” he said. “She was the daughter of a Sicilian
noble, who, too poor to marry her to one of her own rank, had
sent her to a convent, where confinement had driven her mad.
She is now a charity patient in the asylum.”


The courts in which these poor creatures are confined open
upon a large and lovely garden. We walked through it with the
baron, and then returned to the apartments of the females. In
passing a cell, a large majestic woman strided out with a theatrical
air, and commenced an address to the Deity, in a strain, which
showed her possessed of superiority both of birth and endowment.
The baron took her by the hand with the deferential courtesy of the
old school, and led her to one of the stone seats. She yielded to him
politely, but resumed her harangue, upbraiding the Deity, as well
as I could understand her, for her misfortunes. They succeeded in
soothing her by the assistance of the same playful attendant who
had accompanied the other to the hammock, and she sat still,
with her lips white and her tongue trembling like an aspen.
While the good old baron was endeavouring to draw her into
a quiet conversation, the physician told me some curious circumstances
respecting her. She was a Greek, and had been brought
to Palermo when a girl. Her mind had been destroyed by an
illness, and after seven years’ madness, during which she had
refused to rise from her bed, and had quite lost the use of her
limbs, she was brought to this establishment by her friends.
Experiments were tried in vain to induce her to move from her
painful position. At last the baron determined upon addressing
what he considered the master-passion in all female bosoms. He
dressed himself in the gayest manner, and, in one of her gentle
moments, entered her room with respectful ceremony, and offered
himself to her in marriage! She refused him with scorn, and
with seeming emotion he begged forgiveness and left her. The
next morning, on his entrance, she smiled—the first time for
years. He continued his attentions for a day or two, and after a
little coquetry, she one morning announced to him that she had
re-considered his proposal, and would be his bride. They raised
her from her bed to prepare her for the ceremony, and she was
carried in a chair to the garden, where the bridal feast was
spread, nearly all the other patients of the hospital being present.
The gaiety of the scene absorbed the attention of all; the
utmost decorum prevailed: and when the ceremony was performed
the bride was crowned, and carried back in state to
her apartment. She recovered gradually the use of her limbs,
her health is improved, and, excepting an occasional paroxysm,
such as we happened to witness, she is quiet and contented. The
other inmates of the asylum still call her the bride; and the
baron, as her husband, has the greatest influence over her.


While the physician was telling me these circumstances, the
baron had succeeded in calming her, and she sat with her arms
folded, dignified and silent. He was still holding her hand,
when the woman whom we had left swinging in the hammock,
came stealing up behind the trees on tiptoe, and putting her
hand suddenly over the baron’s eyes, kissed him on both sides of
his face, laughing heartily, and calling him by every name of
affection. The contrast between this mood and the infuriated
one in which we had found her, was the best comment on the
good man’s system. He gently disengaged himself, and apologised
to his lady for allowing the liberty, and we followed him to
another apartment.


It opened upon a pretty court, in which a fountain was playing,
and against the columns of the portico sat some half dozen
patients. A young man of eighteen, with a very pale, scholar-like
face, was reading Ariosto. Near him, under the direction
of an attendant, a fair, delicate girl, with a sadness in her soft
blue eyes that might have been a study for a mater dolorosa, was
cutting paste upon a board laid across her lap. She seemed
scarcely conscious of what she was about, and when I approached
and spoke to her, she laid down the knife and rested her head
upon her hand, and looked at me steadily, as if she was trying to
recollect where she had known me. “I cannot remember,” she
said to herself, and went on with her occupation. I bowed to
her as we took our leave, and she returned it gracefully but
coldly. The young man looked up from his book and smiled, the
old man lying on the stone seat in the outer court rose up and
followed us to the door, and we were bowed out by the baron and
his gentle madmen as politely and kindly as if we were concluding
a visit with a company of friends.




An evening out of doors, in summer, is pleasant enough anywhere
in Italy: but I have found no place where the people and
their amusements were so concentrated at that hour, as upon the
“Marina” of Palermo. A ramble with the officers up and down,
renewing the acquaintances made with visitors to the ships, listening
to the music and observing the various characters of the
crowd, concludes every day agreeably. A terraced promenade
twenty feet above the street, extends nearly the whole length of
the Marina, and here, under the balconies of the viceroy’s palace,
with the crescent harbour spread out before the eye, trees above,
and marble seats tempting the weary at every step, may be met
pedestrians of every class, from the first cool hour when the sea-breeze
sets in till midnight or morning. The intervals between
the pieces performed by the royal band in the centre of the drive,
is seized by the wandering improvisatrice, or the ludicrous puncinello,
and even the beggars cease to importune in the general
abandonment to pleasure. Every other moment the air is filled
with a delightful perfume, and you are addressed by the bearer
of a tall pole tied thickly with the odorous flowers of this
voluptuous climate—a mode of selling these cheap luxuries
which I believe is peculiar to Palermo. The gaiety they give a
crowd, by the way, is singular. They move about among the
gaudily-dressed contadini like a troop of banners—tulips, narcissus,
moss-roses, branches of jasmine, geraniums, every flower
that is rare and beautiful scenting the air from a hundred overladen
poles, and the merest pittance will purchase the rarest
and loveliest. It seems a clime of fruits and flowers; and if
one could but shut his eyes to the dreadful contrasts of nakedness
and starvation, he might believe himself in a Utopia.


We were standing on the balcony of the consul’s residence (a
charming situation overlooking the Marina), and remarking the
gaiety of the scene on the first evening of our arrival. The conversation
turned upon the condition of the people. The consul
remarked that it was an every-day circumstance to find beggars
starved to death in the streets; and that, in the small villages
near Palermo, eight or ten were often taken up dead from the
road-side in the morning. The difficulty of getting a subsistence
is every day increasing, and in the midst of one of the most fertile
spots of the earth, one half the population are driven to the last
extremity for bread. The results appear in constant conspiracies
against the government, detected and put down with more or
less difficulty. The island is garrisoned with troops from Italy,
and the viceroy has lately sent to his brother for a reinforcement,
and is said to feel very insecure. A more lamentably misgoverned
kingdom than that of the Sicilies, probably does not
exist in the world.






LETTER IX.




Palermo—Fête given by Mr. Gardiner, the American Consul—Temple of
Clitumnus—Cottage of Petrarch—Messina—Lipari Islands—Scylla
and Charybdis.




Palermo, June 28th.—The curve of “The Golden Shell,”
which bends to the east of Palermo, is a luxuriant plain of ten
miles in length, terminated by a bluff which forms a headland
corner of the bay. A broad neck of land between this bay and
another indenting the coast less deeply on the other side, is occupied
by a cluster of summer palaces belonging to several of the
richer princes of Sicily. The breeze, whenever there is one on
land or sea, sweeps freshly across this ridge, and a more desirable
residence for combined coolness and beauty could scarce be
imagined. The Palermitan princes, however, find every country
more attractive than their own; and while you may find a
dozen of them in any city of Europe, their once magnificent
residences are deserted and falling to decay, almost without an
exception.


The old walls of one of these palaces were enlivened yesterday,
by a fête given to the officers of the squadron by the American
consul, Mr. Gardiner. We left Palermo in a long cavalcade,
followed by a large omnibus containing the ship’s band, early in
the forenoon. The road was lined with prickly pear and oleander
in the most luxuriant blossom. Exotics in our country, these
plants are indigenous to Sicily, and form the only hedges to the
large plantations of cane and the spreading vineyards and fields.
A more brilliant show than these long lines of trees, laden with
bright pink flowers, and varied by the gigantic and massive leaf
of the pear, cannot easily be imagined.


We were to visit one or two places on our way. The carriage
drew up about eight miles from town, at the gate of a ruinous
building, and passing through a deserted court, we entered an
old-fashioned garden, presenting one succession of trimmed walks,
urns, statues, and fountains. The green mould of age and
exposure upon the marbles, the broken seats, the once costly but
now ruined and silent fountains, the tall weeds in the seldom-trodden
walks, and the wild vegetation of fragrant jasmine and
brier, burying everything with its luxuriance, all told the story
of decay. I remembered the scenes of the Decameron; the many
“tales of love,” laid in these very gardens; the gay romances of
which Palermo was the favourite home; and the dames and
knights of Sicily, the fairest and bravest themes, and I longed to
let my merry companions pass on, and remain to realise more
deeply the spells of poetry and story. The pleasure of travel is
in the fancy. Men and manners are so nearly alike over the
world, and the same annoyances disturb so certainly, wherever
we are, the gratification of seeing and conversing with our living
fellow-beings, that it is only by the mingled illusion of fancy and
memory, by getting apart, and peopling the deserted palace or
the sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we ever realise the
anticipated pleasure of standing on celebrated ground. The eye,
the curiosity, are both disappointed, and the voice of a common
companion reduces the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone.
In some of the footsteps of Childe Harold himself, with his
glorious thoughts upon my lips, and all that moved his imagination
addressing my eye, with the additional grace which his
poetry has left around them, I have found myself unable to
overstep the vulgar circumstances of the hour—“the Temple of
Clitumnus” was a ruined shed glaring in the sunshine, and the
“Cottage of Petrarch” an apology for extortion and annoyance.


I heard a shout from the party, and followed them to a building
at the foot of a garden. I passed the threshold and started
back. A ghastly monk, with a broom in his hand, stood gazing
at me, and at a door just beyond, a decrepit nun was see-sawing
backward and forward, ringing a bell with the most impatient
violence. I ventured to pass in, and a door opened at the right,
disclosing the self-denying cell of a hermit with his narrow bed
and single chair, and at the table sat the rosy-gilled friar, filling
his glass from an antiquated bottle, and nodding his head to his
visitor in grinning welcome. A long cloister with six or eight
cells extended beyond, and in each was a monk in some startling
attitude, or a pale and saintly nun employed in work or prayer.
The whole was as like a living monastery as wax could make it.
The mingling of monks and nuns seemed an anachronism, but
we were told that it represented a tale, the title of which I have
forgotten. It was certainly an odd as well as an expensive fancy
for a garden ornament, and shows by its uselessness the once
princely condition of the possessors of the palace. An Englishman
married not many years since an old princess, to whom the
estates had descended, and with much unavailable property and
the title of prince, he has entered the service of the king of the
Sicilies for a support.


We drove on to another palace, still more curious in its
ornaments. The extensive wall which enclosed it, the gates,
the fountains in the courts and gardens, were studded with
marble monsters of every conceivable deformity. The head of a
man crowned the body of an eagle standing on the legs of a
horse; the lovely face and bosom of a female crouched upon the
body of a dog; alligators, serpents, lions, monkeys, birds, and
reptiles, were mixed up with parts of the human body in the
most revolting variety. So admirable was the work, too, and so
beautiful the material, that even outraged taste would hesitate
to destroy them. The wonder is that artists of so much merit
could have been hired to commit such sins against decency, or
that a man in his senses would waste upon them the fortune they
must have cost.


We mounted a massive flight of steps, with a balustrade of
gorgeously-carved marble, and entered a hall hung round with
the family portraits, the eccentric founder at their head. He
was a thin, quizzical-looking gentleman, in a laced coat and
sword, and had precisely the face I imagined for him—that of a
whimsical madman. You would select it from a thousand as the
subject for a lunatic asylum.


We were led next to a long, narrow hall, famous for having
dined the king and his courtiers an age or two ago. The ceiling
was of plate mirror, reflecting us all, upside down, as we strolled
through, and the walls were studded from the floor to the roof
with the quartz diamond, (valueless but brilliant), bits of coloured
glass, spangles, and everything that could reflect light. The
effect, when the quaint old chandeliers were lit, and the table
spread with silver and surrounded by a king and his nobles,
in the costume of a court in the olden time, must have
exceeded faëry.


Beyond, we were ushered into the state drawing-room, a saloon
of grand proportions, roofed like the other with mirrors, but
paved and lined throughout with the costliest marbles, Sicilian
agates, paintings set in the wall and covered with glass, while on
pedestals around, stood statues of the finest workmanship,
representing the males of the family in the costume or armour of
the times. A table of inlaid precious stones stood in the centre,
cabinets of lapis-lazuli and side tables, occupied the spaces
between the furniture, and the chairs and sofas were covered with
the rich velvet stuffs now out of use, embroidered and fringed
magnificently. I sat down upon a tripod stool, and with my eyes
half closed, looked up at the mirrored reflections of the officers
in the ceiling, and tried to imagine back the gay throngs that
had moved across the floor they were treading so unceremoniously,
the knightly and royal feet that had probably danced the
stars down with the best beauty of Sicily beneath those silent
mirrors; the joy, the jealousy, the love and hate, that had lived
their hour and been repeated, as were our lighter feelings and
faces now, outlived by the perishing mirrors that might still
outlive ours as long. How much there is in an atmosphere!
How full the air of these old palaces is of thought! How one
might enjoy them could he ramble here alone, or with one
congenial and musing companion to answer to his moralising.


We drove on to our appointment. At the end of a handsome
avenue stood a large palace, in rather more modern taste than
those we had left. The crowd of carriages in the court, the
gold-laced midshipmen scattered about the massive stairs and
in the formal walks of the gardens, the gay dresses of the ship’s
band, playing on the terrace, and the troops of ladies and
gentlemen in every direction, gave an air of bustle to the stately
structure that might have reminded the marble nymphs of the
days when they were first lifted to their pedestals.


The old hall was thrown open at two, and a table stretching
from one end to the other, loaded with every luxury of the
season, and capable of accommodating sixty or seventy persons,
usurped the place of unsubstantial romance, and brought in the
wildest straggler willingly from his ramble. No cost had been
spared, and the hospitable consul (a Bostonian) did the honours
of his table in a manner that stirred powerfully my pride of
country and birthplace. All the English resident in Palermo
were present; and it was the more agreeable to me that their
countrymen are usually the only givers of generous entertainment
in Europe. One feels ever so distant a reflection on his country
abroad. The liberal and elegant hospitality of one of our
countrymen at Florence, has served me as a better argument
against the charge of hardness and selfishness urged upon our
nation, than all which could be drawn from the acknowledgments
of travellers.


When dinner was over, an hour was passed at coffee in a
small saloon stained after the fashion of Pompeii, and we then
assembled on a broad terrace facing the sea, and with the band
in the gallery above, commenced dances which lasted till an hour
or two into the moonlight. The sunset had the eternal but
untiring glory of the Italian summer, and it never set on a gayer
party. There were among the English one or two lovely girls,
and with the four ladies belonging to the squadron (the commodore’s
family and Captain Reed’s), the dancers were sufficient
to include all the officers, and the scene in the soft light of the
moon was like a description in an old tale. The broad sea on
either side, broke by the headland in front, the distant crescent
of lights glancing along the seaside at Palermo, the solemn old
palaces seen from the eminence around us, and the noble pile
through whose low windows we strolled out upon the terrace,
the music and the excitement, all blended a scene that is drawn
with bright and living lines in my memory. We parted
unwillingly, and reaching Palermo about midnight, pulled off to
the frigates, and were under-weigh at daylight for Messina.




This is the poetry of sailing. The long, low frigate glides on
through the water with no more motion than is felt in a dining-room
on shore. The sea changes only from a glossy calm to a
feathery ripple, the sky is always serene, the merchant sail
appears and disappears on the horizon edge, the island rises on
the bow, creeps along the quarter, is examined by the glasses of
the idlers on deck and sinks gradually astern; the sun-fish whirls
in the eddy of the wake, the tortoise plunges and breathes about
us; and the delightful temperature of the sea, even and invigorating,
keeps both mind and body in an undisturbed equilibrium of
enjoyment. For me it is a paradise. I am glad to escape from
the contact, the dust, the trials of temper, the noon-day sultriness,
and the midnight chill, the fatigue, and privation, and
vexation, which beset the traveller on shore. I shall return to
it no doubt willingly after a while, but for the present, it is rest,
it is relief, refreshment, to be at sea. There is no swell in the
Mediterranean during the summer months, and this gliding
about, sleeping or reading, as if at home, from one port to
another, seems to me just now the Utopia of enjoyment.


We have been all day among the Lipari islands. It is pleasant
to look up at the shaded and peaceful huts on their mountainous
sides, as we creep along under them, or to watch the fisherman’s
children with a glass, as they run out from their huts on the seashore
to gaze at the uncommon apparition of a ship-of-war. They
seem seats of solitude and retirement. I have just dropped the
glass, which I had raised to look at what I took to be a large
ship in full sail rounding the point of Felicudi. It is a tall,
pyramidal rock, rising right from the sea, and resembling exactly
a ship with studding-sails set, coming down before the wind.
The band is playing on the deck; and a fisherman’s boat with
twenty of the islanders resting on their oars and listening in
wondering admiration, lies just under our quarter. It will form
a tale for the evening meal, to which they were hastening home.




We run between Scylla and Charybdis, with a fresh wind and
a strong current. The “dogs” were silent, and the “whirlpool”
is a bubble to Hurl-gate. Scylla is quite a town, and the tall
rock at the entrance of the strait is crowned with a large
building, which seems part of a fortification. The passage
through the Faro is lonely—quite like a river. Messina lies in
a curve of the western shore, at the base of a hill; and, opposite,
a graceful slope covered with vineyards, swells up to a broad
table plain on the mountain, which looked like the home of peace
and fertility.


We rounded-to, off the town, to send in for letters, and I went
ashore in the boat. Two American friends, whom I had as little
expectation of meeting as if I had dropped upon Jerusalem,
hailed me from the grating of the health-office, before we reached
the land, and having exhibited our bill of health, I had half an
hour for a call upon an old friend, resident at Messina, and we
were off again to the ship. The sails filled, and we shot away on
a strong breeze down the straits. Rhegium lay on our left,
a large cluster of old-looking houses on the edge of the sea. It
was at this town of Calabria that St. Paul landed on his journey
to Rome. We sped on without much time to look at it, even
with a glass, and were soon rounding the toe of “the boot,” the
southern point of Italy. We are heading at this moment for
the gulf of Tarento, and hope to be in Venice by the fourth of
July.






LETTER X.




The Adriatic—Albania—Gay Costumes and Beauty of the Albanese—Capo
d’Istria—Trieste resembles an American Town—Visit to the Austrian
Authorities of the Province—Curiosity of the Inhabitants—Gentlemanly
Reception by the Military Commandant—Visit to Vienna—Singular
Notions of the Austrians respecting the Americans—Similarity of the
Scenery to that of New England—Meeting with German Students—Frequent
Sight of Soldiers and Military Preparation—Picturesque
Scenery of Styria.




The Doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic. It is the
fourth of July, and with the Italian Cape Colonna on our left
and the long, low coast of Albania shading the horizon on the
east, we are gazing upon her from the deck of the first American
frigate that has floated upon her bosom. We head for Venice,
and there is a stir of anticipation on board, felt even through the
hilarity of our cherished anniversary. I am the only one in the
ward-room to whom that wonderful city is familiar, and I feel as
if I had forestalled my own happiness—the first impression of it
is so enviable.




It is difficult to conceive the gay costumes and handsome
features of the Albanese existing in these barren mountains that
bind the Adriatic. It has been but a continued undulation of
rock and sand, for three days past; and the closer we hug to the
shore, the more we look at the broad canvass above us, and pray
for wind. We make Capo d’Istria now, a small town nestled in
a curve of the sea, and an hour or two more will bring us to
Trieste, where we drop anchor, we hope for many an hour of
novelty and pleasure.




Trieste lies sixty or eighty miles from Venice, across the head
of the gulf. The shore between is piled up to the sky with the
“blue Friuli mountains;” and from the town of Trieste, the low
coast of Istria breaks away at a right angle to the south,
forming the eastern bound of the Adriatic. As we ran into the
harbour on our last tack, we passed close under the garden walls
of the villa of the ex-queen of Naples, a lovely spot just in the
suburbs. The palace of Jerome Bonaparte was also pointed out
to us by the pilot, on the hill just above. They have both
removed since to Florence, and their palaces are occupied by
English. We dropped anchor within a half mile of the pier, and
the flags of a dozen American vessels were soon distinguishable
among the various colours of the shipping in the port.




I accompanied Commodore Patterson to-day on a visit of
ceremony to the Austrian authorities of the province. We made
our way with difficulty through the people, crowding in hundreds
to the water-side, and following us with the rude freedom of a
showman’s audience. The vice-governor, a polite but Frenchified
German count, received us with every profession of kindness.
His Parisian gesture sat ill enough upon his national high cheekbones,
lank hair, and heavy shoulders. We left him to call upon
the military commandant, an Irishman, who occupies part of the
palace of the ex-king of Westphalia. Our reception by him was
gentlemanly, cordial, and dignified. I think the Irish are, after
all, the best-mannered people in the world. They are found in
every country, as adventurers for honour, and they change
neither in character nor manner. They follow foreign fashions,
and acquire a foreign language; but in the first they retain their
heart, and in the latter their brogue. They are Irishmen always.
Count Nugent is high in the favour of the Emperor, has the
commission of a field-marshal, and is married to a Neapolitan
princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely woman, and
related to most of the royal houses of Europe. His reputation
as a soldier is well known, and he seems to me to have no drawback
to the enviableness of his life, except its expatriation.


Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling extremely our
new towns in America. We took a stroll through the principal
streets after our visits were over, and I was surprised at the
splendour of the shops, and the elegance of the costumes and
equipages. It is said to contain thirty thousand inhabitants.




Vienna.—The frigates were to lie three or four weeks at
Trieste. One half of the officers had taken the steamboat for
Venice on the second evening of our arrival, and the other half
waited impatiently their turn of absence. Vienna was but some
four hundred miles distant, and I might never be so near it again.
On a rainy evening, at nine o’clock, I left Trieste in the eil-wagon,
with a German courier, and commenced the ascent of
the spur of the Friuli mountains that overhangs the bay.


My companions inside were a merchant from Gratz, a fantastical
and poor Hungarian count, a Corfu shop-keeper, and an
Italian ex-militaire and present apothecary, going to Vienna to
marry a lady whom he had never seen. After a little bandying
of compliments in German, of which I understood nothing
except that they were apologies for the incessant smoking of
three disgusting pipes, the conversation, fortunately for me,
settled into Italian. The mountain was steep and very high, and
my friends soon grew conversable. The novelty of two American
frigates in the harbour naturally decided the first topic. Our
Gratz merchant was surprised at the light colour of the officers
he had seen, and doubted if they were not Englishmen in the
American service. He had always heard Americans were
black. “They are so,”  said the soldier-apothecary; “I saw the
real Americans yesterday in a boat, quite black.” (One of the
cutters of the “Constellation” has a negro crew, which he had
probably seen at the pier.) The assertion seemed to satisfy the
doubts of all parties. They had wondered how such beautiful
ships could come from a savage country. It was now explained.
“They were bought from the English, and officered by Englishmen.”
I was too much amused by their speculations to undeceive
them; and with my head thrust half out of the window to avoid
choking with the smoke of their pipes, I gazed back at the glittering
lights of the town below, and indulged the never-palling
sensation of a first entrance into a new country. The lantern at
the peak of the “United States” was the last thing I saw as we
rose the brow of the mountain, and started off on a rapid trot
towards Vienna.


I awoke at daylight with the sudden stop of the carriage. We
were at the low door of a German tavern, and a clear, rosy,
good-humoured looking girl bade us good morning, as we alighted
one by one. The phrase was so like English, that I asked for a
basin of water in my mother tongue. The similarity served me
again. She brought it without hesitation; but the question she
asked me as she set it down was like nothing that had ever before
entered my ears. The count smiled at my embarrassment, and
explained that she wished to know if I wanted soap.


I was struck with the cleanliness of everything. The tables,
chairs and floors, looked worn away with scrubbing. Breakfast
was brought in immediately—eggs, rolls, and coffee, the latter in
a glass bottle like a chemist’s retort, corked up tightly, and
wrapped in a snowy napkin. It was an excellent breakfast,
served with cleanliness and good humour, and cost about fourteen
cents each. Even from this single meal, it seemed to me
that I had entered a country of simple manners and kind feelings.
The conductor gravely kissed the cheek of the girl who had
waited on us, my companions lit their pipes afresh, and the
postillion, in cocked hat and feather, blew a stave of a waltz on
his horn, and fell into a steady trot, which he kept up with
phlegmatic perseverance to the end of his post.


As we get away from the sea, the land grows richer, and the
farm-houses more frequent. We are in the duchy of Carniola,
forty or fifty miles from Trieste. How very unlike Italy and
France, and how very like New England it is! There are no
ruined castles, nor old cathedrals. Every village has its small
white church, with a tapering spire, large manufactories cluster
on the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid and deep, the
horses large and strong, the barns immense, the crops heavy, the
people grave and hard at work, and not a pauper by the post
together. We are very far north, too, and the climate is like
New England. The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing,
and there is no travelling as in Italy, with one’s hat off and
breast open, dissolving at midnight in the luxury of the soft air.
The houses, too, are ugly and comfortable, staring with paint and
pierced in all directions with windows. The children are white-headed
and serious. The hills are half-covered with woods, and
clusters of elms are left here and there through the meadows, as
if their owners could afford to let them grow for a shade to the
mowers. I was perpetually exclaiming, “how like America!”


We dined at Laybach. My companions had found out by my
passport that I was an American, and their curiosity was most
amusing. The report of the arrival of the two frigates had
reached the capital of Illyria, and with the assistance of the
information of my friends, I found myself an object of universal
attention. The crowd around the door of the hotel looked into
the windows while we were eating, and followed me round the
house as if I had been a savage. One of the passengers told me
they connected the arrival of the ships with some political object,
and thought I might be the envoy. The landlord asked me if
we had potatoes in our country.


I took a walk through the city after dinner with my mincing
friend the count. The low, two-story wooden houses, the sidewalks
enclosed with trees, the matter-of-fact looking people, the
shut windows, and neat white churches remind me again strongly
of America. It was like the more retired streets of Portland or
Portsmouth. The Illyrian language spoken here, seemed to me
the most inarticulate succession of sounds I had ever heard. In
crossing the bridge in the centre of the town, we met a party of
German students travelling on foot with their knapsacks. My
friend spoke to them to gratify my curiosity. I wished to know
where they were going. They all spoke French and Italian, and
seemed in high heart, bold, cheerful, and intelligent. They
were bound for Egypt, determined to seek their fortunes in the
service of the present reforming and liberal pacha. Their enthusiasm,
when they were told I was an American, quite thrilled
me. They closed about me and looked into my eyes, as if they
expected to read the spirit of freedom in them. I was taken by
the arms at last, and almost forced into a beer-shop. The large
tankards were filled, each touched mine and the others, and
“America” was drank with a grave earnestness of manner that
moved my heart within me. They shook me by the hand on
parting, and gave me a blessing in German, which as the old
count translated it, was the first word I have learned of their
language. We had met constantly parties of them on the road.
They all dress alike, in long travelling frocks of brown stuff, and
small green caps with straight visors; but, coarsely as they are
clothed, and humbly as they seem to be faring, their faces bear
always a mark that can never be mistaken. They look like
scholars.


The roads, by the way, are crowded with pedestrians. It
seems to be the favourite mode of travelling in this country. We
have scarce met a carriage, and I have seen, I am sure, in one
day, two hundred passengers on foot. Among them is a class of
people peculiar to Germany. I was astonished occasionally at
being asked for charity by stout, well-dressed young men, to all
appearance as respectable as any travellers on the road.
Expressing my surprise, my companion informed me that they
were apprentices, and that the custom or law of the country
compelled them, after completing their indentures, to travel in
some distant province, and depend upon charity and their own
exertions for two or three years before becoming masters at their
trade. It is a singular custom, and I should think, a useful
lesson in hardship and self-reliance. They held out their hats
with a confident independence of look that quite satisfied me they
felt no degradation in it.


We soon entered the province of Styria, and brighter rivers,
greener woods, richer and more graceful uplands and meadows,
do not exist in the world. I had thought the scenery of
Stockbridge, in my own State, unequalled till now. I could
believe myself there, were not the women alone working in the
fields, and the roads lined for miles together with military wagons
and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of Austria compels
every peasant to serve fourteen years! and the labours of
agriculture fall, of course, almost exclusively upon females.
Soldiers swarm like locusts through the country, but they seem
as inoffensive and as much at home as the cattle in the farm-yards.
It is a curious contrast, to my eye, to see parks of
artillery glistening in the midst of a wheat-field, and soldiers
sitting about under the low thatches of these peaceful-looking
cottages. I do not think, among the thousands that I have
passed in three days’ travel, I have seen a gesture or heard a
syllable. If sitting, they smoke and sit still, and if travelling,
they economise motion to a degree that is wearisome to the eye.


Words are limited, and the description of scenery becomes
tiresome. It is a fault that the sense of beauty, freshening
constantly on the traveller, compels him who makes a note of
impressions to mark every other line with the same ever-recurring
exclamations of pleasure. I saw a hundred miles of unrivalled
scenery in Styria, and how can I describe it? I were keeping
silence on a world of enjoyment to pass it over. We come to a
charming descent into a valley. The town beneath, the river,
the embracing mountains, the swell to the ear of its bells ringing
some holiday, affect my imagination powerfully. I take out my
tablets. What shall I say? How convey to your minds who
have not seen it, the charm of a scene I can only describe as I
have described a thousand others?






LETTER XI.




Gratz—Vienna.




We had followed stream after stream through a succession of
delicious valleys for a hundred miles. Descending from a slight
eminence, we came upon the broad and rapid Muhr, and soon
after caught sight of a distant citadel upon a rock. As we
approached, it struck me as one of the most singular freaks of
nature I had ever seen. A pyramid, perhaps three hundred
feet in height, and precipitous on every side, rose abruptly in the
midst of a broad and level plain, and around it in a girdle of
architecture, lay the capital of Styria. The fortress on the
summit hung like an eagle’s nest over the town, and from its
towers, a pistol-shot would reach the outermost point of the
wall.


Wearied with travelling near three hundred miles without
sleep, I dropped upon a bed at the hotel, with an order to be
called in two hours. It was noon, and we were to remain at
Gratz till the next morning. My friend, the Hungarian, had
promised, as he threw himself on the opposite bed, to wake and
accompany me in a walk through the town, but the shake of a
stout German chambermaid at the appointed time had no effect
upon him, and I descended to my dinner alone. I had lost my
interpreter. The carte was in German, of which I did not know
even the letters. After appealing in vain in French and Italian
to the persons eating near me, I fixed my finger at hazard upon a
word, and the waiter disappeared. The result was a huge dish
of cabbage cooked in some filthy oil and graced with a piece of
beef. I was hesitating whether to dine on bread or make another
attempt, when a gentlemanly man of some fifty years came in
and took the vacant seat at my table. He addressed me immediately
in French, and smiling at my difficulties, undertook to
order a dinner for me something less national. We improved
our acquaintance with a bottle of Johannesburgh, and after
dinner he kindly offered to accompany me in my walk through
the city.


Gratz is about the size of Boston, a plain German city, with
little or no pretensions to style. The military band was playing
a difficult waltz very beautifully in the public square, but no one
was listening except a group of young men dressed in the worst
taste of dandyism. We mounted by a zigzag path to the
fortress. On a shelf of the precipice, half way up, hangs a
small casino, used as a beer-shop. The view from the summit
was a feast to the eye. The wide and lengthening valley of the
Muhr lay asleep beneath its loads of grain, its villas and farm-houses,
the picture of “waste and mellow fruitfulness,” the rise
to the mountains around the head of the valley was clustered
with princely dwellings, thick forests with glades between them,
and churches with white slender spires shooting from the bosom
of elms, and right at our feet, circling around the precipitous
rock for protection, lay the city enfolded in its rampart, and
sending up to our ears the sound of every wheel that rolled
through her streets. Among the striking buildings below, my
friend pointed out to me a palace which he said had been lately
purchased by Joseph Bonaparte, who was coming here to reside.
The people were beginning to turn out for their evening walk
upon the ramparts which are planted with trees and laid out for
a promenade, and we descended to mingle in the crowd.


My old friend had a great many acquaintances. He presented
me to several of the best dressed people we met, all of whom
invited me to supper. I had been in Italy almost a year and a
half, and such a thing had never happened to me. We walked
about until six, and as I preferred going to the play, which
opened at that early hour, we took tickets for “Der Schlimme
Leisel,” and were seated presently in one of the simplest and
prettiest theatres I have ever seen.


“Der Schlimme Leisel” was an old maid who kept house for
an old bachelor brother, proposing, at the time the play opens, to
marry. Her dislike to the match, from the dread of losing her
authority over his household, formed the humour of the piece,
and was admirably represented. After various unsuccessful
attempts to prevent the nuptials, the lady is brought to the
house, and the old maid enters in a towering passion, throws
down her keys, and flirts out of the room with a threat that she
“will go to America!” Fortunately she is not driven to that
extremity. The lady has been already married secretly to a
poorer lover, and the old bachelor, after the first shock of the
discovery, settles a fortune on them, and returns to his celibacy
and his old maid sister, to the satisfaction of all parties.
Certainly the German is the most unmusical language of Babel.
If my good old friend had not translated it for me word for
word, I should scarce have believed the play to be more than a
gibbering pantomime. I shall think differently when I have
learned it, no doubt, but a strange language strikes upon one’s
ear so oddly! I was quite too tired when the play was over
(which, by the way, was at the sober hour of nine,) to accept any
of the kind invitations of which my companion reminded me.
We supped tête-à-tête, instead, at the hotel. I was delighted with
my new acquaintance. He was an old citizen of the world. He
had left Gratz at twenty, and after thirty years wandering from
one part of the globe to the other, had returned to end his days
in his birthplace. His relations were all dead, and speaking all
the languages of Europe, he preferred living at a hotel for the
society of strangers. With a great deal of wisdom he had
preserved his good humour toward the world; and I think I
have rarely seen a kinder, and never a happier man. I parted
from him with regret, and the next morning at daylight, had
resumed my seat at the eil-wagon.


Imagine the Hudson, at the highlands, reduced to a sparkling
little river a bowshot across, and a rich valley thridded by a road
accompanying the remaining space between the mountains, and
you have the scenery for the first thirty miles beyond Gratz.
There is one more difference. On the edge of one of the most
towering precipices, clear up against the clouds, hang the ruins
of a noble castle. The rents in the wall, and the embrasures in
the projecting turrets, seem set into the sky. Trees and vines
grow within and about it, and the lacings of the twisted roots
seem all that keep it together. It is a perfect “castle in
the air.”


A long day’s journey and another long night (during which
we passed Neustadt, on the confines of Hungary) brought us
within sight of Baden, but an hour or two from Vienna. It was
just sunrise, and market-carts and pedestrians and suburban
vehicles of all descriptions notified us of our approach to a great
capital. A few miles farther we were stopped in the midst of an
extensive plain by a crowd of carriages. A criminal was about
being guillotined. What was that to one who saw Vienna for
the first time? A few steps farther the postillion was suddenly
stopped. A gentleman alighted from a carriage in which were
two ladies, and opened the door of the diligence. It was the
bride of the soldier-apothecary come to meet him with her
mother and brother. He was buried in dust, just waked out of
sleep, a three days’ beard upon his face, and, at the best, not a
very lover-like person. He ran to the carriage door, jumped in,
and there was an immediate cry for water. The bride had
fainted! We left her in his arms and drove on. The courier
had no bowels for love.


There is a small Gothic pillar before us, on the rise of a
slight elevation. Thence we shall see Vienna. “Stop, thou
tasteless postillion!” Was ever such a scene revealed to mortal
sight! It is like Paris from the Barrière de l’Etoile—it seems
to cover the world. Oh, beautiful Vienna! What is that broad
water on which the rising sun glances so brightly? The
Danube! What is that unparalleled Gothic structure piercing
the sky? What columns are these? What spires? Beautiful,
beautiful city!




Vienna.—It must be a fine city that impresses one with its
splendour before breakfast, after driving all night in a mail-coach.
It was six o’clock in the morning when I left the post-office,
in Vienna, to walk to a hotel. The shops were still shut,
the milkwomen were beating at the gates, and the short, quick
ring upon the church bells summoned all early risers to mass.
A sudden turn brought me upon a square. In its centre stood
the most beautiful fabric that has ever yet filled my eye. It
looked like the structure of a giant, encrusted with fairies—a
majestically proportioned mass, and a spire tapering to the
clouds, but a surface so curiously beautiful, so traced and fretted,
so full of exquisite ornament, that it seemed rather some curious
cabinet gem, seen through a magnifier, than a building in the
open air. In these foreign countries, the labourer goes in with
his load to pray, and I did not hesitate to enter the splendid
Church of St. Etienne, though a man followed me with a portmanteau
on his back. What a wilderness of arches! Pulpits,
chapels, altars, ciboriums, confessionals, choirs, all in the exquisite
slenderness of Gothic tracery, and all of one venerable and time-worn
dye, as if the incense of a myriad censers had steeped them
in their spicy odours. The mass was chanting, and hundreds
were on their knees about me, and not one without some trace
that he had come in on his way to his daily toil. It was the
hour of the poor man’s prayer. The rich were asleep in their
beds. The glorious roof over their heads, the costly and elaborated
pillars against which they pressed their foreheads, the
music and the priestly service, were, for that hour, theirs alone.


I seldom have felt the spirit of a place of worship so strong
upon me.


The foundations of St. Etienne were laid seven hundred years
ago. It has twice been partly burnt, and has been embellished
in succession by nearly all the emperors of Germany. Among
its many costly tombs, the most interesting is that of the hero
Eugene of Savoy, erected by his niece, the Princess Therese, of
Liechtenstein. There is also a vault in which it is said, in compliance
with an old custom, the entrails of all the emperors are
deposited.


Having marked thus much upon my tablets, I remembered the
patient porter of my baggage, who had taken the opportunity to
drop on his knees while I was gazing about, and having achieved
his matins, was now waiting submissively till I was ready to
proceed. A turn or two brought us to the hotel, where a bath
and a breakfast soon restored me, and in an hour I was again
on the way with a valet de place, to visit the tomb of the son of
Napoleon.


He lies in the deep vaults of the capuchin convent, with
eighty-four of the imperial family of Austria beside him. A
monk answered our pull at the cloister-bell, and the valet translated
my request into German. He opened the gate with a
guttural “Yaw!” and lighting a wax candle at a lamp burning
before the image of the Virgin, unlocked a massive brazen door
at the end of the corridor, and led the way into the vault. The
capuchin was as pale as marble, quite bald, though young, and
with features which expressed, I thought, the subdued fierceness
of a devil. He impatiently waved away the officious interpreter
after a moment or two, and asked me if I understood Latin.
Nothing could have been more striking than the whole scene.
The immense bronze sarcophagi lay in long aisles behind railings
and gates of iron, and as the long-robed monk strode on with his
lamp through the darkness, pronouncing the name and title of
each as he unlocked the door and struck it with his heavy key,
he seemed to me, with his solemn pronunciation, like some
mysterious being calling forth the imperial tenants to judgment.
He appeared to have something of scorn in his manner as he
looked on the splendid workmanship of the vast coffin, and pronounced
the sounding titles of the ashes within. At that of the
celebrated Empress Maria Theresa alone, he stopped to make a
comment. It was a simple tribute to her virtues, and he uttered
it slowly, as if he were merely musing to himself. He passed
on to her husband, Francis the First, and then proceeded
uninterruptedly till he came to a new copper coffin. It lay in a
niche, beneath a tall, dim window, and the monk, merely pointing
to the inscription, set down his lamp, and began to pace up and
down the damp floor, with his head on his breast, as if it
was a matter of course that here I was to be left awhile to my
thoughts.


It was certainly the spot, if there is one in the world, to feel
emotion. In the narrow enclosure on which my finger rested,
lay the last hopes of Napoleon. The heart of the master-spirit
of the world was bound up in these ashes. He was beautiful,
accomplished, generous, brave. He was loved with a sort of
idolatry by the nation with which he had passed his childhood.
He had won all hearts. His death seemed impossible. There
was a universal prayer that he might live, his inheritance of
glory was so incalculable.


I read his epitaph. It was that of a private individual. It
gave his name, and his father’s and mother’s; and then enumerated
his virtues, with a commonplace regret for his early death.
The monk took up his lamp and reascended to the cloister in
silence. He shut the convent-door behind me, and the busy
street seemed to me profane. How short a time does the most
moving event interrupt the common current of life.






LETTER XII.




Vienna—Magnificence of the Emperor’s Manège—The Young Queen of
Hungary—The Palace—Hall of Curiosities, Jewelry, &c.—The
Polytechnic School—Geometrical Figures described by the Vibrations
of Musical Notes—Liberal Provision for the Public Institutions—Popularity
of the Emperor.




I had quite forgotten, in packing up my little portmanteau to
leave the ship, that I was coming so far north. Scarce a week
ago, in the south of Italy, we were panting in linen jackets. I
find myself shivering here, in a latitude five hundred miles north
of Boston, with no remedy but exercise and an extra shirt, for a
cold that would grace December.


It is amusing, sometimes, to abandon one’s self to a valet de
place. Compelled to resort to one from my ignorance of the
German, I have fallen upon a dropsical fellow, with a Bardolph
nose, whose French is execrable, and whose selection of objects
of curiosity is worthy of his appearance. His first point was
the emperor’s stables. We had walked a mile and a half to see
them. Here were two or three hundred horses of all breeds,
in a building that the emperor himself might live in, with a
magnificent inner court for a manège, and a wilderness of grooms,
dogs, and other appurtenances. I am as fond of a horse as most
people, but with all Vienna before me, and little time to lose, I
broke into the midst of the head-groom’s pedigrees, and requested
to be shown the way out. Monsieur Karl did not take the hint.
We walked on a half mile, and stopped before another large
building. “What is this?”—“The imperial carriage-house,
Monseigneur.” I was about turning on my heel and taking my
liberty into my own hands, when the large door flew open, and
the blaze of gilding from within turned me from my purpose.
I thought I had seen the ne plus ultra of equipages at Rome.
The imperial family of Austria ride in more style than his
Holiness. The models are lighter and handsomer, while the
gold and crimson is put on quite as resplendently. The most
curious part of the show were ten or twelve state traineaux or
sleighs. I can conceive nothing more brilliant than a turn-out
of these magnificent structures upon the snow. They are built
with aerial lightness, of gold and sable, with a seat fifteen or
twenty feet from the ground, and are driven, with two or four
horses, by the royal personage himself. The grace of their shape
and the splendour of their gilded trappings are inconceivable to
one who has never seen them.


Our way lay through the court of the imperial palace. A
large crowd was collected round a carriage with four horses
standing at the side-door. As we approached it, all hats flew
off, and a beautiful woman, of perhaps twenty-eight, came down
the steps, leading a handsome boy of two or three years. It was
the young Queen of Hungary and her son. If I had seen such a
face in a cottage ornée on the borders of an American lake, I
should have thought it made for the spot.


We entered a door of the palace, at which stood a ferocious-looking
Croat sentinel, near seven feet high. Three German
travelling students had just been refused admittance. A little
man appeared at the ring of the bell within, and after a preliminary
explanation by my valet, probably a lie, he made a
low bow, and invited me to enter. I waited a moment, and a
permission was brought me to see the imperial treasury. Handing
it to Karl, I requested him to get permission inserted for
my three friends at the door. He accomplished it in the same
incomprehensible manner in which he had obtained my own,
and introducing them with the ill-disguised contempt of a valet
for all men with dusty coats, we commenced the rounds of the
curiosities together.


A large clock, facing us as we entered, was just striking.
From either side of its base, like companies of gentlemen and
ladies advancing to greet each other, appeared figures in the
dress and semblance of the royal family of Austria, who remained
a moment, and then retired, bowing themselves courteously out
backward. It is a costly affair, presented by the landgrave of
Hesse to Maria Theresa, in 1750.


After a succession of watches, snuff-boxes, necklaces, and jewels
of every description, we came to the famous Florentine diamond,
said to be the largest in the world. It was lost by a duke of
Burgundy upon the battle-field of Granson, found by a soldier,
who parted with it for five florins, sold again, and found its
way at last to the royal treasury of Florence, whence it was
brought to Vienna. Its weight is one hundred and thirty-nine
and a half carats, and it is estimated at one million, forty-three
thousand, three hundred and thirty-four florins. It looks like
a lump of light. Enormous diamonds surround it, but it hangs
among them like Hesperus among the stars.


The next side of the gallery is occupied by specimens of
carved ivory. Many of them are antique, and half of them are
more beautiful than decent. There were two bas-reliefs among
them by Raphael Donner, which were worth, to my eye, all the
gems in the gallery. They were taken from Scripture, and
represented the Woman of Samaria at the well, and Hagar waiting
for the death of her son. No powers of elocution, no enhancement
of poetry could bring those touching passages of the Bible
so movingly to the heart. The latter particularly arrested me.
The melancholy beauty of Hagar, sitting with her head bowed
upon her knees, while her boy is lying a little way off, beneath a
shrub of the desert, is a piece of unparalleled workmanship. It
may well hang in the treasury of an emperor.


Miniatures of the royal family in their childhood, set in costly
gems, massive plate curiously chased, services of gold, robes of
diamonds, gem-hilted swords, dishes wrought of solid integral
agates, and finally the crown and sceptre of Austria upon red
velvet cushions, looking very much like their imitations on the
stage, were among the world of splendours unfolded to our eyes.
The Florentine diamond and the bas-reliefs by Raphael Donner
were all I coveted. The beauty of the diamond was royal. It
needed no imagination to feel its value. A savage would pick
it up in the desert for a star dropped out of the sky. For the rest,
the demand on my admiration fatigued me, and I was glad to
escape with my dusty friends from the university, and exchange
courtesies in the free air. One of them spoke English a little
and called me “Mister Englishman,” on bidding me adieu. I
was afraid of a beer-shop scene in Vienna, and did not correct
the mistake.


As we were going out of the court, four covered wagons,
drawn each by four superb horses, dashed through the gate. I
waited a moment to see what they contained. Thirty or forty
servants in livery came out from the palace, and took from the
wagons quantities of empty baskets carefully labelled with directions.
They were from Schoenbrunn, where the emperor is at
present residing with his court, and had come to market for the
imperial kitchen. It should be a good dinner that requires
sixteen such horses to carry to the cook.


It was the hungry hour of two, and I was still musing on the
emperor’s dinner, and admiring the anxious interest his servants
took in their disposition of the baskets, when a blast of military
music came to my ear. It was from the barracks of the
imperial guard, and I stepped under the arch, and listened to
them an hour. How gloriously they played! It was probably
the finest band in Austria. I have heard much good music, but
of its kind, this was like a new sensation to me. They stand, in
playing, just under the window at which the emperor appears
daily when in the city.


I have been indebted to Mr. Schwartz, the American consul at
Vienna, for a very unusual degree of kindness. Among other
polite attentions, he procured for me to-day an admission to the
Polytechnic School—a favour granted with difficulty, except on
the appointed days for public visits.


The Polytechnic School was established in 1816, by the present
emperor. The building stands outside the rampart of the city,
of elegant proportions, and about as large as all the buildings
of Yale or Harvard College thrown into one. Its object is
to promote instruction in the practical sciences, or, in other
words, to give a practical education for the trades, commerce, or
manufactures. It is divided into three departments. The first
is preparatory, and the course occupies two years. The studies
are religion and morals, elementary mathematics, natural history,
geography, universal history, grammar, and “the German style,”
declamation, drawing, writing, and the French, Italian, and
Bohemian languages. To enter this class, the boy must be
thirteen years of age, and pays fifty cents per month.


The second course is commercial, and occupies one year. The
studies are mercantile correspondence, commercial law, mercantile
arithmetic, the keeping of books, geography and history, as
they relate to commerce, acquaintance with merchandise, &c. &c.


The third course lasts one year. The studies are chemistry as
applicable to arts, and trades, the fermentation of woods, tannery,
soap-making, dying, blanching, &c. &c.; also mechanism, practical
geometry, civil architecture, hydraulics, and technology.
The two last courses are given gratis.


The whole is under the direction of a principal, who has under
him thirty professors and two or three guardians of apparatus.


We were taken first into a noble hall, lined with glass cases
containing specimens of every article manufactured in the
German dominions. From the finest silks, down to shoes, wigs,
nails, and mechanics’ tools, here were all the products of human
labour. The variety was astonishing. Within the limits of a
single room, the pupil is here made acquainted with every
mechanic art known in his country.


The next hall was devoted to models. Here was every kind of
bridge, fortification, lighthouse, dry dock, breakwater, canal-lock,
&c. &c.; models of steamboats, of ships, and of churches, in
every style of architecture. It was a little world.


We went thence to the chemical apartment. The servitor
here, a man without education, has constructed all the apparatus.
He is an old grey-headed man, of a keen German countenance,
and great simplicity of manners. He takes great pride in having
constructed the largest and most complete chemical apparatus—now
in London. The one which he exhibited to us occupies the
whole of an immense hall, and produces an electric discharge
like the report of a pistol. The ordinary batteries in our universities
are scarce a twentieth part as powerful.


After showing us a variety of experiments, the old man turned
suddenly and asked us if we knew the geometrical figures
described by the vibrations of musical notes. We confessed our
ignorance, and he produced a pane of glass covered with black
sand. He then took a fiddle bow, and holding the glass horizontally,
drew it downward against the edge at a peculiar angle.
The sand flew as if it had been bewitched, and took the shape of
a perfect square. He asked us to name a figure. We named a
circle. Another careful draw of the bow, and the sand flew into
a circle, with scarce a particle out of its perfect curve. Twenty
times he repeated the experiment, and with the most complicated
figures drawn on paper. He had reduced it to an art. It
would have hung him for a magician a century ago.


However one condemns the policy of Austria with respect to
her subject provinces and the rest of Europe, it is impossible not
to be struck with her liberal provision for her own immediate
people. The public institutions of all kinds in Vienna are
allowed to be the finest and most liberally endowed on the continent.
Her hospitals, prisons, houses of industry, and schools,
are on an imperial scale of munificence. The emperor himself
is a father to his subjects, and every tongue blesses him.
Napoleon envied him their affection, it is said, and certainly no
monarch could be more universally beloved.


Among the institutions of Vienna are two which are peculiar.
One is a maison d’accouchement, into which any female can enter
veiled, remain till after the period of her labour, and depart
unknown, leaving her child in the care of the institution, which
rears it as a foundling. Its object is a benevolent prevention of
infanticide.


The other is a private penitentiary, to which the fathers of
respectable families can send for reformation children they are
unable to govern. The name is kept a secret, and the culprits
are returned to their families after a proper time, punished without
disgrace. Pride of character is thus preserved, while the
delinquent is firmly corrected.






LETTER XIII.




Vienna—Palaces and Gardens—Mosaic Copy of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper”—Collection
of Warlike Antiquities; Scanderburg’s Sword, Montezuma’s
Tomahawk, Relics of the Crusaders, Warriors in Armour, the Farmer
of Augsburg—Room of Portraits of Celebrated Individuals—Gold
Busts of Jupiter and Juno—The Glacis, full of Gardens, the General
Resort of the People—Universal Spirit of Enjoyment—Simplicity and
Confidence in the Manners of the Viennese—Baden.




At the foot of a hill in one of the beautiful suburbs of Vienna,
stands a noble palace, called the Lower Belvidere. On the
summit of the hill stands another, equally magnificent, called the
Upper Belvidere, and between the two extend broad and princely
gardens, open to the public.


On the lower floor of the entrance-hall in the former palace,
lies the copy, in mosaic, of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,”
done at Napoleon’s order. Though supposed to be the finest
piece of mosaic in the world, it is so large that they have never
found a place for it. A temporary balcony has been erected on
one side of the room, and the spectator mounts nearly to the
ceiling to get a fair position for looking down upon it. That
unrivalled picture, now going to decay in the convent at Milan,
will probably depend upon this copy for its name with posterity.
The expression in the faces of the apostles is as accurately
preserved as in the admirable engraving of Morghen.


The remaining halls in the palace are occupied by a grand collection
of antiquities, principally of a warlike character. When
I read in my old worm-eaten Burton, of “Scanderburg’s strength,”
I never thought to see his sword. It stands here against the wall,
along straight weapon with a cross hilt, which few men could
heave to their shoulders. The tomahawk of poor Montezuma
hangs near it. It was presented to the emperor by the king of
Spain. It is of a dark granite, and polished very beautifully.
What a singular curiosity to find in Austria!


The windows are draped with flags dropping in pieces with
age. This, so in tatters, was renowned in the crusades. It was
carried to the Holy Land and brought back by the archduke
Ferdinand.


A hundred warriors in bright armour stand around the hall.
Their visors are down, their swords in their hands, their feet
planted for a spring. One can scarce believe there are no men
in them. The name of some renowned soldier is attached to
each. This was the armour of the cruel Visconti of Milan—that
of Duke Alba of Florence—both costly suits, beautifully inlaid
with gold. In the centre of the room stands a gigantic fellow in
full armour, with a sword on his thigh and a beam in his right
hand. It is the shell of the famous farmer of Augsburg, who
was in the service of one of the emperors. He was over eight
feet in height, and limbed in proportion. How near such relics
bring history! With what increased facility one pictures the
warrior to his fancy, seeing his sword, and hearing the very
rattle of his armour. Yet it puts one into Hamlet’s vein to see
a contemptible valet lay his hand with impunity on the armed
shoulder, shaking the joints that once belted the soul of a Visconti!
I turned, in leaving the room, to take a second look at
the flag of the crusade. It had floated, perhaps, over the helmet
of Cœur de Lion. Saladin may have had it in his eye, assaulting
the Christian camp with his pagans.


In the next room hung fifty or sixty portraits of celebrated
individuals, presented in their time to the emperors of Austria.
There was one of Mary of Scotland. It is a face of superlative
loveliness, taken with a careless and most bewitching half smile,
and yet not without the look of royalty, which one traces in all
the pictures of the unfortunate queen. One of the emperors of
Germany married Philippina, a farmer’s daughter, and here is
her portrait. It is done in the prim old style of the middle ages,
but the face is full of character. Her husband’s portrait hangs
beside it, and she looks more born for an emperor than he.


Hall after hall followed, of costly curiosities. A volume would
not describe them. Two gold busts of Jupiter and Juno, by
Benvenuto Cellini, attracted my attention particularly. They
were very beautiful, but I would copy them in bronze, and coin
“the thunderer and his queen,” were they mine.


Admiration is the most exhausting thing in the world. The
servitor opened a gate leading into the gardens of the palace,
that we might mount to the Upper Belvidere, which contains the
imperial gallery of paintings. But I had no more strength. I
could have dug in the field till dinner-time—but to be astonished
more than three hours without respite is beyond me. I took a
stroll in the garden. How delightfully the unmeaning beauty of
a fountain refreshes one after this inward fatigue. I walked on,
up one alley and down another, happy in finding nothing that
surprised me, or worked upon my imagination, or bothered my
historical recollections, or called upon my worn-out superlatives
for expression. I fervently hoped not to have another new sensation
till after dinner.


Vienna is an immense city (two hundred and fifty thousand
inhabitants), but its heart only is walled in. You may walk
from gate to gate in twenty minutes. In leaving the walls you
come upon a feature of the city which distinguishes it from every
other in Europe. Its rampart is encircled by an open park
(called the Glacis), a quarter of a mile in width and perhaps
three miles in circuit, which is, in fact, in the centre of Vienna.
The streets commence again on the other side of it, and on going
from one part of the city to another, you constantly cross this
lovely belt of verdure, which girds her heart like a cestus of
health. The top of the rampart itself is planted with trees, and,
commanding beautiful views in every direction, it is generally
thronged with people. (It was a favourite walk of the Duke of
Reichstadt.) Between this and the Glacis lies a deep trench,
crossed by draw-bridges at every gate, the bottom of which is
cultivated prettily as a flower garden. Altogether Vienna is a
beautiful city. Paris may have single views about the Tuileries
that are finer than anything of the same kind here, but this
capital of western Europe, as a whole, is quite the most imposing
city I have seen.


The Glacis is full of gardens. I requested my disagreeable
necessity of a valet, this afternoon, to take me to two or three of
the most general resorts of the people. We passed out by one
of the city gates, five minutes’ walk from the hotel, and entered
immediately into a crowd of people, sauntering up and down
under the alleys of the Glacis. A little farther on we found a
fanciful building, buried in trees, and occupied as a summer café
In a little circular temple in front was stationed a band of music,
and around it for a considerable distance were placed small tables
filled just now with elegantly dressed people, eating ices, or
drinking coffee. It was in every respect like a private fête
champètre. I wandered about for an hour, expecting involuntarily
to meet some acquaintance—there was such a look of
kindness and unreserve throughout. It is a desolate feeling to
be alone in such a crowd.


We jumped into a carriage and drove round the Glacis for a
mile, passing everywhere crowds of people idling leisurely along
and evidently out for pleasure. We stopped before a superb
façade, near one of the gates of the city. It was the entrance to
the Volksgarten. We entered in front of a fountain, and turning
up a path to the left, found our way almost impeded by another
crowd. A semi circular building, with a range of columns in
front encircling a stand for a band of music, was surrounded by
perhaps two or three thousand people. Small tables and seats
under trees, were spread in every direction within reach of the
music. The band played charmingly. Waiters in white jackets
and aprons were running to and fro, receiving and obeying orders
for refreshments, and here again all seemed abandoned to one
spirit of enjoyment. I had thought we must have left all Vienna
at the other garden. I wondered how so many people could be
spared from their occupations and families. It was no holiday.
“It is always as gay in fair weather,” said Karl.


A little back into the garden stands a beautiful little structure,
on the model of the temple of Theseus in Greece. It was built
for Canova’s group of “Theseus and the Centaur,” bought by
the emperor. I had seen copies of it in Rome, but was of course
much more struck with the original. It is a noble piece of
sculpture.


Still farther back, on the rise of a mount, stood another
fanciful café, with another band of music—and another crowd!
After we had walked around it, my man was hurrying me away.
“You have not seen the Augarten,” said he. It stands upon a
little green island in the Danube, and is more extensive than
either of the others. But I was content where I was; and
dismissing my Asmodeus, I determined to spend the evening
wandering about in the crowds alone. The sun went down, the
lamps were lit, the alleys were illuminated, the crowd increased,
and the emperor himself could not have given a gayer evening’s
entertainment.


Vienna has the reputation of being the most profligate capital
in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is certainly, even to a
stranger, no lack of temptation to every species of pleasure.
But there is, besides, a degree of simplicity and confidence in
the manners of the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to
America, and inconsistent with the state of society in Europe.
In the most public resorts, and at all hours of the day and
evening, modest and respectable young women of the middle
classes walk alone perfectly secure from molestation. They sit
under the trees in these public gardens, eat ices at the cafés, walk
home unattended, and no one seems to dream of impropriety.
Whole families, too, spend the afternoon upon a seat in a
thronged place of resort, their children playing about them, the
father reading, and the mother sewing or knitting, quite unconscious
of observation. The lower and middle classes live all
summer, I am told, out of doors. It is never oppressively warm
in this latitude, and their houses are deserted after three or four
o’clock in the afternoon, and the whole population pours out to
the different gardens on the Glacis, where till midnight, they
seem perfectly happy in the enjoyment of the innocent and unexpensive
pleasures which a wise government has provided for them.


The nobles and richer class pass their summer in the circle of
rural villages near the city. They are nested about on the hills,
and crowded with small and lovely rural villas more like the
neighbourhood of Boston than anything I have seen in Europe.


Baden, where the Emperor passes much of his time, is called
“the miniature Switzerland.” Its baths are excellent, its hills
are cut into retired and charming walks, and from June till
September it is one of the gayest of watering-places. It is about
a two hours’ drive from the city, and omnibuses at a very low
rate, run between at all times of the day. The Austrians seldom
travel, and the reason is evident. They have everything for
which others travel, at home.






LETTER XIV.




Vienna—The Palace of Liechtenstein.




The red-nosed German led on through the crowded Graben,
jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and her handsome Hungarian
cavalier, the phlegmatic smoker and the bearded Turk,
alike. We passed the imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty
bridge over the trench (casting a look below at the flower-garden
laid out in “the ditch” which encircles the wall), and entered
upon the lovely Glacis—one step from the crowded street to the
fresh greenness of a park.


Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded alley, that you
are in the heart of the city still?


The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children and shy
maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking lovers, and its
idling soldiers, and we again enter the crowded street. A half
hour more, and the throng thins again, the country opens, and
here you are, in front of the palace of Liechstenstein, the first
noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful and light
architecture, rises from its clustering trees: servants in handsome
livery hang about the gates and lean against the pillars of
the portico, and with an explanation from my lying valet, who
evidently makes me out an ambassador at least, by the ceremony
with which I am received, a grey servitor makes his appearance
and opens the immense glass door leading from the side of the
court.


One should step gingerly on the polished marble of this superb
staircase! It opens at once into a lofty hall, the ceiling of which
is painted in fresco by an Italian master. It is a room of noble
proportions. Few churches in America are larger, and yet it
seems in keeping with the style of the palace, the staircase—everything
but the creature meant to inhabit it.


How different are the moods in which one sees pictures!
To-day I am in the humour to give it to the painter’s delusion.
The scene is real. Asmodeus is at my elbow, and I am witched
from spot to spot, invisible myself, gazing on the varied scenes
revealed only to the inspired vision of genius.


A landscape opens.[2] It is one of the woody recesses of Lake
Nervi, at the very edge of “Dian’s Mirror.” The huntress
queen is bathing with her nymphs. The sandal is half laced over
an ankle that seems fit for nothing else than to sustain a goddess,
when casting her eye on the lovely troop emerging from the
water, she sees the unfortunate Calista surrounded by her
astonished sisters, and fainting with shame. Poor Calista! one’s
heart pleads for her. But how expressive is the cold condemning
look in the beautiful face of her mistress queen! Even the dogs
have started from their reclining position on the grass, and stand
gazing at the unfortunate, wondering at the silent astonishment
of the virgin troop. Pardon her, imperial Dian!


Come to the baptism of a child! It is a vision of Guido
Reni’s.[3] A young mother, apparently scarce sixteen, has
brought her first child to the altar. She kneels with it in her
arms, looking earnestly into the face of the priest while he
sprinkles the water on its pure forehead, and pronounces the
words of consecration. It is a most lovely countenance, made
lovelier by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes are moist,
her throat swells with emotion—my own sight dims while I gaze
upon her. We have intruded upon one of the most holy moments
of nature. A band of girls, sisters by the resemblance, have
accompanied the young mother, and stand, with love and wonder
in their eyes, gazing on the face of the child. How strangely the
mingled thoughts, crowding through their minds, are expressed
in their excited features. It is a scene worthy of an audience of
angels.


We have surprised Giorgione’s wife (the “Flora” of Titian,
the “love in life” of Byron) looking at a sketch by her husband.
It stands on his easel, outlined in crayons, and represents
Lucretia the moment before she plunges the dagger into her
bosom. She was passing through his studio, and you see by the
half suspended foot, that she stopped but for a momentary glance,
and has forgotten herself in thoughts that have risen unaware.
The head of Lucretia resembles her own, and she is wondering
what Giorgione thought while he drew it. Did he resemble her
to the Roman’s wife in virtue as well as in feature? There is an
embarrassment in the expression of her face, as if she doubted
he had drawn it half in mischief. We will leave the lovely
Venetian to her thoughts. When she sits again to Titian, it will
be with a colder modesty.


Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene for you.
It is an old man, who has thrust his head through a prison gate,
and is looking into the street with the listless patience and curiosity
of one whom habit has reconciled to his situation. His
beard is neglected, his hair is slightly grizzled, and on his head
sits a shabby fur cap, that has evidently shared all his imprisonment,
and is quite past any pride of appearance. What a vacant
face! How perfectly he seems to look upon the street below,
as upon something with which he has nothing more to do. There
is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past that. He
looks at the playing children, and watches the zigzag trot of
an idle dog with the quiet apathy of one who can find nothing
better to help off the hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented,
unthinking misery.


Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot at his
mother’s knee, while she pares an apple for him! With what
an amused and playful love she listens to his hurrying entreaties,
stealing a glance at him as he pleads, with a deeper feeling
than he will be able to comprehend for years? It is one
of the commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with
speculation!


On—on—what an endless gallery! I have seen twelve rooms,
with forty or fifty pictures in each, and there are thirteen halls
more! The delusion begins to fade. These are pictures merely.
Beautiful ones, however! If language could convey to your
eye the impressions that this waste and wealth of beauty have
conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture. There is not
an indifferent one here. All Italy together has not so many
works by the Flemish masters as are contained in this single
gallery—certainly none so fine. A most princely fortune for
many generations must have been devoted to its purchase.


I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by Corregio.
They were the gems of the galleries in which they exist, but
always small, and seemed to me to want a certain finish. Here
is a Corregio, a large picture, and no miniature ever had so
elaborate a beauty. It melts into the eye. It is a conception
of female beauty so very extraordinary, that it seems to me it
must become, in the mind of every one who sees it, the model
and the standard of all loveliness. It is a nude Venus, sitting
lost in thought, with Cupid asleep in her lap. She is in the
sacred retirement of solitude, and the painter has thrown into
her attitude and expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all
presence, that you feel like a daring intruder while you gaze
upon the picture. Surely such softness of colouring, such faultless
proportions, such subdued and yet eloquent richness of teint
in the skin, was never before attained by mortal pencil. I am
here, some five thousand miles from America, yet would I have
made the voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this
ravishing image of woman.


In the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of female
beauty, both in degree and in variety, than his anticipations had
promised. Three or four heads at the most, of the many
hundreds that he sees, are imprinted in his memory, and serve as
standards in his future observations. Even when standing
before the most celebrated pictures, one often returns to recollections
of living beauty in his own country, by which the most
glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suffer in comparison. In
my own experience this has been often true, and it is perhaps
the only thing in which my imagination of foreign wonders was
too fervent. To this Venus of Corregio’s, however, I unhesitatingly
submit all knowledge, all conception even, of female loveliness.
I have seen nothing in life, imagined nothing from the
description of poets, that is any way comparable to it. It is
matchless.


In one of the last rooms the servitor unlocked two handsome
cases, and showed me, with a great deal of circumstance, two
heads by Denner. They were an old man and his wife—two hale,
temperate, good old country gossips—but so curiously finished!
Every pore was painted. You counted the stiff stumps of the
good man’s beard as you might those of a living person, till you
were tired. Every wrinkle looked as if a month had been spent
in elaborating it. The man said they were extremely valuable,
and I certainly never saw anything more curiously and perhaps
uselessly wrought.


Near them was a capital picture of a drunken fellow, sitting by
himself, and laughing heartily at his own performance on the
pipe. It was irresistible, and I joined in the laugh till the long
suite of halls rung again.


Landscapes by Van Delen—such as I have seen engravings of
in America, and sighed over as unreal—the skies, the temples,
the water, the soft mountains, the distant ruins, seemed so like
the beauty of a dream. Here, they recall to me even lovelier
scenes in Italy—atmospheres richer than the painter’s pallet can
imitate, and ruins and temples whose ivy-grown and melancholy
grandeur are but feebly copied at the best.


Come Karl! I am bewildered with these pictures. You have
twenty such galleries in Vienna, you say! I have seen enough
for to-day, however, and we will save the Belvidere till to-morrow.
Here! pay the servitor, and the footman, and the porter, and let
us get into the open air. How common look your Viennese after
the celestial images we have left behind! And, truly, this is the
curse of refinement. The faces we should have loved else, look
dull! The forms that were graceful before, move somehow
heavily. I have entered a gallery ere now, thinking well of a
face that accompanied me, and I have learned indifference to it,
by sheer comparison, before coming away.


We return through the Kohlmarket, one of the most fashionable
streets of Vienna. It is like a fancy ball. Hungarians, Poles,
Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Moldavians, Greeks, Turks, all dressed
in their national and striking costumes, promenade up and down,
smoking all, and none exciting the slightest observation. Every
third window is a pipe shop, and they show, by their splendour
and variety, the expensiveness of the passion. Some of them are
marked “two hundred dollars.” The streets reek with tobacco
smoke. You never catch a breath of untainted air within the
Glacis. Your hotel, your café, your coach, your friend, are all
redolent of the same disgusting odour.














By Franceschini. He passed his life with the Prince Liechstenstein,
and his pictures are found only in this collection. He is a delicious
painter, full of poetry, with the one fault of too voluptuous a style.
















One of the loveliest pictures that divine painter ever drew.










LETTER XV.




The Palace of Schoenbrunn—Hietzing, the Summer Retreat of the Wealthy
Viennese—Country-House of the American Consul—Specimen of Pure
Domestic Happiness in a German Family—Splendid Village Ball—Substantial
Fare for the Ladies—Curious Fashion of Cushioning the
Windows—German Grief—The Upper Belvidere Palace—Endless
Quantity of Pictures.




Drove to Schoenbrunn. It is a princely palace, some three
miles from the city, occupied at present by the emperor and his
court. Napoleon resided here during his visit to Vienna, and
here his son died—the two circumstances which alone make it
worth much trouble to see. The afternoon was too cold to hope
to meet the emperor in the grounds, and being quite satisfied with
drapery and modern paintings, I contented myself with having
driven through the court, and kept on to Hietzing.


This is a small village of country-seats within an hour’s drive
of the city—another Jamaica-Plains, or Dorchester in the
neighbourhood of Boston. It is the summer retreat of most of
the rank and fashion of Vienna. The American consul has here
a charming country-house, buried in trees, where the few of our
countrymen who travel to Austria find the most hospitable of
welcomes. A bachelor friend of mine from New York is domesticated
in the village with a German family. I was struck with
the Americanism of their manners. The husband and wife, a
female relative and an intimate friend of the family, were sitting
in the garden, engaged in grave, quiet, sensible conversation.
They had passed the afternoon together. Their manners were
affectionate to each other, but serious and respectful. When I
entered, they received me with kindness, and the conversation
was politely changed to French, which they all spoke fluently.
Topics were started, in which it was supposed I would be interested,
and altogether the scene was one of the simplest and purest
domestic happiness. This seems to you, I daresay, like the
description of a very common thing, but I have not seen such a
one before since I left my country. It is the first family I have
found in two years’ travel who lived in, and seemed sufficient for,
themselves. It came over me with a kind of feeling of refreshment.


In the evening there was a ball at a public room in the village.
It was built in the rear of a café, to which we paid about thirty
cents for entrance. I was not prepared for the splendour with
which it was got up. The hall was very large and of beautiful
proportions, built like the interior of a temple, with columns on
the four sides. A partition of glass divided it from a supper
room equally large, in which were set out perhaps fifty tables,
furnished with a carte, from which each person ordered his
supper when he wished it, after the fashion of a restaurant. The
best band in Vienna filled the orchestra, led by the celebrated
Strauss, who has been honoured for his skill with presents from
half the monarchs of Europe.


The ladies entered, dressed in perfect taste, à la Parisienne,
but the gentlemen (hear it, Basil Hall and Mrs. Trollope!)
came in frock coats and boots, and danced with their hats on!
It was a public ball, and there was, of course, a great mixture
of society; but I was assured that it was attended constantly by
the most respectable people of the village, and was as respectable
as anything of the kind in the middle classes. There were,
certainly, many ladies in the company, of elegant manners and
appearance, and among the gentlemen I recognised two attachés
to the French embassy, whom I had known in Paris, and several
Austrian gentlemen of rank were pointed out to me among the
dancers. The galopade and the waltz were the only dances, and
dirty boots and hats to the contrary notwithstanding, it was the
best waltzing I ever saw. They danced with a soul.


The best part of it was the supper. They danced and eat—danced
and eat, the evening through. It was quite the more
important entertainment of the two. The most delicate ladies
present returned three and four times to the supper, ordering
fried chicken, salads, cold meats, and beer, again and again, as if
every waltz created a fresh appetite. The bill was called for,
the ladies assisted in making the change, the tankard was
drained, and off they strolled to the ball-room to engage with
renewed spirit in the dance. And these, positively, were ladies
who, in dress, manners, and modest demeanour, might pass
uncriticised in any society in the world! Their husbands and
brothers attended them, and no freedom was attempted, and I
am sure it would not have been permitted even to speak to a
lady without a formal introduction.


We left most of the company supping at a late hour, and I
drove into the city, amused with the ball, and reconciled to any
or all of the manners which travellers in America find so
peculiarly entertaining.


These cold winds from the Danube have given me a
rheumatism. I was almost reconciled to it this morning
however, by a curtain-scene which I should have missed but for
its annoyance. I had been driven out of my bed at daylight,
and was walking my room between the door and the window,
when a violent knocking in the street below arrested my
attention. A respectable family occupies the house opposite,
consisting of a father and mother and three daughters, the least
attractive of whom has a lover. I cannot well avoid observing
them whenever I am in my room, for every house in Vienna has
a leaning cushion on the window for the elbows, and the ladies
of all classes are upon them the greater part of the day. A
handsome carriage, servants in livery, and other circumstances,
leave no doubt in my mind that my neighbours are rather of the
better class.


The lover stood at the street door with a cloak on his arm,
and a man at his side with his portmanteau. He was going on
a journey, and had come to take leave of his mistress. He
was let in by a gaping servant, who looked rather astonished at
the hour he had chosen for his visit, but the drawing-room
windows were soon thrown open, and the lady made her
appearance with her hair in papers, and other marks of a hasty
toilet. My room is upon the same floor, and as I paced to and
fro, the narrowness of the street in a manner forced them upon
my observation. The scene was a very violent one, and the
lady’s tears flowed without restraint. After twenty partings at
least, the lover scarce getting to the door before he returned to
take another embrace, he finally made his exit, and the lady
threw herself on a sofa and hid her face—for five minutes! I
had begun to feel for her, although her swollen eyes added very
unnecessarily to her usual plainness, when she rose and rang
the bell. The servant appeared and disappeared, and in a few
minutes returned with a ham, a loaf of bread, and a mug of beer?
and down sets my sentimental miss and consoles the agony of
parting with a meal that I would venture to substitute in
quantity for any working man’s lunch.


I went to bed and rose at nine, and she was sitting at breakfast
with the rest of the family, playing as good a knife and fork as
her sisters, though, I must admit, with an expression of sincere
melancholy in her countenance.


The scene, I am told by my friend the consul, was perfectly
German. They eat a great deal, he says, in affliction. The poet
writes:—




 

“They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings.”


 



For silent read hungry.




The Upper Belvidere, a palace containing eighteen large
rooms, filled with pictures. This is the imperial gallery and the
first in Austria. How can I give you an idea of perhaps five
hundred masterpieces you see here now, and by whom Italy
has been stripped. They have bought up all Flanders, one
would think, too. In one room here are twenty-eight superb
Vandykes. Austria, in fact, has been growing rich while every
other nation on the continent has been growing poor, and she
has purchased the treasures of half the world at a discount.[4]


It is wearisome writing of pictures, one’s language is so
limited. I must mention one or two in this collection, however,
and I will let you off entirely on the Esterhazy, which is nearly
as fine.


“Cleopatra dying.” She is represented younger than usual,
and with a more fragile and less queenly style of beauty than is
common. It is a fair slight creature of seventeen, who looks
made to depend for her very breath upon affection, and is dying
of a broken heart. It is painted with great feeling, and with a
soft and delightful tone of colour which is peculiar to the artist.
It is the third of Guido Cagnacci’s pictures that I have seen.
One was the gem of a gallery at Bologna, and was bought last
summer by Mr. Cabot of Boston.


“The wife of Potiphar” is usually represented as a woman of
middle age, with a full, voluptuous person. She is so drawn, I
remember, in the famous picture in the Barberini Palace at
Rome, said to be the most expressive thing of its kind in the
world. Here is a painting less dangerously expressive of passion
but full of beauty. She is eighteen at the most, fair, delicate,
and struggles with the slender boy, who seems scarce older than
herself, more like a sister from whom a mischievous brother has
stolen something in sport. Her partly disclosed figure has all
the incomplete slightness of a girl. The handsome features of
Joseph express more embarrassment than anger. The habitual
courtesy to his lovely mistress is still there, his glance is just
averted from the snowy bosom toward which he is drawn, but in
the firmly curved lip the sense of duty sits clearly defined, and
evidently will triumph. I have forgotten the painter’s name.
His model must have been some innocent girl whose modest
beauty led him away from his subject. Called by another name
the picture were perfect.


A portrait of Count Wallenstein, by Vandyke. It looks a
man, in the fullest sense of the word. The pendant to it is the
Countess Turentaxis, and she is a woman he might well have
loved—calm, lofty, and pure. They are pictures, I should think,
would have an influence on the character of those who saw them
habitually.


Here is a curious picture by Schnoer—“Mephistopheles
tempting Faust.” The scholar sits at his table, with a black
letter volume open before him, and apparatus of all descriptions
around. The devil has entered in the midst of his speculations,
dressed in black like a professor, and stands waiting the decision
of Faust, who gazes intently on the manuscript held in his hand.
His fingers are clenched, his eyes start from his head, his feet
are braced, and the devil eyes him with a side glance, in which
malignity and satisfaction are admirably mingled. The features
of Faust are emaciated, and show the agitation of his soul very
powerfully. The points of his compasses, globes, and instruments
emit electric sparks toward the infernal visitor; his lamp burns
blue, and the picture altogether has the most diabolical effect.
It is quite a large painting, and just below, by the same artist,
hangs a small, simple, sweet Madonna. It is a singular contrast
in subjects by the same hand.


A portrait of the Princess Esterhazy, by Angelica Kauffman—a
beautiful woman, painted in the pure, touching style of that
interesting artist.


Then comes a “Cleopatra dropping the pearl into the cup.”
How often, and how variously, and how admirably always, the
Egyptian queen is painted! I never have seen an indifferent
one. In this picture the painter seems to have lavished all he
could conceive of female beauty upon his subject. She is a
glorious creature. It reminds me of her own proud description
of herself, when she is reproaching Antony to one of her maids,
in “The False One” of Beaumont and Fletcher:—




 

                            “To prefer


The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe,


Before the life of love and soul of beauty!”


 



I have marked a great many pictures in this collection I cannot
describe without wearying you, yet I feel unwilling to let
them go by. A female, representing Religion, feeding a dove
from a cup, a most lovely thing by Guido; portraits of Gerard
Douw and Rembrandt, by themselves; Rubens’ children, a boy
and girl ten or twelve years of age, one of the most finished
paintings I ever saw, and entirely free from the common
dropsical style of colouring of this artist; another portrait of
Giorgione’s wife, the fiftieth that I have seen, at least, yet a face
of which one would never become weary; a glowing landscape
by Fischer, the first by this celebrated artist I have met; and
last (for this is mere catalogue-making), a large picture representing
the “Sitting of the English Parliament” in the time of
Pitt. It contains about a hundred portraits, among which those
of Pitt and Fox are admirable. The great Prime-Minister stands
speaking in the foreground, and Fox sits on the opposite side of
the House listening attentively with half a smile on his features.
It is a curious picture to find in Vienna.


One thing more, however—a Venus, by Lampi. It kept me a
great while before it. She lies asleep on a rich couch, and,
apparently in her dream, is pressing a rose to her bosom, while
one delicate foot, carelessly thrown back, is half imbedded in a
superb cushion supporting a crown and sceptre. It is a lie, by
all experience. The moral is false, but the picture is delicious.














Besides the three galleries of the Belvidere, Leichstenstein, and
Esterhazy, which contain as many choice masters as Rome and Florence
together, the guide-book refers the traveller to sixty-four private galleries
of oil paintings, well worth his attention, and to twenty-five private
collections of engravings and antiquities. We shall soon be obliged to go
to Vienna, to study the arts, at this rate. They have only no sculpture.










LETTER XVI.




Departure from Vienna—The Eil-Wagon—Motley quality of the passengers—Thunderstorm
in the Mountains of Styria—Trieste—Short beds of
the Germans—Grotto of Adelsburgh—Curious Ball-Room in the
Cavern—Nautical preparations for a Dance on board the “United
States” swept away by the Bora—Its successful termination.




I left Vienna at daylight in a diligence nearly as capacious as
a steamboat—inaptly called the eil-wagon. A Friuli count, with
a pair of cavalry moustaches, his wife, a pretty Viennese of
eighteen, scarce married a year, two fashionable-looking young
Russians, an Austrian midshipman, a fat Gratz lawyer, a trader
from the Danube, and a young Bavarian student, going to seek
his fortune in Egypt, were my companions. The social habits of
continental travellers had given me thus much information by
the end of the first post.


We drove on with German regularity, three days and three
nights, eating four meals a-day (and very good ones), and
improving hourly in our acquaintance. The Russians spoke all
our languages. The Friulese and the Bavarian spoke everything
but English, and the lady, the trader, and the Gratz avocat, were
confined to their vernacular. It was a pretty idea of Babel when
the conversation became general.


We were coursing the bank of a river, in one of the romantic
passes of the mountains of Styria, with a dark thunder-storm
gathering on the summit of a crag overhanging us. I was
pointing out to one of my companions a noble ruin of a castle
seated very loftily on the edge of one of the precipices, when a
streak of the most vivid lightning shot straight upon the northern-most
turret, and the moment after several large masses rolled
slowly down the mountain-side. It was so like the scenery in a
play, that I looked at my companion with half a doubt that it
was some optical delusion. It reminded me of some of Martin’s
engravings. The sublime is so well imitated in our day that one
is less surprised than he would suppose when nature produces
the reality.


The night was very beautiful when we reached the summit of
the mountain above Trieste. The new moon silvered the little
curved bay below like a polished shield, and right in the path of
its beams lay the two frigates like a painting. I must confess
that the comfortable cot swinging in the ward-room of the
“United States” was the prominent thought in my mind as I
gazed upon the scene. The fatigue of three days and nights’
hard driving had dimmed my eye for the picturesque. Leaving
my companions to the short beds[5] and narrow coverlets of a
German hotel, I jumped into the first boat at the pier, and in a
few minutes was alongside the ship. How musical is the hail of
a sentry in one’s native tongue, after a short habitation to the
jargon of foreign languages! “Boat ahoy!” It made my heart
leap. The officers had just returned from Venice, some over
land by the Friuli, and some by the steamer through the gulf,
and were sitting round the table laughing with professional
merriment over their various adventures. It was getting back
to country and friends and home.




I accompanied the commodore’s family yesterday in a visit to
the Grotto of Adelsburgh. It is about thirty miles back into
the Friuli mountains, near the province of Cariola. We arrived
at the nearest tavern at three in the afternoon, and subscribing
our names upon the magistrate’s books, took four guides and the
requisite number of torches, and started on foot. A half hour’s
walk brought us to a large rushing stream, which, after turning a
mill, disappeared with violence into the mouth of a broad cavern,
sunk in the base of a mountain. An iron gate opened on the
nearest side, and lighting our torches, we received an addition of
half a dozen men to our party of guides, and entered. We
descended for ten or fifteen minutes, through a capacious gallery
of rock, up to the ankles in mud, and feeling continually the
drippings exuding from the roof, till by the echoing murmurs of
dashing water we found ourselves approaching the bed of a
subterraneous river. We soon emerged in a vast cavern, whose
height, though we had twenty torches, was lost in the darkness.
The river rushed dimly below us, at the depth of perhaps fifty
feet, partially illuminated by a row of lamps, hung on a slight
wooden bridge by which we were to cross to the opposite side.


We descended by a long flight of artificial stairs, and stood
upon the bridge. The wildness of the scene is indescribable.
A lamp or two glimmered faintly from the lofty parapet from
which we had descended; the depth and breadth of the surrounding
cave could only be measured by the distance of the
echoes of the waters, and beneath us leaped and foamed a dark
river, which sprang from its invisible channel, danced a moment
in the faint light of our lamps, and was lost again instantly in
darkness. It brought with it, from the green fields through
which it had come, a current of soft warm air, peculiarly
delightful after the chilliness of the other parts of the cavern;
there was a smell of new-mown hay in it which seemed lost in
the tartarean blackness around.


Our guides led on, and we mounted a long staircase on the
opposite side of the bridge. At the head of it stood a kind of
monument, engraved with the name of the emperor of Austria,
by whose munificence the staircase had been cut and the conveniences
for strangers provided. We turned hence to the
right, and entered a long succession of natural corridors, roofed
with stalactites, with a floor of rock and mud, and so even and
wide that the lady under my protection had seldom occasion to
leave my arm. In the narrowest part of it, the stalactites
formed a sort of reversed grove, with the roots in the roof.
They were of a snowy white, and sparkled brilliantly in the light
of the torches. One or two had reached the floor, and formed
slender and beautiful sparry columns, upon which the names of
hundreds of visitors were written in pencil.


The spars grew white as we proceeded, and we were constantly
emerging into large halls of the size of handsome drawing-rooms,
whose glittering roofs, and sides lined with fantastic
columns, seemed like the brilliant frost-work of a crystallised
cavern of ice. Some of the accidental formations of the
stalagmites were very curious. One large area was filled with
them, of the height of small plants. It was called by the guides
the “English Garden.” At the head of another saloon, stood a
throne, with a stalactite canopy above it, so like the work of
art, that it seemed as if the sculptor had but left the finishing
undone.


We returned part of the way we had come, and took another
branch of the grotto, a little more on the descent. A sign above
informed us that it was the “road to the infernal regions.” We
walked on an hour at a quick pace, stopping here and there to
observe the oddity of the formations. In one place, the stalactites
had enclosed a room, leaving only small openings between the
columns, precisely like the grating of a prison. In another, the
ceiling lifted out of the reach of torch-light, and far above us we
heard the deep-toned beat as upon a muffled bell. It was a thin
circular sheet of spar, called “the bell,” to which one of the
guides had mounted, striking upon it with a billet of wood.


We came after a while to a deeper descent, which opened into
a magnificent and spacious hall. It is called “the ball-room,”
and used as such once a year, on the occasion of a certain Illyrian
festa. The floor has been cleared of stalagmites, the roof and
sides are ornamented beyond all art with glittering spars, a
natural gallery with a balustrade of stalactites contains the
orchestra, and side-rooms are all around where supper might be
laid, and dressing-rooms offered in the style of a palace. I can
imagine nothing more magnificent than such a scene. A literal
description of it even would read like a fairy tale.


A little farther on, we came to a perfect representation of a
waterfall. The impregnated water had fallen on a declivity, and
with a slightly ferruginous tinge of yellow, poured over in the
most natural resemblance to a cascade after a rain. We proceeded
for ten or fifteen minutes, and found a small room like a
chapel, with a pulpit, in which stood one of the guides, who gave
us, as we stood beneath, an Illyrian exhortation. There was a
sounding-board above, and I have seen pulpits in old gothic
churches that seemed at a first glance to have less method in their
architecture. The last thing we reached was the most beautiful.
From the cornice of a long gallery, hung a thin, translucent
sheet of spar, in the graceful and waving folds of a curtain;
with a lamp behind, the hand could be seen through any part
of it. It was perhaps twenty feet in length, and hung five or
six feet down from the roof of the cavern. The most singular
part of it was the fringe. A ferruginous stain ran through it
from one end to the other, with the exactness of a drawn line,
and thence to the curving edge a most delicate rose-tint faded
gradually down like the last flush of sunset through a silken
curtain. Had it been a work of art, done in alabaster, and
stained with the pencil, it would have been thought admirable.


The guide wished us to proceed, but our feet were wet, and
the air of the cavern was too chill. We were at least four miles,
they told us, from the entrance, having walked briskly for
upward of two hours. The grotto is said to extend ten miles
under the mountains, and has never been thoroughly explored.
Parties have started with provisions, and passed forty-eight
hours in it without finding the extremity. It seems to me that
any city I ever saw might be concealed in its caverns. I have
often tried to conceive of the grottos of Antiparos, and the celebrated
caverns of our own country, but I received here an
entirely new idea of the possibility of space under ground.
There is no conceiving it unseen. The river emerges on the
other side of the mountain, seven or eight miles from its first
entrance.


We supped and slept at the little albergo of the village, and
returned the next day to an early dinner.


Trieste.—A ball on board the “United States.” The guns
were run out of the ports; the main and mizen-masts were
wound with red and white bunting; the capstan was railed with
arms and wreathed with flowers; the wheel was tied with
nosegays; the American eagle stood against the mainmast, with
a star of midshipmen’s swords glittering above it; festoons of
evergreens were laced through the rigging; the companion-way
was arched with hoops of green leaves and roses; the decks were
tastefully chalked: the commodore’s skylight was piled with
cushions and covered with red damask for an ottoman; seats
were laid along from one carronade to the other; and the whole
was enclosed with a temporary tent lined throughout with showy
flags, and studded all over with bouquets of all the flowers of
Illyria. Chandeliers made of bayonets, battle-lanterns, and
candles in any quantity, were disposed all over the hall. A
splendid supper was set out on the gun-deck below, draped in
with flags. Our own and the “Constellation’s” boats were to
be at the pier at nine o’clock to bring off the ladies, and at noon
everything promised of the brightest.


First, about four in the afternoon, came up a saucy-looking
cloud from the westernmost peak of the Friuli. Then followed
from every point towards the north, an extending edge of a broad
solid black sheet which rose with the regularity of a curtain, and
began to send down a wind upon us which made us look
anxiously to our ball-room bowlines. The midshipmen were all
forward, watching it from the forecastle. The lieutenants were
in the gangway, watching it from the ladder. The commodore
looked seriously out of the larboard cabin port. It was as grave
a ship’s company as ever looked out for a shipwreck.


The country about Trieste is shaped like a bellows, and the
city and harbour lie in the nose. They have a wind that comes
down through the valley, called the “bora,” which several times
in the year is strong enough to lift people from their feet. We
could see, by the clouds of dust on the mountain roads, that it
was coming. At six o’clock the shrouds began to creak; the
white tops flew from the waves in showers of spray, and the roof
of our sea-palace began to shiver in the wind. There was no
more hope. We had waited even too long. All hands were
called to take down the chandeliers, sword-stars, and ottomans,
and before it was half done, the storm was upon us; the bunting
was flying and flapping, the nicely-chalked decks were swashed
with rain, and strewn with leaves of flowers, and the whole
structure, the taste and labour of the ship’s company for two days,
was a watery wreck.


Lieutenant C——, who had the direction of the whole, was
the officer of the deck. He sent for his pea-jacket, and leaving
him to pace out his watch among the ruins of his imagination, we
went below to get early to bed, and forgot our disappointment
in sleep.


The next morning the sun rose without a veil. The “blue
Friuli” looked clear and fresh; the south-west wind came over
softly from the shore of Italy, and we commenced retrieving our
disaster with elastic spirit. Nothing had suffered seriously
except the flowers, and boats were despatched ashore for fresh
supplies, while the awnings were lifted higher and wider than
before, the bright-coloured flags replaced, the arms polished and
arranged in improved order, and the decks re-chalked with new
devices. At six in the evening everything was swept up, and
the ball-room astonished even ourselves. It was the prettiest
place for a dance in the world.


The ship has an admirable band of twenty Italians, collected
from Naples and other ports, and a fanciful orchestra was raised
for them on the larboard side of the mainmast. They struck up
a march as the first boatful of ladies stepped upon the deck, and
in the course of half an hour the waltzing commenced with at
least two hundred couples, while the ottoman and seats under the
hammock-cloths were filled with spectators. The frigate has a
lofty poop, and there was room enough upon it for two quadrilles
after it had served as a reception-room. It was edged with a
temporary balustrade, wreathed with flowers, and studded with
lights, and the cabin beneath (on a level with the main ball-room),
was set out with card-tables. From the gangway
entrance, the scene was like a brilliant theatrical ballet.


An amusing part of it was the sailors’ imitation on the
forward decks. They had taken the waste shrubbery and evergreens,
of which there was a great quantity, and had formed a
sort of grove, extending all round. It was arched with festoons
of leaves, with quantities of fruit tied among them; and over the
entrance was suspended a rough picture of a frigate with the
inscription, “Free trade and sailors’ rights.” The forecastle
was ornamented with cutlasses, and one or two nautical transparencies,
with pistols and miniature ships interspersed, and the
whole lit up handsomely. The men were dressed in their white
duck trowsers and blue jackets, and sat round on the guns
playing at draughts, or listening to the music, or gazing at the
ladies constantly promenading fore and aft, and to me this was
one of the most interesting parts of the spectacle. Five hundred
weather-beaten and manly faces are a fine sight anywhere.


The dance went gaily on. The reigning belle was an American,
but we had lovely women of all nations among our guests.
There are several wealthy Jewish families in Trieste, and their
dark-eyed daughters, we may say at this distance, are full of the
thoughtful loveliness peculiar to the race. Then we had Illyrians
and Germans, and—Terpsichore be our witness—how they
danced! My travelling companion, the count of Friuli, was
there; and his little Viennese wife, though she spoke no Christian
language, danced as featly as a fairy. Of strangers passing
through the Trieste, we had several of distinction. Among
them was a fascinating Milanese marchioness, a relative of Manzoni’s,
the novelist (and as enthusiastic and eloquent a lover of
her country as I ever listened to on the subject of oppressed
Italy), and two handsome young men, the counts Neipperg, sons-in-law
to Maria Louisa, who amused themselves as if they had
seen nothing better in the little duchy of Parma.


We went below at midnight, to supper, and the ladies came
up with renewed spirit to the dance. It was a brilliant scene
indeed. The officers of both ships in full uniform, the gentlemen
from shore, mostly military, in full dress, the gaiety of the
bright red bunting, laced with white and blue, and studded,
wherever they would stand, with flowers, and the really uncommon
number of beautiful women, with the foreign features and complexions
so rich and captivating to our eyes, produced altogether
an effect unsurpassed by anything I have ever seen even at the
court fêtes of Europe. The daylight gun fired at the close of a
galopade, and the crowded boats pulled ashore with their lovely
freight by the broad light of morning.














A German bed is never over five feet in length, and proportionably
narrow. The sheets, blankets, and coverlets, are cut exactly to the size of
the bed’s surface, so that there is no tucking up. The bed-clothes seem
made for cradles. It is easy to imagine how a tall person sleeps in them.










LETTER XVII.




Trieste, its Extensive Commerce—Hospitality of Mr. Moore—Ruins of
Pola—Immense amphitheatre—Village of Pola—Coast of Dalmatia, of
Apulia and Calabria—Otranto—Sails for the Isles of Greece.




Trieste is certainly a most agreeable place. Its streets are
beautifully paved and clean, its houses new and well built, and
its shops as handsome and as well stocked with every variety of
things as those of Paris. Its immense commerce brings all
nations to its port, and it is quite the commercial centre of the
continent. The Turk smokes cross-legged in the café, the English
merchant has his box in the country and his snug establishment
in town, the Italian has his opera, and his wife her cavalier,
the Yankee captain his respectable boarding-house, and the
German his four meals a day at a hotel dyed brown with tobacco.
Every nation is at home in Trieste.


The society is beyond what is common in a European mercantile
city. The English are numerous enough to support a
church, and the circle of which our hospitable consul is the
centre, is one of the most refined and agreeable it has been my
happiness to meet. The friends of Mr. Moore have pressed
every possible civility and kindness upon the commodore and his
officers, and his own house has been literally our home on shore.
It is the curse of this volant life, otherwise so attractive, that its
frequent partings are bitter in proportion to its good fortune.
We make friends but to lose them.


We got under way with a light breeze this morning, and
stole gently out of the bay. The remembrance of a thousand
kindnesses made our anchors lift heavily. We waved our
handkerchiefs to the consul, whose balconies were filled with his
charming family watching our departure, and with a freshening
wind, disappeared around the point, and put up our helm for
Pola.




The ruins of Pola, though among the first in the world, are
seldom visited. They lie on the eastern shore of the Adriatic,
at the head of a superb natural bay, far from any populous
town, and are seen only by the chance trader who hugs the
shore for the land-breeze, or the Albanian robber who looks
down upon them with wonder from the mountains. What their
age is I cannot say nearly. The country was conquered by the
Romans about one hundred years before the time of our Saviour,
and the amphitheatre and temples were probably erected
soon after.


We ran into the bay, with the other frigate close astern, and
anchored off a small green island which shuts in the inner
harbour. There is deep water up to the ancient town on either
side, and it seems as if nature had amused herself with constructing
a harbour incapable of improvement. Pola lay about two
miles from the sea.


It was just evening, and we deferred our visit to the ruins
till morning. The majestic amphitheatre stood on a gentle
ascent, a mile from the ship, goldenly bright in the flush of
sunset; the pleasant smell of the shore stole over the decks,
and the bands of the two frigates played alternately the evening
through. The receding mountains of Istria changed their light
blue veils gradually to grey and sable, and with the pure stars of
these enchanted seas, and the shell of a new moon bending over
Italy in the west, it was such a night as one remembrances like
a friend. The “Constellation” was to part from us here, leaving
us to pursue our voyage to Greece. There were those on board
who had brightened many of our “hours ashore,” in these
pleasant wanderings. We pulled back to our own ship, after a
farewell visit, with regrets deepened by crowds of pleasant
remembrances.


The next morning we pulled ashore to the ruins. The amphitheatre
was close upon the sea, and to my surprise and pleasure,
there was no cicerone. A contemplative donkey was grazing
under the walls, but there was no other living creature near.
We looked at its vast circular wall with astonishment. The
Coliseum at Rome, a larger building of the same description, is,
from the outside, much less imposing. The whole exterior wall,
a circular pile one hundred feet high in front, and of immense
blocks of marble and granite, is as perfect as when the Roman
workman hewed the last stone. The interior has been nearly all
removed. The well-hewn blocks of the many rows of seats were
too tempting, like those of Rome, to the barbarians who were
building near. The circle of the arena, in which the gladiators
and wild beasts of these then new-conquered provinces fought,
is still marked by the foundation of its barrier. It measures
two hundred and twenty-three feet. Beneath it is a broad and
deep canal, running toward the sea, filled with marble columns,
still erect upon their pedestals, used probably for the introduction
of water for the naumachia. The whole circumference of the
amphitheatre is twelve hundred and fifty-six feet, and the
thickness of the exterior wall seven feet six inches. Its shape
is oblong, the length being four hundred and thirty-six feet,
and the breadth three hundred and fifty. The measurements
were taken by the captain’s orders, and are doubtless critically
correct.


We loitered about the ruins several hours, finding in every
direction the remains of the dilapidated interior. The sculpture
upon the fallen capitals and fragments of frieze was in the highest
style of ornament. The arena is overgrown with rank grass,
and the crevices in the walls are filled with flowers. A vineyard,
with its large blue grape just within a week of ripeness, encircles
the rear of the amphitheatre. The boat’s crew were soon among
them, much better amused than they could have been by all the
antiquities in Istria.


We walked from the amphitheatre to the town; a miserable
village built around two antique temples, one of which still
stands alone, with its fine Corinthian columns, looking just ready
to crumble. The other is incorporated barbarously with the
guard-house of the place, and is a curious mixture of beautiful
sculpture and dirty walls. The pediment, which is still perfect,
in the rear of the building, is a piece of carving, worthy of the
choicest cabinet of Europe. The thieveries from the amphitheatre
are easily detected. There is scarcely a beggar’s house
in the village, that does not show a bit or two of sculptural
marble upon its front.


At the end of the village stands a triumphal arch, recording
the conquests of a Roman consul. Its front, toward the town,
is of Parian marble, beautifully chiselled. One recognises the
solid magnificence of that glorious nation, when he looks on these
relics of their distant conquests, almost perfect after eighteen
hundred years. It seems as if the foot-print of a Roman were
eternal.


We stood out of the little bay, and with a fresh wind, ran
down the coast of Dalmatia, and then crossing to the Italian side,
kept down the ancient shore of Apulia and Calabria to the
mouth of the Adriatic. I have been looking at the land with
the glass, as we ran smoothly along, counting castle after castle
built boldly on the sea, and behind them, on the green hills, the
thickly built villages with their smoking chimneys and tall
spires, pictures of fertility and peace. It was upon these shores
that the Barbary corsairs descended so often during the last
century, carrying off for eastern harems, the lovely women of
Italy. We are just off Otranto, and a noble old castle stands
frowning from the extremity of the Cape. We could throw a
shot into its embrasures as we pass. It might be the “Castle of
Otranto,” for the romantic looks it has from the sea.


We have out-sailed the “Constellation,” or we should part from
her here. Her destination is France: and we should be to-morrow
amid the [6]Isles of Greece. The pleasure of realising
the classic dreams of one’s boyhood, is not to be expressed in a
line. I look forward to the succeeding month or two as to the
“red-letter” chapter of my life. Whatever I may find the
reality, my heart has glowed warmly and delightfully with
the anticipation. Commodore Patterson is, fortunately for me,
a scholar, and a judicious lover of the arts, and loses no opportunity,
consistently with his duty, to give his officers the means
of examining the curious and the beautiful in these interesting
seas. The cruise, thus far, has been one of continually mingled
pleasure and instruction, and the best of it, by every association
of our early days, is to come.














It was to this point (the ancient Hydrantum) that Pyrrhus proposed
to build a bridge from Greece—only sixty miles! He deserved to ride on
an elephant.










LETTER XVIII.




The Ionian Isles—Lord and Lady Nugent—Corfu—Greek and English
Soldiers—Cockneyism—The Gardens of Alcinous—English Officers—Albanians—Dionisio
Salomos, the Greek Poet—Greek Ladies—Dinner
with the Artillery Mess.




This is proper dream-land. The “Isle of Calypso,”[7] folded
in a drapery of blue air, lies behind, fading in the distance, “the
Acroceraunian mountains of old name,” which caught Byron’s
eye as he entered Greece, are piled up before us on the Albanian
shore, and the Ionian sea is rippling under our bow, breathing,
from every wave, of Homer, and Sappho, and “sad Penelope.”
Once more upon Childe Harold’s footsteps. I closed the book at
Rome, after following him for a summer through Italy, confessing,
by many pleasant recollections, that




 

                          “Not in vain


He wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell.”


 



I resume it here with the feeling of Thalaba when he caught
sight of the green bird that led him through the desert. It lies
open on my knee at the second canto, describing our position
even to the hour:




 

“‘Twas on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eve


Childe Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar;


A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave.”


 



We shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu in the
morning. Two Turkish vessels-of-war, with the crescent flag
flying, lie in a small cove a mile off, on the Albanian shore, and
by the discharge of musketry, our pilot presumes that they have
accompanied the Sultan’s tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from
these wild people without fighting for it.




The entrance to Corfu is considered pretty, but the English
flag flying over the forts, divested ancient Corcyra of its poetical
associations. It looked to me a commonplace seaport, glaring
in the sun. The “gardens of Alcinous” were here, but who could
imagine them, with a red-coated sentry posted on every corner
of the island.




The Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles, Lord
Nugent, came off to the ship this morning in a kind of Corfiote
boat, called a “scampavia,” a greyhound-looking craft, carrying
sail enough for a schooner. She cut the water like the wing of a
swallow. His lordship was playing sailor, and was dressed like
the mate of one of our coasters, and his manners were as bluff.
He has a fine person, however, and is said to be a very elegant
man when he chooses it. He is the author of the “Life and
Times of John Hampden,” and Whig, of course. Southey has
lately reviewed him rather bitterly in the “Quarterly.” Lady N.
is literary, too, and they have written between them a book of
tales called (I think) “Legends of the Lilies,” of which her ladyship’s
half is said to be the better.




Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English soldiers mix
oddly together. The streets are narrow, and crowded with them
in about equal proportions. John Bull retains his red face, and
learns no Greek. We passed through the Bazaar, and bad English
was the universal language. There is but one square in the
town, and round its wooden fence, enclosing a dusty area, without
a blade of grass, were riding the English officers, while the
regimental band played in the centre. A more arid and cheerless
spot never pained the eye. The appearance of the officers,
retaining all their Bond-street elegance and mounted upon English
hunters, was in singular contrast with the general shabbiness
of the houses and people. I went into a shop at a corner to
inquire for the residence of a gentleman to whom I had a letter.
“It’s werry ‘ot, sir,” said a little red-faced woman behind the
counter, as I went out, “perhaps you’d like a glass of vater.”
It was odd to hear the Wapping dialect in the “isles of Greece.”
She sold green groceries, and wished me to recommend her to
the hofficers. Mrs. Mary Flack’s “grocery” in the gardens of
Alcinous.


“The wild Albanian, kirtled to the knee,” walks through the
streets of Corfu, looking unlike and superior to everything about
him. I met several in returning to the boat. Their gait is very
lofty, and the snow-white juktanilla, or kirtle, with its thousand
folds, sways from side to side, as they walk, with a most showy
effect. Lord Byron was very much captivated with these people,
whose capital (just across the strait from Corfu) he visited once
or twice in his travels through Greece. Those I have seen are
all very tall, and have their prominent features, with keen eyes
and limbs of the most muscular proportions. The common
English soldiers look like brutes beside them.


The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a church. A
rude picture of a battle between the Greeks and Turks hung
above it, and beneath was written, in Italian, “Honour the
representation of the immortal deeds of your hero Marco
Bozzaris.” It is singular that even a pack of slaves can find
pleasure in a remembrance that reproaches every breath they
draw.


Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The governor,
sailor, author, antiquary, nobleman (for he is all these, and a
jockey to boot), received us in a calico morning frock, with his
breast and neck bare, in a large library lumbered with half-packed
antiquities and strewn with straw. Books, miniatures
of his family (a lovely one of Lady Nugent among them), Whig
pamphlets, riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and nails,
half-eaten cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations to his
own balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish pistols, and,
lastly, his own just printed answer to Mr. Southey’s review of
his book, occupied the table. He was reading his own production
when we entered. His lordship mentioned, with great
apparent satisfaction, a cruise he had taken some years ago with
Commodore Chauncey. The conversation was rather monologue
than dialogue; his excellency seeming to think, with Lord Bacon,
that “the honorablest part of talk was to give the occasion, and
then to moderate and pass to something else.” He started a
topic, exhausted and changed it with the same facility and
rapidity with which he sailed his scampavia. An engagement
with the artillery-mess prevented my acceptance of an invitation
to dine with him to-morrow—a circumstance I rather regret, as
he is said to be, at his own table, one of the most polished and
agreeable men of his time.


Thank Heaven, revolutions do not affect the climate! The
isle that gave a shelter to the storm-driven Ulysses is an English
barrack, but the same balmy air that fanned the blind eyes of
old Homer blows over it still. “The breezes,” says Landor,
beautifully, “are the children of eternity.” I never had the hair
lifted so pleasantly from my temples as to-night, driving into the
interior of the island. The gardening of Alcinous seems to have
been followed up by nature. The rhododendron, the tamarisk, the
almond, cypress, olive, and fig, luxuriate in the sweetest beauty
everywhere.


There was a small party in the evening at the house of the
gentleman who had driven me out, and among other foreigners
present were the Count Dionisio Salomos, of Zante, and the
Cavaliere Andrea Mustoxidi, both men of whom I had often
heard. The first is almost the only modern Greek poet, and his
hymns, principally patriotic, are in the common dialect of the
country, and said to be full of fire. He is an excessively handsome
man, with large dark eyes, almost effeminate in their
softness. His features are of the clearest Greek chiselling, as
faultless as a statue, and are stamped with nature’s most
attractive marks of refinement and feeling. I can imagine
Anacreon to have resembled him.


Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late chapter of
Grecian history. He was much trusted by Capo d’Istria, and
among other things had the whole charge of his school at Ægina.
An Italian exile (a Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took
me aside when I asked something of his history, and told me a
story of him, which proves either that he was a dishonest man,
or (no new truth) that conspicuous men are liable to be abused.
A valuable donation of books was given by some one to the
school library. They stood on the upper shelves, quite out of
reach, and Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach
to them. Some time after his departure from the island, the
library was committed to the charge of another person, and the
treasures of the upper shelves were found to be—painted boards!
His physiognomy would rather persuade me of the truth of the
story. He is a small man, with a downcast look, and a sly, gray
eye, almost hidden by his projecting eyebrows. His features are
watched in vain for an open expression.


The ladies of the party were principally Greeks. None of
them were beautiful, but they had the melancholy, retired expression
of face which one looks for, knowing the history of their
nation. They are unwise enough to abandon their picturesque
national costume, and dress badly in the European style. The
servant girls, with their hair braided into the folds of their
turbans, and their open-laced bodices and sleeves, are much
more attractive to the stranger’s eye. The liveliest of the party,
a little Zantiote girl of eighteen, with eyes and eye-lashes that
contradicted the merry laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian
song to the guitar very sweetly.




Dined to-day with the artillery mess, in company with the
commodore and some of his officers. In a place like this, the
dinner is naturally the great circumstance of the day. The
inhabitants do not take kindly to their masters, and there is next
to no society for the English. They sit down to their soup after
the evening drive, and seldom rise till midnight. It was a gay
dinner, as dinners will always be where the whole remainder of
what the “day may bring forth” is abandoned to them, and we
parted from our hospitable entertainers, after four or five hours
“measured with sands of gold.” We must do the English the
justice of confessing the manners of their best bred men to be
the best in the world. It is inevitable that one should bear the
remainder of the nation little love. Neither the one class nor
the other, doubtless, will ever seek it at our hands. But mutual
hospitality may soften so much of our intercourse as happens in
the traveller’s way, and without loving John Bull better, all
in all, one soon finds out in Europe that the dog and the lion
are not more unlike, than the race of bagmen and runners
with which our country is overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen
of England.


On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had spent the last
summer at the Saratoga Springs. We found any number of
mutual acquaintances, of course, and I was amused with the
impressions which some of the fairest of my friends had made
upon a man who had passed years in the most cultivated society
of Europe. He liked America with reservations. He preferred
our ladies to those of any other country except England, and he
had found more dandies in one hour in Broadway than he should
have met in a week in Regent-street. He gave me a racy scene
or two from the City Hotel, in New York, but he doubted if the
frequenters of a public table in any country in the world were,
on the whole, so well-mannered. If Americans were peculiar
for anything, he thought it was for confidence in themselves and
tobacco-chewing.














Fano, which disputes it with Gozo, near Malta.










LETTER XIX.




Corfu—Unpopularity of British Rule—Superstition of the Greeks—Accuracy
of the Descriptions in the Odyssey—Advantage of the Greek
Costume—The Paxian Isles—Cape Leucas, or Sappho’s Leap—Bay of
Navarino, Ancient Pylos—Modon—Coran’s Bay—Cape St. Angelo—Isle
of Cythera.




Corfu.—Called on one of the officers of the 10th this morning,
and found lying on his table two books upon Corfu. They were
from the circulating library of the town, much thumbed, and
contained the most unqualified strictures on the English administration
in the islands. In one of them, by a Count, or
Colonel, Boig de St. Vincent, a Frenchman, the Corfiotes were
taunted with their slavish submission, and called upon to shake
off the yoke of British dominion in the most inflammatory
language. Such books in Italy or France would be burnt by the
hangman, and prohibited on penalty of death. Here, with a
haughty consciousness of superiority, which must be galling
enough to an Ionian who is capable of feeling, they circulate
uncensured in two languages, and the officers of the abused
government read them for their amusement, and return them
coolly to go their rounds among the people. They have twenty-five
hundred troops upon the island, and they trouble themselves
little about what is thought of them. They confess that their
government is excessively unpopular, the officers are excluded
from the native society, and the soldiers are scowled upon in
the streets.




The body of St. Spiridion was carried through the streets of
Corfu to-day, sitting bolt upright in a sedan chair, and accompanied
by the whole population. He is the great saint of the
Greek church, and such is his influence, that the English
government thought proper, under Sir Frederick Adams’s
administration, to compel the officers to walk in the procession.
The saint was dried at his death, and makes a neat, black
mummy, sans eyes and nose, but otherwise quite perfect. He
was carried to-day by four men in a very splendid sedan, shaking
from side to side with the motion, preceded by one of the bands
of music from the English regiments. Sick children were
thrown under the feet of the bearers, half dead people brought
to the doors as he passed, and every species of disgusting
mummery practised. The show lasted about four hours, and
was, on the whole, attended with more marks of superstition
than anything I found in Italy. I was told that the better
educated Christians of the Greek Church disbelieve the saint’s
miracles. The whole body of the Corfiote ecclesiastics were in
the procession, however.


I passed the first watch in the hammock-nettings to-night,
enjoying inexpressibly the phenomena of this brilliant climate.
The stars seem burning like lamps in the absolute clearness of
the atmosphere. Meteors shoot constantly with a slow liquid
course over the sky. The air comes off from the land laden with
the breath of the wild thyme, and the water around the ship is
another deep blue heaven, motionless with its studded constellations.
The frigate seems suspended between them.


We have little idea, while conning an irksome school-task, how
strongly the “unwilling lore” is rooting itself in the imagination.
The frigate lies perhaps a half mile from the most interesting
scenes of the Odyssey. I have been recalling from the long
neglected stores of memory, the beautiful descriptions of the court
of King Alcinous, and of the meeting of his matchless daughter
with Ulysses. The whole web of the poet’s fable has gradually
unwound, and the lamps ashore, and the outline of the hills, in
the deceiving dimness of night, have entered into the delusion
with the facility of a dream. Every scene in Homer may be
traced to this day, the blind old poet’s topography was so
admirable. It was over the point of land sloping down to the
right, that the Princess Nausicaa went with her handmaids to
wash her bridal robes in the running streams. The description
still guides the traveller to the spot where the damsels of the
royal maid spread the linen on the grass, and commenced the
sports that waked Ulysses from his slumbers in the bed of leaves.




Ashore with one of the officers this morning, amusing ourselves
with trying on dresses in a Greek tailor’s shop. It quite
puts one out of conceit with these miserable European fashions.
The easy and flowing juktanilla, the unembarrassed leggings, the
open sleeve of the collarless jacket leaving the throat exposed,
and the handsome close-binding girdle from it, seems to me the
very dress dictated by reason and nature. The richest suit in
the shop, a superb red velvet, wrought with gold, was priced at
one hundred and forty dollars. The more sober colours were
much cheaper. A dress lasts several years.




We made our farewell visits to the officers of the English
regiments, who had overwhelmed us with hospitality during our
stay, and went on board to get under way with the noon breeze.
We were accompanied to the ship, not as the hero of Homer,
when he left the same port, by three damsels of the royal train,
bearing, “one a tunic, another a rich casket, and a third bread
and wine” for his voyage, but by Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Wilson,
soldiers’ wives, and washerwomen, with baskets of hurriedly-dried
linen, pinned, every bundle, with a neat bill in shillings and
halfpence.


Ulysses slept all the way from Corcyra to Ithaca. He lost a
great deal of fine scenery. The passage between Corfu and
Albania is beautiful. We ran past the southern cape of the
island with a free wind, and are now off the Paxian Isles, where,
according to Plutarch, Emilanus, the rhetorician, voyaging by
night, “heard a voice louder than human, announcing the death
of Pan.” A “schoolboy midshipman” is breaking the same
silence with “on deck, all hands! on deck, all of you!”




Off the mouth of the Alpheus. If he still chases Arethusa
under the sea, and she makes straight for Sicily, her bed is
beneath our keel. The moon is pouring her broad light over the
ocean, the shadows of the rigging on the deck lie in clear and
definite lines, the sailors of the watch sit around upon the guns
in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of snowy sail spread
aloft, is stealing through the water with the noiseless motion of a
swan. Even the gallant man-of-war seems steeped in the spirit
of the scene. The hour wants but an “Ionian Myrrha” to fill
the last void of the heart.


Cape Leucas on the lee—the scene of Sappho’s leap. We have
coursed down the long shore of ancient Leucadia, and the precipice
to which lovers came from all parts of Greece for an oblivious
plunge, is shining in the sun, scarce a mile from the ship. The
beautiful Grecian here sung her last song, and broke her lyre
and died. The leap was not always so tragical: there are two
lovers, at least, on record (Maces of Buthrotum, and Cephalos,
son of Deioneos), who survived the fall, and were cured effectually
by salt water. It was a common resource in the days of Sappho,
and Strabo says that they were accustomed to check their descent
by tying birds and feathers to their arms. Females, he says,
were generally killed by the rapidity of the fall, their frames
being too slight to bear the shock; but the men seldom failed to
come safe to shore. The sex has not lost its advantages since the
days of Phaon.


We have caught a glimpse of Ithaca through the isles, the
land




 

“Where sad Penelope o’erlooked the wave.”


 



and which Ulysses loved, non quia larga, sed quia sua—the most
natural of reasons. We lose Childe Harold’s track here. He
turned to the left into the gulf of Lepanto. We shall find him
again at Athens. Missolonghi, where he died, lies about twenty
or thirty miles on our lee, and it is one, of several places in the
gulf, that I regret to pass so near, unvisited.




Entering the bay of Navarino. A picturesque and precipitous
rock, filled with caves, nearly shuts the mouth of this ample
harbour. We ran so close to it, that it might have been touched
from the deck with a tandem whip. On a wild crag to the left,
a small, white marble monument, with the earth still fresh about
it, marks the grave of some victim of the late naval battle. The
town and fortress, miserable heaps of dirty stone, lie in the curve
of the southern shore. A French brig-of-war is at anchor in the
port, and broad, barren hills, stretching far away on every side,
complete the scene before us. We run up the harbour, and tack
to stand out again, without going ashore. Not a soul is to be
seen, and the bay seems the very sanctuary of silence. It is
difficult to conceive, that but a year or two ago, the combined
fleets of Europe, were thundering among these silent hills, and
hundreds of human beings lying in their blood, whose bones are
now whitening in the sea beneath. Our pilot was in the fight, on
board an English frigate. He has pointed out to us the position
of the different fleets, and among other particulars, he tells me,
that when the Turkish ships were boarded, Greek sailors were
found chained to the guns, who had been compelled, at the
muzzle of the pistol, to fight against the cause of their country.
Many of them must thus have perished in the vessels that
were sunk.


Navarino was the scene of a great deal of fighting, during the
late Greek revolution. It was invested, while in possession of
the Turks, by two thousand Peloponnesians and a band of
Ionians, and the garrison were reduced to such a state of starvation,
as to eat their slippers. They surrendered at last, under
promise that their lives should be spared; but the news of the
massacre of the Greek patriarchs and clergy, at Adrianople, was
received at the moment, and the exasperated troops put their
prisoners to death, without mercy.


The peaceful aspect of the place is better suited to its poetical
associations. Navarino was the ancient Pylos, and it is here that
Homer brings Telemachus in search of his father. He finds old
Nestor and his sons sacrificing on the seashore to Neptune, with
nine altars, and at each five hundred men. I should think the
modern town contained scarce a twentieth of this number.




Rounding the little fortified town of Modon, under full sail.
It seems to be built on the level of the water, and nothing but
its high wall and its towers are seen from the sea. This, too,
has been a much-contested place, and remained in possession of
the Turks till after the formation of the provisional government
under Mavrocordato. It forms the south-western point of the
Morea, and is a town of great antiquity. King Philip gained
his first battle over the Athenians here, some thousands of years
ago; and the brave old Miualis beat the Egyptian fleet in the
same bay, without doubt in a manner quite as deserving of as
long a remembrance. It is like a city of the dead—we cannot
even see a sentinel on the wall.




Passed an hour in the mizen-chains with “the Corsair” in my
hand, and “Coran’s Bay” opening on the lee. With what
exquisite pleasure one reads, when he can look off from the page,
and study the scene of the poet’s fiction—




 

“In Coran’s bay floats many a galley light,


Through Coran’s lattices the lamps burn bright,


For Seyd, the Pacha, makes a feast to-night.”


 



It is a small, deep bay, with a fortified town, on the western
shore, crowned on the very edge of the sea, with a single,
tall tower. A small aperture near the top, helps to realise
the Corsair’s imprisonment, and his beautiful interview with
Gulnare:—




 

“In the high chamber of his highest tower,


Sate Conrad fettered in the Pacha’s power,” &c.


 



The Pirate’s Isle is said to have been Poros, and the original
of the Corsair himself, a certain Hugh Crevelier, who filled the
Ægæan with terror, not many years ago.




Made the Cape St. Angelo, the southern point of the
Peloponnesus, and soon after the island of Cythera, near which
Venus rose from the foam of the sea. We are now running
northerly, along the coast of ancient Sparta. It is a mountainous
country, bare and rocky, and looks as rude and hardy as the
character of its ancient sons. I have been passing the glass in
vain along the coast to find a tree. A small hermitage stands on
the desolate extremity of the Cape, and a Greek monk, the
pilot tells me, has lived there many years, who comes from his
cell, and stands on the rock with his arms outspread to bless the
passing ship. I looked for him in vain.


A French man-of-war bore down upon us a few minutes ago,
and saluted the commodore. He ran so close, that we could see
the features of his officers on the poop. It is a noble sight at
sea, a fine ship passing, with all her canvass spread, with the
added rapidity of your own course and hers. The peal of the
guns in the midst of the solitary ocean, had a singular effect.
The echo came back from the naked shores of Sparta, with a
warlike sound, that might have stirred old Leonidas in his grave.
The smoke rolled away on the wind, and the noble ship hoisted
her royals once more, and went on her way. We are making
for Napoli di Romania, with a summer breeze, and hope to drop
anchor beneath its fortress, at sunset.






LETTER XX.




The Harbour of Napoli—Tricoupi and Mavrocordato, Otho’s Cabinet
Councillors—Colonel Gordon—King Otho—The Misses Armanspergs—Prince
of Saxe—Miaulis, the Greek Admiral—Excursion to Argos, the
Ancient Terynthus.




Napoli di Romania.—Anchored in the harbour of Napoli after
dark. An English frigate lies a little in, a French and Russian
brig-of-war astern, and two Greek steamboats, King Otho’s
yacht, and a quantity of caïques, fill the inner port. The fort
stands a hundred feet over our heads on a bold promontory, and
the rocky Palamidi soars a hundred feet still higher, on a crag
that thrusts its head sharply into the clouds, as if it would lift
the little fortress out of eyesight. The town lies at the base of
the mountain, an irregular looking heap of new houses; and
here, at present, resides the boy-king of Greece, Otho the first.
His predecessors were Agamemnon and Perseus, who, some three
thousand years ago (more or less, I am not certain of my
chronology), reigned at Argos and Mycenæ, within sight of his
present capital.




Went ashore with the commodore, to call on Tricoupi and
Mavrocordato, the king’s cabinet councillors. We found the
former in a new stone house, slenderly furnished, and badly
painted, but with an entry full of servants, in handsome Greek
costumes. He received the commodore with the greatest friendliness.
He had dined on board the “Constitution” six years
before, when his prospects were less promising than now. He is
a short, stout man, of dark complexion, and very bright black
eyes, and looks very honest and very vulgar. He speaks English
perfectly. He shrugged his shoulders when the commodore
alluded to having left him fighting for a republic, and said
anything was better than anarchy. He spoke in the highest
terms of my friend, Dr. Howe (who was at Napoli with the
American provisions, when Grivas held the Palamidi). Greece,
he said, had never a better friend. Madame Tricoupi (the
sister of Prince Mavrocordato) came in presently with two very
pretty children. She spoke French fluently, and seemed an
accomplished woman. Her family had long furnished the Prince
Hospodars of Wallachia, and though not a beautiful woman, she
has every mark of the gentle blood of the east. Colonel
Gordon, the famous Philhellene, entered, while we were there.
He was an intimate friend of Lord Byron’s, and has expended
the best part of a large fortune in the Greek cause. He is
a plain man, of perhaps fifty, with red hair and freckled face, and
features and accent very Scotch. I liked his manners. He had
lately written a book upon Greece, which is well spoken of in
some review that has fallen in my way.


Went thence to Prince Mavrocordato’s. He occupies the
third story of a very indifferent house, furnished with the mere
necessaries of life. A shabby sofa, a table, two chairs, and a
broken tumbler, holding ink and two pens, is the inventory of his
drawing-room. He received us with elegance and courtesy, and
presented us to his wife, a pretty and lively little Constantinopolitan,
who chattered French like a magpie. She gave the
uncertainty of their residence until the seat of government was
decided on, as the apology for their lodgings, and seemed
immediately to forget that she was not in a palace. Mavrocordato
is a strikingly handsome man, with long, curling, black
hair, and most luxuriant moustaches. His mouth is bland, and
his teeth uncommonly beautiful; but without being able to say
where it lies, there is an expression of guile in his face, that shut
my heart to him. He is getting fat, and there is a shade of red
in the clear olive of his cheek, which is very uncommon in this
country. The commodore remarked that he was very thin when
he was here six years before. The settlement of affairs in
Greece has probably relieved him from a great deal of care.


Presented, with the commodore, to King Otho. Tricoupi
officiated as chamberlain, dressed in a court suit of light blue,
wrought with silver. The royal residence is a comfortable
house, built by Capo d’Istria, in the principal street of Napoli.
The king’s aide, a son of Marco Bozzaris, a very fine, resolute-looking
young man of eighteen, received us in the antechamber,
and in a few minutes the door of the inner room was thrown
open. His majesty stood at the foot of the throne (a gorgeous
red velvet arm-chair, raised on a platform, and covered with a
splendid canopy of velvet), and with a low bow to each of us
as we entered, he addressed his conversation immediately, and
without embarrassment, to the commodore. I had leisure to
observe him closely for a few minutes. He appears about
eighteen. He was dressed in an exceedingly well cut, swallow-tailed
coat, of very light blue, with a red standing collar,
wrought with silver. The same work upon a red ground, was
set between the buttons of the waist, and upon the edges of the
skirts. White pantaloons, and the ordinary straight court-sword
completed his dress. He is rather tall, and his figure is
extremely light and elegant. A very flat nose, and high cheekbones,
are the most marked features of his face; his hair is
straight, and of a light brown, and with no claim to beauty; the
expression of his countenance is manly, open, and prepossessing.
He spoke French fluently, though with a German accent, and
went through the usual topics of a royal presentation (very much
the same all over the world) with grace and ease. In the few
remarks which he addressed to me, he said that he promised
himself great pleasure in the search for antiquities in Greece.
He bowed us out after an audience of about ten minutes, no
doubt extremely happy to exchange his court-coat and our
company for a riding-frock and saddle. His horse and a guard
of twelve lancers were in waiting at the door.


The king usually passes his evenings with the Misses Armanspergs,
the daughters of the president of the regency. They
accompanied him from Munich, and are the only ladies in his
realm with whom he is acquainted. They keep a carriage, which
is a kind of wonder at Napoli; ride on horseback in the English
style, very much to the amusement of the Greeks; and give
soirées once of twice a week, which are particularly dull. One
of the three is a beautiful girl, and if policy does not interfere, is
likely to be Queen of Greece. The Count Armansperg is a
small, shrewd-looking man, with a thin German countenance,
and agreeable manners. He is, of course, the real king of
Greece.


The most agreeable man I found in Napoli, was the king’s
uncle, the prince of Saxe, at present in command of his army.
He is a tall and uncommonly handsome soldier, of perhaps
thirty-six years, and, with all the air of a man of high birth, has
the open and frank manners of the camp. He has been twice
on board the ship, and seemed to consider his acquaintance with
the commodore’s family as a respite from exile. The Bavarian
officers in his suite spoke nothing but the native German, and
looked like mere beef-eaters. The prince returns in two years,
and when the king is of age, his Bavarian troops leave him, and
he commits himself to the country.




Hired the only two public vehicles in Napoli, and set off with
the commodore’s family, on an excursion to the ancient cities in
the neighbourhood. We left the gate built by the Venetians,
and still adorned with a bas-relief of a winged lion, at nine o’clock
of a clear Grecian summer’s day. Auguries were against us.
Pyrrhus did the same thing with his elephants and his army, one
morning about two thousand years ago, and was killed before
noon; and our driver stopped his horses a half mile out of the
gate, and told us very gravely that the evil eye was upon him.
He had dreamed that he had found a dollar the night before—a
certain sign by the laws of witchcraft in Greece, that he should
lose one. He concluded by adding another dollar to the price
of each carriage.


We passed the house of old Miaulis, the Greek admiral, a
pretty cottage a mile from the city, and immediately after came
the ruins of the ancient Terynthus, the city of Hercules, The
walls, built of the largest hewn stones in the world, still stand,
and will till time ends. It would puzzle modern mechanics to
carry them away. We drove along the same road upon which
Autolycus taught the young hero to drive a chariot, and passing
ruins and fragments of columns strewn over the whole length of
the plain of Argos, stopped under a spreading aspen tree, the
only shade within reach of the eye. A dirty khan stood a few
yards off, and our horses were to remain here while we ascended
the hills to Mycenæ.


It was a hot walk. The appearance of ladies, as we passed
through a small Greek village on our way, drew out all the
inhabitants, and we were accompanied by about fifty men,
women, and children, resembling very much in complexion and
dress, the Indians of our country. A mile from our carriages
we arrived at a subterranean structure, built in the side of the
hill, with a door toward the east, surmounted by the hewn stone
so famous for its size among the antiquities of Greece. It shuts
the tomb of old Agamemnon. The interior is a hollow cone,
with a small chamber at the side, and would make “very eligible
lodgings for a single gentleman,” as the papers say.


We kept on up the hill, wondering that the “king of many
islands and of all Argos,” as Homer calls him, should have built
his city so high in this hot climate. We sat down at last, quite
fagged, at the gate of a city built only eighteen hundred years
before Christ. A descendant of Perseus brought us some water
in a wooden piggin, and somewhat refreshed, we went on with
our examination of the ruins. The mere weight of the walls has
kept them together three thousand six hundred years. You can
judge how immoveable they must be. The antiquarians call
them the “cyclopean walls of Mycenæ;” and nothing less than
a giant, I should suppose, would dream of heaving such enormous
masses one upon the other. “The gate of the Lions,” probably
the principal entrance to the city, is still perfect. The bas-relief
from which it takes its name, is the oldest sculptured stone
in Europe. It is of green basalt, representing two lions rampant,
very finely executed, and was brought from Egypt. An angle
of the city wall is just below, and the ruins of a noble aqueduct
are still visible, following the curve of the opposite hill, and
descending to Mycenæ on the northern side. I might bore you
now with a long chapter on antiquities (for, however dry in the
abstract, they are exceedingly interesting on the spot), but I let
you off. Those who like them will find Spohn and Wheeler,
Dodwell, Leake, and Gell, diffuse enough for the most classic
enthusiasm.


We descended by a rocky ravine, in the bosom of which lay a
well with six large fig-trees growing at its brink. A woman,
burnt black with the sun, was drawing water in a goat-skin, and
we were too happy to get into the shade, and in the name of Pan,
sink delicately, and ask for a drink of water. I have seen the time
when nectar in a cup of gold would have been less refreshing.


We arrived at the aspen about two o’clock, and made preparations
for our dinner. The sea-breeze had sprung up, and
came freshly over the plain of Argos. We put our claret in a
goat-skin of water hung at one of the wheels, the basket was
produced, the ladies sat in the interior of the carriage, and the
commodore, and his son, and myself made tables of the foot-boards;
and thus we achieved a meal which, if meals are
measured by content, old King Danaus and his fifty daughters
might have risen from their graves to envy us.


A very handsome Greek woman had brought us water, and
stood near while we were eating, and making over to her the
remnants of the ham, and its condiments, and the empty bottles,
with which she seemed made happy for a day, we went on our
way to Argos.


“Rivers die,” it is said, “as well as men and cities.” We
drove through the bed of “Father Inachus,” which was a
respectable river in the time of Homer, but which, in our day,
would be puzzled to drown a much less thing than a king. Men
achieve immortality in a variety of ways. King Inachus might
have been forgotten as the first Argive; but by drowning himself
in the river which afterwards took his name, every knowledge-hunter
that travels is compelled to look up his history. So
St. Nepomuc became the guardian of bridges by breaking his
neck over one.


The modern Argos occupies the site of the ancient. It is
tolerably populous, but it is a town of most wretched hovels.
We drove through several long streets of mud houses with
thatched roofs, completely open in front, and the whole family
huddled together on the clay floor, with no furniture but a flock
bed in the corner. The first settlement by Deucalion and
Pyrrha, on the sediment of the deluge, must have looked like it.
Mud, stones, and beggars, were all we saw. Old Pyrrhus was
killed here, after all his battles, by a tile from a house-top; but
modern Argos has scarce a roof high enough to overtop his
helmet.


We left our carriages in the street, and walked to the ruins of
the amphitheatre. The brazen Thalamos in which Danae was
confined when Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, was near
this spot, the supposed site of most of the thirty temples once
famous in Argos.


Some solid brick walls, the seats of the amphitheatre cut into
the solid rock of the hill, the rocky Acropolis above, and twenty
or thirty horses tied together, and treading out grain on a
thrashing-floor in the open field, were all we found of ancient or
picturesque in the capital of the Argives. A hot, sultry afternoon,
was no time to weave romance from such materials.


We returned to our carriages, and while the Greek was getting
his horses into their harness, we entered a most unpromising
café for shade and water. A billiard-table stood in the centre;
and the high, broad bench on which the Turks seat themselves,
with their legs crooked under them, stretched around the wall.
The proprietor was a Venetian woman, who sighed, as she might
well, for a gondola. The kingdom of Agamemnon was not to
her taste.


After waiting awhile here for the sun to get behind the hills of
Sparta, we received a message from our coachman, announcing
that he was arrested. The “evil eye” had not glanced upon
him in vain. There was no returning without him, and I walked
over with the commodore to see what could be done. A fine-looking
man sat cross-legged on a bench, in the upper room of a
building adjoining a prison, and a man with a pen in his hand
was reading the indictment. The driver had struck a child who
was climbing on his wheel. I pleaded his case in “choice
Italian,” and after half an hour’s delay, they dismissed him,
exacting a dollar as a security for reappearance. It was a
curious verification of his morning’s omen.


We drove on over the plain, met the king, five camels, and the
Misses Armansperg, and were on board soon after sunset.






LETTER XXI.




Visit from King Otho and Miaulis—Visit an English and Russian frigate—Beauty
of the Greek Men—Lake Lerna—The Hermionicus Sinus—Hydra—Ægina.




Napoli di Romania.—Went ashore with one of the officers,
to look for the fountain of Canathus. Its waters had the property
(vide Pausanias) of renewing the infant purity of the
women who bathed in them. Juno used it once a year. We
found but one natural spring in all Napoli. It stands in a
narrow street, filled with tailors, and is adorned with a marble
font bearing a Turkish inscription. Two girls were drawing
water in skins. We drank a little of it, but found nothing
peculiar in the taste. Its virtues are confined probably to the
other sex.




The king visited the ship. As his barge left the pier, the
vessels of war in the harbour manned their yards and fired the
royal salute. He was accompanied by young Bozzaris and the
prince, his uncle, and dressed in the same uniform in which he
received us at our presentation. As he stepped on the deck, and
was received by Commodore Patterson, I thought I had never
seen a more elegant and well-proportioned man. The frigate
was in her usual admirable order, and the king expressed his
surprise and gratification at every turn. His questions were put
with uncommon judgment for a landsman. We had heard, indeed,
on board the English frigate which brought him from Trieste,
that he lost no opportunity of learning the duties and management
of the ship, keeping watch with the midshipmen, and
running from one deck to the other at all hours. After going
thoroughly through all the ship, the commodore presented him
to his family. He seemed very much pleased with the ease and
frankness with which he was received, and seating himself with
our fair country-women in the after-cabin, prolonged his visit to
a very unceremonious length, conversing with the most unreserved
gaiety. The yards were manned again, the salutes fired
once more, and the king of Greece tossed his oars for a moment
under the stern, and pulled ashore.




Had the pleasure and honour of showing Miaulis through
the ship. The old man came on board very modestly, without
even announcing himself, and as he addressed one of the officers
in Italian, I was struck with his noble appearance, and offered my
services as interpreter. He was dressed in the Hydriote costume,
the full blue trousers gathered at the knee, a short open jacket,
worked with black braid, and a red skull-cap. His lieutenant
dressed in the same costume, a tall, superb-looking Greek, was
his only attendant. He was quite at home on board, comparing
the “United States” continually to the “Hellas,” the American
built frigate which he commanded. Every one on board was
struck with the noble simplicity and dignity of his address. I
have seldom seen a man who impressed me more. He requested
me to express his pleasure at his visit, and his friendly feelings to
the commodore, and invited us to his country-house, which he
pointed out from the deck, just without the city. Every officer
in the ship uncovered as he passed. The gratification at seeing
him was universal. He looks worthy to be one of the “three”
that Byron demanded, in his impassioned verse,




 

“To make a new Thermopylæ.”


 





Returned visits of ceremony with the commodore, to the
English and Russian vessels of war. The British frigate “Madagascar”
is about the size of the “United States,” but not in nearly
so fine a condition. The superior cleanliness and neatness of
arrangement on board our own ship are indisputable. The cabin
of Captain Lyon (who is said to be one of the best officers in the
English service) was furnished in almost oriental luxury, and
what I should esteem more, crowded with the choicest books.
He informed us that of his twenty-four midshipmen, nine were
sons of noblemen, and possessed the best family influence on both
father’s and mother’s side, and several of the remainder had high
claims for preferment. There is small chance there, one would
think, for commoners.


Captain Lyon spoke in the highest terms of his late passenger,
King Otho, both as to disposition and talent. Somewhere in the
Ægæan, one of his Bavarian servants fell overboard, and the
boatswain jumped after him, and sustained him till the boat was
lowered to his relief. On his reaching the deck, the king drew a
valuable repeater from his pocket, and presented it to him in the
presence of the crew. He certainly has caught the “trick of
royalty” in its perfection.


The guard presented, the boatswain “piped us over the side,”
and we pulled alongside the Russian. The file of marines drawn
up in honour of the commodore on her quarter deck, looked like
so many standing bears. Features and limbs so brutally coarse
I never saw. The officers, however, were very gentlemanly, and
the vessel was in beautiful condition. In inquiring after the
health of the ladies on board our ship, the captain and his lieutenant
rose from their seats and made a low bow—a degree of
chivalrous courtesy very uncommon, I fancy, since the days of
Sir Piercie Shafton. I left his imperial majesty’s ship with an
improved impression of him.




They are a gallant looking people the Greeks. Byron says
of them, all “are beautiful, very much resembling the busts of
Alcibiades.” We walked beyond the walls of the city this evening,
on the plain of Argos. The whole population were out in
their Sunday costumes, and no theatrical ballet was ever more
showy than the scene. They are a very affectionate people, and
walk usually hand in hand, or sit upon the rocks at the road-side,
with their arms over each other’s shoulders; and their picturesque
attitudes and lofty gait, combined with the flowing beauty of
their dress, give them all the appearance of heroes on the stage.
I saw literally no handsome women, but the men were magnificent,
almost without exception. Among others, a young man
passed us with whose personal beauty the whole party were
struck. As he went by he laid his hand on his breast and bowed
to the ladies, raising his red cap, with its flowing blue tassel, at
the same time with perfect grace. It was a young man to whom
I had been introduced the day previous, a brother of Mavromichalis,
the assassin of Capo d’Istrias. He is about seventeen,
tall and straight as an arrow, and has the eye of a falcon. His
family is one of the first in Greece; and his brother, who was a
fellow of superb beauty, is said to have died in the true heroic
style, believing that he had rid his country of a tyrant.


The view of Napoli and the Palamidi from the plain, with its
back ground of the Spartan mountains, and the blue line of the
Argolic gulf between, is very fine. The home of the Nemean
lion, the lofty hill rising above Argos, was enveloped in a black
cloud as the sun set on our walk, the short twilight of Greece
thickened upon us, and the white, swaying juktanillas of the
Greeks striding past, had the effect of spirits gliding by in
the dark.


The king, with his guard of lancers on a hard trot, passed us
near the gate, followed close by the Misses Armansperg, mounted
on fine Hungarian horses. His majesty rides beautifully, and
the effect of the short high-borne flag on the tips of the lances,
and the tall Polish caps with their cord and tassels, is highly
picturesque.




Made an excursion with the commodore across the gulf, to
Lake Lerna, the home of the hydra. We saw nothing save the
half dozen small marshy lakes, whose overflow devastated the
country, until they were dammed by Hercules, who is thus poetically
said to have killed a many-headed monster. We visited,
near by, “the mills,” which were the scene of one of the most
famous battles of the late struggle. The mill is supplied by a
lovely stream, issuing from beneath a rock, and running a short
course of twenty or thirty rods to the sea. It is difficult to
believe that human blood has ever stained its pure waters.




Left Napoli with the daylight breeze, and are now entering
the Hermionicus Sinus. A more barren land never rose upon
the eye. The ancients considered this part of Greece so near to
hell, that they omitted to put the usual obolon into the hands of
those who died here, to pay their passage across the Styx.




Off the town of Hydra. This is the birthplace of Miaulis, and
its neighbour island, Spesia, that of the sailor heroine, Bobolina.
It is a heap of square stone houses set on the side of a hill,
without the slightest reference to order. I see with the glass,
an old Greek smoking on his balcony, with his feet over the
railing, and half a dozen bare-legged women getting a boat into
the water on the beach. The whole island has a desolate and
sterile aspect. Across the strait, directly opposite the town, lies
a lovely green valley, with olive groves and pastures between,
and hundreds of gray cattle feeding in all the peace of Arcadia.
I have seen such pictures so seldom of late, that it is like a medicine
to my sight. “The sea and the sky,” after a while, “lie
like a load on the weary eye.”




In passing two small islands just now, we caught a glimpse
between them of the “John Adams,” sloop-of-war, under full
sail in the opposite direction. Five minutes sooner or later we
should have missed her. She has been cruising in the Archipelago
a month or two, waiting the commodore’s arrival, and has
on board despatches and letters, which makes the meeting a very
exciting one to the officers. There is a general stir of expectation
on board, in which my only share is that of sympathy. She brings
her news from Smyrna, to which port, though my course has been
errant enough, you will scarce have thought of directing a letter
for me.




Anchored off the Island of Ægina, a mile from the town. The
rocks which King Æacus (since Judge Æacus of the infernal
regions) raised in the harbour to keep off the pirates, prevent our
nearer approach. A beautiful garden of oranges and figs close to
our anchorage, promises to reconcile us to our position. The
little bay is completely shut in by mountainous islands, and the
sun pours down upon us, unabated by the “wooing Ægæan wind.”






LETTER XXII.




The Maid of Athens—Romance and Reality—American Benefactions to
Greece—A Greek Wife and Scottish Husband—School of Capo d’Istrias—Grecian
Disinterestedness—Ruins of the Most Ancient Temple—Beauty
of the Grecian Landscape—Hope for the Land of Epaminondas
and Aristides.




Island of Ægina.—The “Maid of Athens,” in the very teeth
of poetry, has become Mrs. Black of Ægina! The beautiful Teresa
Makri, of whom Byron asked back his heart, of whom Moore and
Hobhouse, and the poet himself, have written so much and so
passionately, has forgotten the sweet burthen of the sweetest of
love songs, and taken the unromantic name, and followed the
unromantic fortunes, of a Scotchman!


The commodore proposed that we should call upon her on our
way to the temple of Jupiter, this morning. We pulled up to
the town in the barge, and landed on the handsome pier built by
Dr. Howe (who expended thus, most judiciously, a part of the
provisions sent from our country in his charge), and, finding a
Greek in the crowd, who understood a little Italian, we were
soon on our way to Mrs. Black’s. Our guide was a fine, grave-looking
man of forty, with a small cockade on his red cap, which
indicated that he was some way in the service of the government.
He laid his hand on his heart, when I asked him if he
had known any Americans in Ægina. “They built this,” said he,
pointing to the pier, the handsome granite posts of which we were
passing at the moment. “They gave us bread, and meat, and
clothing, when we should otherwise have perished.” It was said
with a look and tone that thrilled me. I felt as if the whole
debt of sympathy which Greece owes our country, were repaid by
this one energetic expression of gratitude.


We stopped opposite a small gate, and the Greek went in
without cards. It was a small stone house of a story and a half,
with a rickety flight of wooden steps at the side, and not a blade
of grass or sign of a flower in court or window. If there had
been but a geranium in the porch, or a rose-tree by the gate, for
description’s sake.


Mr. Black was out—Mrs. Black was in. We walked up the
creaking steps, with a Scotch terrier barking and snapping at our
heels, and were met at the door by, really, a very pretty woman.
She smiled as I apologised for our intrusion, and a sadder or a
sweeter smile I never saw. She said her welcome in a few,
simple words of Italian, and I thought there were few sweeter
voices in the world. I asked her if she had not learned English
yet. She coloured, and said, “No, signore!” and the deep spot
in her cheek faded gradually down, in teints a painter would
remember. Her husband, she said, had wished to learn her language,
and would never let her speak English. I began to feel a
prejudice against him. Presently, a boy of perhaps three years
came into the room—an ugly, white-headed, Scotch-looking
little ruffian, thin-lipped and freckled, and my aversion for
Mr. Black became quite decided. “Did you not regret leaving
Athens?” I asked. “Very much, signore,” she answered with
half a sigh; “but my husband dislikes Athens.” Horrid
Mr. Black! thought I.


I wished to ask her of Lord Byron, but I had heard that the
poet’s admiration had occasioned the usual scandal attendant on
every kind of pre-eminence, and her modest and timid manners,
while they assured me of her purity of heart, made me afraid to
venture where there was even a possibility of wounding her. She
sat in a drooping attitude on the coarsely-covered divan, which
occupied three sides of the little room, and it was difficult to
believe that any eye but her husband’s had ever looked upon her,
or that the “wells of her heart” had ever been drawn upon for
anything deeper than the simple duties of a wife and mother.


She offered us some sweetmeats, the usual Greek compliment
to visitors, as we rose to go, and laying her hand upon her heart,
in the beautiful custom of the country, requested me to express
her thanks to the commodore for the honour he had done her in
calling, and to wish him and his family every happiness. A
servant-girl, very shabbily dressed, stood at the side door, and we
offered her some money, which she might have taken unnoticed.
She drew herself up very coldly, and refused it, as if she thought
we had quite mistaken her. In a country where gifts of the
kind are so universal, it spoke well for the pride of the family, at
least.


I turned after we had taken leave, and made an apology to
speak to her again; for in the interest of the general impression
she had made upon me, I had forgotten to notice her dress, and I
was not sure that I could remember a single feature of her face.
We had called unexpectedly of course, and her dress was very
plain. A red cloth cap bound about the temples, with a coloured
shawl, whose folds were mingled with large braids of dark-brown
hair, and decked with a tassel of blue silk, which fell to her left
shoulder, formed her head-dress. In other respects she was
dressed like a European. She is a little above the middle height,
slightly and well-formed, and walks weakly, like most Greek
women, as if her feet were too small for her weight. Her skin
is dark and clear, and she has a colour in her cheek and lips that
looks to me consumptive. Her teeth are white and regular, her
face oval, and her forehead and nose form the straight line of the
Grecian model—one of the few instances I have ever seen of it.
Her eyes are large, and of a soft, liquid hazel, and this is her
chief beauty. There is that “looking out of the soul through
them,” which Byron always described as constituting the loveliness
that most moved him. I made up my mind, as we walked
away, that she would be a lovely woman anywhere. Her horrid
name, and the unprepossessing circumstances in which we found
her, had uncharmed, I thought, all poetical delusion that would
naturally surround her as the “Maid of Athens.” We met her
as simple Mrs. Black, whose Scotch husband’s terrier had
worried us at the door, and we left her, feeling that the poetry
which she had called forth from the heart of Byron, was her due
by every law of loveliness.


From the house of the maid of Athens we walked to the
school of Capo d’Istrias. It is a spacious stone quadrangle,
enclosing a court handsomely railed and gravelled, and furnished
with gymnastic apparatus. School was out, and perhaps a
hundred and fifty boys were playing in the area. An intelligent-looking
man accompanied us through the museum of antiquities,
where we saw nothing very much worth noticing, after the collections
of Rome, and to the library, where there was a superb
bust of Capo d’Istrias, done by a Roman artist. It is a noble
head, resembling Washington.


We bought a large basket of grapes for a few cents in
returning to the boat, and offered money to one or two common
men who had been of assistance to us, but no one would receive
it. I italicise the remark, because the Greeks are so often
stigmatised as utterly mercenary.


We pulled along the shore, passing round the point on which
stands a single fluted column, the only remains of a magnificent
temple of Venus, and, getting the wind, hoisted a sail, and ran
down the northern side of the island five or six miles, till we
arrived opposite the mountain on which stands the temple of
Jupiter Panhellenios. The view of it from the sea was like that
of a temple drawn on the sky. It occupies the very peak of the
mountain, and is seen many miles on either side by the mariner
of the Ægæan.


A couple of wild-looking, handsome fellows, bareheaded and
bare-legged, with shirts and trousers reaching to the knee, lay in
a small caique under the shore; and, as we landed, the taller of
the two laid his hand on his breast, and offered to conduct us to
the temple. The ascent was about a mile.


We toiled over ploughed fields, with here and there a cluster
of fig-trees, wild patches of rock and brier, and an occasional
wall, and arrived breathless at the top, where a cool wind met us
from the other side of the sea with delicious refreshment.


We sat down among the ruins of the oldest temple of Greece
after that of Corinth. Twenty-three noble columns still lifted
their heads over us, after braving the tempests of more than two
thousand years. The ground about was piled up with magnificent
fragments of marble, preserving, even in their fall, the sharp
edges of the admirable sculpture of Greece. The Doric capital,
the simple frieze, the well-fitted frusta, might almost be restored
in the perfection with which they were left by the last touch of
the chisel.


The view hence comprised a classic world. There was Athens!
The broad mountain over the intensely blue gulf at our feet was
Hymettus, and a bright white summit as of a mound between it
and the sea, glittering brightly in the sun, was the venerable
pile of temples in the Acropolis. To the left, Corinth was distinguishable
over its low isthmus, and Megara and Salamis, and
following down the wavy line of the mountains of Attica, the
promontory of Sunium, modern Cape Colonna, dropped the
horizon upon the sea. One might sit out his life amid these
loftily-placed ruins, and scarce exhaust in thought the human
history that has unrolled within the scope of his eye.


We passed two or three hours wandering about among the
broken columns, and gazing away to the main and the distant
isles, confessing the surpassing beauty of Greece. Yet have its
mountains scarce a green spot, and its vales are treeless and
uninhabited, and all that constitutes desolation is there, and
strange as it may seem, you neither miss the verdure, nor the
people, nor find it desolate. The outline of Greece, in the first
place, is the finest in the world. The mountains lean down into
the valleys, and the plains swell up to the mountains, and the
islands rise from the sea, with a mixture of boldness and grace
altogether peculiar. In the most lonely parts of the Ægæan,
where you can see no trace of a human foot, it strikes you like a
foreign land. Then the atmosphere is its own, and it exceeds
that of Italy, far. It gives it the look of a landscape seen
through a faintly-teinted glass. Soft blue mists of the most
rarefied and changing shapes envelop the mountains on the
clearest day, and without obscuring the most distant points
perceptibly, give hill and vale a beauty that surpasses that of
verdure. I never saw such air as I see in Greece. It has the
same effect on the herbless and rocky scenery about us, as a veil
over the face of a woman.


The islander who had accompanied us to the temple, stood on
a fragment of a column, still as a statue, looking down upon the
sea towards Athens. His figure for athletic grace of mould,
and his head and features, for the expression of manly beauty
and character, might have been models to Phidias. The
beautiful and poetical land, of which he inherited his share of
unparalleled glory, lay around him. I asked myself why it
should have become, as it seems to be, the despair of the
philanthropist. Why should its people, who, in the opinion of
Childe Harold, are “nature’s favourites still,” be branded and
abandoned as irreclaimable rogues, and the source to which we
owe, even to this day, our highest models of taste, be neglected
and forgotten? The nine days’ enthusiasm for Greece has died
away, and she has received a king from a family of despots.
But there seems to me in her very beauty, and in the still
superior qualities of her children, wherever they have room for
competition, a promise of resuscitation. The convulsions of
Europe may leave her soon to herself, and the slipper of the
Turk, and the hand of the Christian, once lifted fairly from her
neck, she will rise, and stand up amid these imperishable
temples, once more free!






LETTER XXIII.




Athens—Ruins of the Parthenon—The Acropolis—Temple of Theseus—The
Oldest of Athenian Antiquities—Burial-Place of the Son of
Miaulis—Reflections on Standing where Plato taught, and Demosthenes
harangued—Bavarian Sentinel—Turkish Mosque, erected within the
Sanctuary of the Parthenon—Wretched Habitations of the Modern
Athenians.




Ægæan Sea.—We got under way this morning, and stood
towards Athens, followed by the sloop-of-war, “John Adams,” which
had come to anchor under our stern the evening of our arrival at
Ægina. The day is like every day of the Grecian summer,
heavenly. The stillness and beauty of a new world lie about us.
The ships steal on with their clouds of canvass just filling in the
light breeze of the Ægæan, and withdrawing the eye from the
lofty temple crowning the mountain on our lee, whose shining
columns shift slowly as we pass; we could believe ourselves
asleep on the sea. I have been repeating to myself the beautiful
reflection of Servius Sulpitius, which occurs in his letter of
condolence to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, written on
this very spot, [8]“On my return from Asia,” he says, “as I
was sailing from Ægina toward Megara, I began to contemplate
the prospect of the countries around me. Ægina was behind,
Megara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left; all
which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and
buried in their ruins; upon this sight, I could not but presently
think within myself, ‘Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and
vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed,
whose life is yet so short, when the carcases of so many cities lie
here exposed before me in one view.’”


The columns of the Parthenon are easily distinguishable with
the glass, and to the right of the Acropolis, in the plain, I see a
group of tall ruins, which by the position must be near the banks
of the Ilissus. I turn the glass upon the sides of the mount
Hymettus, whose beds of thyme, “the long, long summer gilds,”
and I can scarce believe that the murmur of the bees is not
stealing over the water to my ear. Can this be Athens? Are
these the same isles and mountains Alcibiades saw, returning
with his victorious galleys from the Hellespont; the same that
faded on the long gaze of the conqueror of Salamis, leaving his
ungrateful country for exile; the same that to have seen, for a
Roman, was to be complete as a man; the same whose proud
dames wore the golden grasshopper in their hair, as a boasting
token that they had sprung from the soil; the same where
Pericles nursed the arts, and Socrates and Plato taught
“humanity,” and Epicurus walked with his disciples, looking
for truth? What an offset are these thrilling thoughts, with
the nearing view in my sight, to a whole calendar of common
misfortune!


Dropped anchor in the Piræus, the port of Athens. The city
is five miles in the interior, and the “arms of Athens,” as the
extending walls were called, stretched in the times of the
republic from the Acropolis to the sea. The Piræus, now nearly
a deserted port, with a few wretched houses, was then a large
city. It wants an hour to sunset, and I am about starting with
one of the officers to walk to Athens.




Five miles more sacred in history than those between the
Piræus and the Acropolis do not exist in the world. We walked
them in about two hours, with a golden sunset at our backs, and
the excitement inseparable from an approach to “the eye of
Greece,” giving elasticity to our steps. Near the Parthenon,
which had been glowing in a flood of saffron light before us, the
road separated, and taking the right, we entered the city by its
southern gate. A tall Greek, who was returning from the plains
with a gun on his shoulder, led us through the narrow streets of
the modern town to an hotel, where a comfortable supper, of which
the most attractive circumstance to me was some honey from
Hymettus, brought us to bed-time.




We were standing under the colonnades of the temple of
Theseus, the oldest, and the best preserved of the antiquities of
Athens, at an early hour. We walked around it in wonder.
The sun that threw inward the shadows of its beautiful columns,
had risen on that eastern porch for more than two thousand
years, and it is still the transcendent model of the world. The
Parthenon was a copy of it. The now venerable and ruined
temples of Rome, were built in its proportions when it was
already an antiquity. The modern edifices of every civilised
nation are considered faulty only as they depart from it. How
little dreamed the admirable Grecian, when its proportions rose
gradually to his patient thought, that the child of his teeming
imagination would be so immortal!


The situation of the Theseion has done much to preserve it.
It stands free of the city, while the Parthenon and the other
temples of the Acropolis, being within the citadel, have been
battered by every assailant, from the Venetian to the iconoclast
and the Turk. It looks at a little distance like a modern
structure, its parts are so nearly perfect. It is only on coming
close to the columns that you see the stains in the marble to be
the corrosion of the long-feeding tooth of ages. A young
Englishman is buried within the nave of the temple, and the son
of Miaulis, said to have been a young man worthy of the best
days of Greece, lies in the eastern porch, with the weeds growing
rank over his grave.


We passed a handsome portico, standing alone amid a heap
of ruins. It was the entrance to the ancient Agora. Here
assembled the people of Athens, the constituents and supporters
of Pericles, the first possessors of these godlike temples. Here
were sown, in the ears of the Athenians, the first seeds of glory
and sedition, by patriots and demagogues, in the stirring days
of Platæa and Marathon. Here was it first whispered that
Aristides had been too long called “the just,” and that Socrates
corrupted the youth of Athens. And, for a lighter thought, it
was here that the wronged wife of Alcibiades, compelled to come
forth publicly and sign her divorce, was snatched up in the arms
of her brilliant, but dissolute husband, and carried forcibly home,
forgiving him, woman-like, with but half a repentance. The
feeling with which I read the story when a boy, is strangely fresh
in my memory.


We hurried on to the Acropolis. The ascent is winding and
difficult, and, near the gates, encumbered with marble rubbish.
Volumes have been written on the antiquities which exist still
within the walls. The greater part of four unrivalled temples
are still lifted to the sun by this tall rock in the centre of Athens,
the majestic Parthenon, visible over half Greece, towering above
all. A Bavarian soldier received our passport at the gate. He
was resting the butt of his musket on a superb bas-relief, a
fragment from the ruins. How must the blood of a Greek
boil to see a barbarian thus set to guard the very sanctuary
of his glory.


We stood under the portico of the Parthenon, and looked down
on Greece. Right through a broad gap in the mountains, as if
they had been swept away that Athens might be seen, stood the
shining Acropolis of Corinth. I strained my eyes to see
Diogenes lying under the walls, and Alexander standing in his
sunshine. “Sea-born Salamis” was beneath me, but the “ships
by thousands” were not there, and the king had vanished from
his “rocky throne” with his “men and nations.” Ægina lay
far down the gulf, folded in its blue mist, and I strained my sight
to see Aristides wandering in exile on its shore. “Mars Hill”
was within the sound of my voice, but its Areopagus was
deserted of its judges, and the intrepid apostle was gone. The
rostrum of Demosthenes, and the academy of Plato, and the
banks of the Ilissus, where Socrates and Zeno taught, were all
around me, but the wily orator, and the philosopher, “on whose
infant lips the bees shed honey as he slept,” and he whose death
and doctrine have been compared to those of Christ, and the
self-denying stoic, were alike departed. Silence and rain brood
over all!


I walked through the nave of the Parthenon, passing a small
Turkish mosque (built sacrilegiously by the former Disdar of
Athens, within its very sanctuary), and mounted the south-eastern
rampart of the Acropolis. Through the plain beneath
ran the classic Ilissus, and on its banks stood the ruins of the
temple of Jupiter Olympus, which I had distinguished with the
glass in coming up the Ægæan. The Ilissus was nearly dry, but
a small island covered with verdure divided its waters a short
distance above the temple, and near it were distinguishable the
foundations of the Lyceum. Aristotle and his Peripatetics
ramble there no more. A herd of small Turkish horses were
feeding up toward Hymettus, the only trace of life in a valley
that was once alive with the brightest of the tides of human
existence.


The sun poured into the Acropolis with an intensity I have
seldom felt. The morning breeze had died away, and the glare
from the bright marble ruins was almost intolerable to the eye.
I climbed around over the heaps of fragmented columns, and
maimed and fallen statues, to the north-western corner of the
citadel, and sat down in the shade of one of the embrasures to
look over toward Plato’s academy. The part of the city below
this corner of the wall was the ancient Pelasgicum. It was from
the spot where I sat that Parrhesiades, the fisherman, is represented
in Lucian to have angled for philosophers, with a hook
baited with gold and figs.


The academy (to me the most interesting spot of Athens) is
still shaded with olive groves, as in the time of Plato. The
Cephissus, whose gentle flow has mingled its murmur with so
much sweet philosophy, was hidden from my sight by the
numberless trees. I looked toward the spot with inexpressible
interest. I had not yet been near enough to dispel the illusion.
To me the academy was still beneath those silvery olives in all
its poetic glory. The “Altar of Love” still stood before the
entrance; the temple of Prometheus, the sanctuary of the
Muses, the statues of Plato and of the Graces, the sacred olive,
the tank in the cool gardens, and the tower of the railing Timon,
were all there. I could almost have waited till evening to see
Epicurus and Leontium, Socrates and Aspasia, returning to
Athens.


We passed the Tower of the Winds, the ancient Klepsydra or
water-clock of Athens, in returning to the hotel. The Eight
Winds sculptured on the octagonal sides, are dressed according
to their temperatures, six of them being more or less draped, and
the remaining two nude. It is a small marble building, more
curious than beautiful.


Our way lay through the sultry streets of modern Athens.
I can give you an idea of it in a single sentence. It is a large
village, of originally mean houses, pulled down to the very cellars,
and lying choked in its rubbish. A large square in ruins after a
fire in one of our cities, looks like it. It has been destroyed so
often by Turks and Greeks alternately, that scarce one stone is
left upon the other. The inhabitants thatch over one corner
of these wretched and dusty holes with maize stalks and straw,
and live there like beasts. The fineness of the climate makes a
roof almost unnecessary for eight months in the year. The
consuls and authorities of the place, and the missionaries, have
tolerable houses, but the paths to them are next to impracticable
for the rubbish. Nothing but a Turkish horse, which could be
ridden up a precipice, would ever pick his way through the
streets.














“Ex Asia rediens,” &c.—I have given the Translation from Middleton’s
Cicero.










LETTER XXIV.




The “Lantern of Demosthenes”—Byron’s Residence in Athens—Temple of
Jupiter Olympus, Seven Hundred Years in Building—Superstitious
Fancy of the Athenians respecting its Ruins—Hermitage of a Greek
Monk—Petarches, the Antiquary and Poet, and his Wife, Sister to
the “Maid of Athens”—Mutilation of a Basso Rilievo by an English
Officer—The Elgin Marbles—The Caryatides—Lord Byron’s Autograph—Attachment
of the Greeks to Dr. Howe—The Sliding Stone—A
Scene in the Rostrum of Demosthenes.




Took a walk by sunset to the Ilissus. I passed, on the way,
the “Lantern of Demosthenes,” a small octagonal building of
marble, adorned with splendid columns, and a beautifully sculptured
frieze, in which it is said the orator used to shut himself
for a month, with his head half shaved, to practice his orations.
The Franciscan convent, Byron’s residence while in Athens, was
built adjoining it. It is now demolished. The poet’s name is
written with his own hand on a marble slab of the wall.


I left the city by the gate of Hadrian, and walked on to the
temple of Jupiter Olympus. It crowns a small elevation on the
northern bank of the Ilissus. It was once beyond all comparison
the largest and most costly building in the world. During seven
hundred years it employed the attention of the rulers of Greece,
from Pisistratus to Hadrian, and was never quite completed.
As a ruin it is the most beautiful object I ever saw. Thirteen
columns of Pentelic marble, partly connected by a frieze, are all
that remain. They are of the flowery Corinthian order, and sixty
feet in height, exclusive of base or capital.


Three perfect columns stand separate from the rest, and lift
from the midst of that solitary plain with an effect that, to my
mind, is one of the highest sublimity. The sky might rest on
them. They seem made to sustain it. As I lay on the parched
grass and gazed on them in the glory of a Grecian sunset, they
seemed to me proportioned for a continent. The mountains I
saw between them were not designed with more amplitude, nor
corresponded more nobly to the sky above.


The people of Athens have a superstitious reverence for these
ruins. Dodwell says, “The single column toward the western
extremity was thrown down, many years ago, by a Turkish
voivode, for the sake of the materials, which were employed in
constructing the great mosque of the bazaar. The Athenians
relate that, after it was thrown down, the three others nearest it
were heard to lament the loss of their sister! and these nocturnal
lamentations did not cease till the sacrilegious voivode was
destroyed by poison.


Two of the columns, connected by one immense slab, are
surmounted by a small building, now in ruins, but once the
hermitage of a Greek monk. Here he passed his life, seventy
feet in the air, sustained by two of the most graceful columns of
Greece. A basket, lowered by a line, was filled by the pious
every morning, but the romantic eremite was never seen. With
the lofty Acropolis crowned with temples just beyond him, the
murmuring Ilissus below, the thyme-covered sides of Hymettus
to the south, and the blue Ægæan stretching away to the west,
his eye, at least, could never tire. There are times when I could
envy him his lift above the world.


I descended to the Fountain of Callirhoe, which gushes from
beneath a rock in the bed of the Ilissus, just below the temple.
It is the scene of the death of the lovely nymph-mother of
Ganymede. The twilight air was laden with the fragrant thyme,
and the songs of the Greek labourers returning from the fields
came faintly over the plains. Life seems too short, when every
breath is a pleasure. I loitered about the clear and rocky lip of
the fountain, till the pool below reflected the stars in its trembling
bosom. The lamps began to twinkle in Athens, Hesperus
rose over Mount Pentilicus like a blazing lamp, the sky over
Salamis faded down to the sober tint of night, and the columns
of the Parthenon mingled into a single mass of shade. And so, I
thought, as I strolled back to the city, concludes a day in
Athens—one, at least, in my life, for which it is worth the
trouble to have lived.


I was again in the Acropolis the following morning. Mr. Hill
had kindly given me a note to Petarches, the king’s antiquary, a
young Athenian, who married the sister of the “Maid of Athens.”[9]
We went together through the ruins. They have lately made
new excavations, and some superb bassi-rilieivi are among the
discoveries. One of them represented a procession leading
victims to the sacrifice, and was quite the finest thing I ever saw.
The leading figure was a superb female, from the head of which
the nose had lately been barbarously broken. The face of the
enthusiastic antiquary flushed while I was lamenting it. It was
done, he told me, but a week before, by an officer of the English
squadron then lying at the Piræus. Petarches detected it
immediately, and sent word to the admiral, who discovered the
heartless goth in a nephew of an English duke, a midshipman of
his own ship. I should not have taken the trouble to mention so
revolting a circumstance if I had not seen, in a splendid copy
of the “illustrations of Byron’s Travels in Greece,” a most virulent
attack on the officers of the “Constellation,” and Americans
generally, for the same thing. Who but Englishmen have robbed
Athens, and Ægina, and all Greece? Who but Englishmen are
watched like thieves in their visits to every place of curiosity in
the world? Where is the superb caryatid of the Erechtheion?
stolen, with such barbarous carelessness, too, that the remaining
statues and the superb portico they sustained are tumbling to the
ground! The insolence of England’s laying such sins at the door
of another nation is insufferable.


For my own part, I cannot conceive the motive for carrying
away a fragment of a statue or a column. I should as soon
think of drawing a tooth as a specimen of some beautiful woman
I had seen in my travels. And how one dare show such a theft
to any person of taste, is quite as singular. Even when a whole
column or statue is carried away, its main charm is gone with the
association of the place. I venture to presume, that no person of
classic feeling ever saw Lord Elgin’s marbles without execrating
the folly that could bring them from their bright, native sky, to
the vulgar atmosphere of London. For the love of taste, let us
discountenance such barbarisms in America.


The Erechtheion and the adjoining temple are gems of architecture.
The small portico of the caryatides (female figures, in
the place of columns, with their hands on their hips) must have
been one of the most exquisite things in Greece. One of them
(fallen in consequence of Lord Elgin’s removal of the sister
statue), lies headless on the ground, and the remaining ones are
badly mutilated, but they are very, very beautiful. I remember
two in the Villa Albani, at Rome, brought from some other
temple in Greece, and considered the choicest gems of the
gallery.


We climbed up the sanctuary of the Erechtheion, in which
stood the altars to the two elements to which the temples
were dedicated. The sculpture around the cornices is still so
sharp, that it might have been finished yesterday. The young
antiquary alluded to Byron’s anathema against Lord Elgin,
in “Childe Harold,” and showed me, on the inside of the
capital of one of the columns, the place where the poet had
written his name. It was, as he always wrote it, simply
“Byron,” in small letters, and would not be noticed by an
ordinary observer.


If the lover, as the poet sings, was jealous of the star his
mistress gazed upon, the sister of the “Maid of Athens” may
well be jealous of the Parthenon. Petarches looks at it and
talks of it with a fever in his eyes. I could not help smiling at
his enthusiasm. He is about twenty-five, of a slender person,
with downcast, melancholy eyes, and looks the poet according to
the most received standard. His reserved manners melted
toward me on discovering that I knew our countryman,
Dr. Howe, who, he tells me, was his groomsman (or the corresponding
assistant at a Greek wedding), and to whom he seems,
in common with all his countrymen, warmly attached. To a man
of his taste, I can conceive nothing more gratifying than his
appointment to the care of the Acropolis. He spends his day there
with his book, attending the few travellers who come, and when
the temples are deserted, he sits down in the shadow of a column,
and reads amid the silence of the ruins he almost worships.
There are few vocations in this envious world so separated from
the jarring passions of our nature.




Passed the morning on horseback, visiting the antiquities without
the city. Turning by the temple of Theseus, we crossed
Mars Hill, the seat of the Areopagus, and passing a small valley,
ascended the Pnyx. On the right of the path we observed the
rock of the hill worn to the polish of enamel by friction. It was
an almost perpendicular descent of six or seven feet, and steps
were cut at the sides to mount to the top. It is the famous
sliding stone, believed by the Athenians to possess the power of
determining the sex of unborn children. The preference of
sons, if the polish of the stone is to be trusted, is universal in
Greece.


The rostrum of Demosthenes was above us on the side of the
hill facing from the sea. A small platform is cut into the rock,
and on either side a seat is hewn out, probably for the distinguished
men of the state. The audience stood on the side-hill,
and the orator and his listeners were in the open air. An older
rostrum is cut into the summit of the hill, facing the sea. It is
said that when the maritime commerce of Greece began to enrich
the lower classes, the thirty tyrants turned the rostrum toward
the land, lest their orators should point to the ships of the Piræus,
and remind the people of their power.


Scene after scene swept through my fancy as I stood on the
spot. I saw Demosthenes, after his first unsuccessful oration,
descending with a dejected air toward the temple of Theseus,
followed by old Eunomus;[10] abandoning himself to despair, and
repressing the fiery consciousness within him as a hopeless ambition.
I saw him again, with the last glowing period of a Philippic
on his lips, standing on this rocky eminence, his arm stretched
toward Macedon; his eye flashing with success, and his ear
catching the low murmur of the crowd below, which told him he
had moved his country as with the heave of an earthquake. I
saw the calm Aristides rise, with his mantle folded majestically
about him; and the handsome Alcibiades waiting with a smile
on his lips to speak; and Socrates, gazing on his wild but
winning disciple with affection and fear. How easily is this
bare rock, whereon the eagle now alights unaffrighted, repeopled
with the crowding shadows of the past.














You will recollect what Byron says of these three girls in one of his
letters to Dr. Drury: “I had almost forgot to tell you, that I am dying
for love of three Greek girls, at Athens, sisters. I lived in the same
house. Teresa, Marcama, and Katinka, are the names of these divinities—all
under fifteen.”
















“However, in his first address to the people, he was laughed at and
interrupted by their clamours; for the violence of his manner threw him
into a confusion of periods, and a distortion of his argument. At last,
upon his quitting the Assembly, Eunomus, the Thriasian, a man now
extremely old, found him wandering in a dejected condition in the Piræus,
and took upon him to set him right.”—Plutarch’s Life of Demosthenes.










LETTER XXV.




The Prison of Socrates—Turkish Stirrups and Saddles—Plato’s Academy—The
American Missionary School at Athens—The Son of Petarches
and Nephew of “Mrs. Black of Ægina.”




Athens.—We dismounted at the door of Socrates’ prison. A
hill between the Areopagus and the sea, is crowned with the
remains of a showy monument to a Roman pro-consul. Just
beneath it the hill forms a low precipice, and in the face of it you
see three low entrances to caverns hewn in the solid rock. The
farthest to the right was the room of the Athenian guard, and
within it is a chamber with a round ceiling, which the sage occupied
during the thirty days of his imprisonment. There are
marks of an iron door which separated it from the guard-room,
and through the bars of this he refused the assistance of his
friends to escape, and held those conversations with Crito, Plato,
and others which have made his name immortal. On the day
upon which he was doomed to die, he was removed to the
chamber nearest the Acropolis, and here the hemlock was
presented to him. A shallower excavation between, held an
altar to the gods; and after his death, his body was here given
to his friends.


Nothing, except some of the touching narrations of Scripture
ever seemed to me so affecting as the history of the death of
Socrates. It has been likened (I think, not profanely), to the
death of Christ. His virtuous life, his belief in the immortality
of the soul and a future state of reward and punishment, his forgiveness
of his enemies and his godlike death, certainly prove
him, in the absence of revealed light, to have walked the “darkling
path of human reason” with an almost inspired rectitude.
I stood in the chamber which had received his last breath, not
without emotion. The rocky walls about me had witnessed his
composure as he received the cup from his weeping jailer; the
roughly-hewn floor beneath my feet had sustained him, as he
walked to and fro, till the poison had chilled his limbs; his last
sigh, as he covered his head with his mantle and expired, passed
forth by that low portal. It is not easy to be indifferent on spots
like these. The spirit of the place is felt. We cannot turn
back and touch the brighter links of that “fleshly chain,” in
which all human beings since the creation have been bound alike
without feeling, even through the rusty coil of ages, the electric
sympathy. Socrates died here! The great human leap into
eternity, the inevitable calamity of our race, was here taken more
nobly than elsewhere. Whether the effect be to “fright us from
the shore,” or, to nerve us by the example, to look more steadily
before us, a serious thought, almost, of course, a salutary one,
lurks in the very air.


We descended the hill and galloped our small Turkish horses
at a stirring pace over the plain. The short stirrup and high-peaked
saddle of the country, are (at least to men of my length
and limb) uncomfortable contrivances. With the knees almost
up to the chin, one is compelled, of course, to lean far over the
horse’s head, and it requires all the fulness of Turkish trousers
to conceal the awkwardness of the position. We drew rein at
the entrance of the “olive-grove.” Our horses walked leisurely
along the shaded path between the trees, and we arrived in a few
minutes at the site of Plato’s Academy. The more ethereal
portion of my pleasure in seeing it must be in the recollection.
The Cephissus was dry, the noon-day sun was hot, and we were
glad to stop, with throbbing temples, under a cluster of fig-trees,
and eat the delicious fruit, forgetting all the philosophers incontinently.
We sat in our saddles, and a Greek woman, of great
natural beauty, though dressed in rags, bent down the boughs to
our reach. The honey from the over-ripe figs, dropped upon us
as the wind shook the branches. Our dark-eyed and bright-lipped
Pomona served us with a grace and cheerfulness that
would draw me often to the neighbourhood of the Academy if I
lived in Athens. I venture to believe that Phryne herself, in so
mean a dress, would scarce have been more attractive. We
kissed our hand to her as our spirited horses leaped the hollow
with which the trees were encircled, and passing the mound
sacred to the Furies, where Œdipus was swallowed up, dashed
over the sultry plain once more, and were soon in Athens.




I have passed most of my leisure hours here in a scene I
certainly did not reckon in anticipation, among the pleasures of
a visit to Athens—the American Missionary School. We have
all been delighted with it, from the commodore to the youngest
midshipman. Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been here some four
or five years, and have attained their present degree of success
in the face of every difficulty. Their whole number of
scholars from the commencement, has been upwards of three
hundred; at present they have a hundred and thirty, mostly
girls.


We found the school in a new and spacious stone building on
the site of the ancient “market,” where Paul, on his visit to
Athens, “disputed daily with those that met with him.” A
large court-yard, shaded partly with a pomegranate tree, separates
it from the marble portico of the Agora, which is one of
the finest remains of antiquity. Mrs. Hill was in the midst of
the little Athenians. Two or three serious-looking Greek girls
were assisting her in regulating their movements, and the new
and admirable system of combined instruction and amusement
was going on swimmingly. There were, perhaps, a hundred
children in the benches, mostly from three to six or eight years
of age: dark-eyed, cheerful little creatures, who looked as if
their “birthright of the golden grasshopper” had made them
nature’s favourites as certainly as in the days when their
ancestor-mothers settled questions of philosophy. They marched
and recited, and clapped their sun-burnt hands, and sung hymns,
and I thought I never had seen a more gratifying spectacle. I
looked around in vain for one who seemed discontented or weary.
Mrs. Hill’s manner to them was most affectionate. She governs,
literally with a smile.


I selected several little favourites. One was a fine fellow of
two to three years, whose name I inquired immediately. He
was Plato Petarches, the nephew of the “Maid of Athens,” and
the son of the second of the three girls so admired by Lord
Byron. Another was a girl of six or seven, with a face, surpassing,
for expressive beauty, that of any child I ever saw.
She was a Hydriote by birth, and dressed in the costume of the
islands. Her little feet were in Greek slippers; her figure was
prettily set off with an open jacket, laced with buttons from the
shoulder to the waist, and her head was enveloped in a figured
handkerchief, folded gracefully in the style of a turban, and
brought under her chin, so as to show suspended a rich metallic
fringe. Her face was full, but marked with childish dimples,
and her mouth and eyes, as beautiful as ever those expressive
features were made, had a retiring seriousness in them, indescribably
sweet. She looked as if she had been born in some
scene of Turkish devastation, and had brought her mother’s
heart-ache into the world.


At noon, at the sound of a bell, they marched out, clapping
their hands in time to the instructor’s voice, and seated themselves
in order upon the portico, in front of the school. Here
their baskets were given them, and each one produced her dinner
and eat it with the utmost propriety. It was really a beautiful
scene.


It is to be remembered that here are educated a class of
human beings who were else deprived of instruction by the
universal custom of their country. The females of Greece are
suffered to grow up in ignorance. One who can read and write
is rarely found. The school has commenced fortunately at the
most favourable moment. The government was in process of
change, and an innovation was unnoticed in the confusion that at
a later period might have been opposed by the prejudices of
custom. The King and the President of the Regency, Count
Armansperg, visited the school frequently during their stay in
Athens, and expressed their thanks to Mrs. Hill warmly. The
Countess Armansperg called repeatedly to have the pleasure of
sitting in the school-room for an hour. His Majesty, indeed,
could hardly find a more useful subject in his realm. Mrs. Hill,
with her own personal efforts, has taught more than one hundred
children to read the Bible! How few of us can write against our
names an equal offset to the claims of human duty?


Circumstances made me acquainted with one or two wealthy
persons residing in Athens, and I received from them a strong
impression of Mr. Hill’s usefulness and high standing. His
house is the hospitable resort of every stranger of intelligence
and respectability.


Mr. King and Mr. Robinson, missionaries of the Foreign
Board, are absent at Psera. Their families are here.


I passed my last evening among the magnificent ruins on the
banks of the Ilissus. The next day was occupied in returning
visits to the families who had been polite to us, and, with a
farewell of unusual regret to our estimable missionary friends,
we started on horseback to return by a gloomy sunset to the
Piræus. I am looking more for the amusing than the useful in
my rambles about the world, and I confess I should not have
gone far out of my way to visit a missionary station anywhere.
But chance has thrown this of Athens across my path, and I
record it as a moral spectacle to which no thinking person could
be indifferent. I freely say I never have met with an equal
number of my fellow-creatures, who seemed to me so indisputably
and purely useful. The most cavilling mind must applaud their
devoted sense of duty, bearing up against exile from country and
friends, privations, trial of patience, and the many, many ills
inevitable to such an errand in a foreign land, while even the
coldest politician would find in their efforts the best promise for
an enlightened renovation of Greece.


Long after the twilight thickened immediately about us, the
lofty Acropolis stood up, bathed in a glow of light from the
lingering sunset. I turned back to gaze upon it with an
enthusiasm I had thought laid on the shelf with my half-forgotten
classics. The intrinsic beauty of the ruins of Greece,
the loneliness of their situation, and the divine climate in which,
to use Byron’s expression, they are “buried,” invest them
with an interest which surrounds no other antiquities in the
world, I rode on, repeating to myself Milton’s beautiful
description:—




 

“Look! on the Ægæan a city stands


Built nobly; pure the air and light the soil:


Athens—the eye of Greece, mother of arts


And eloquence; native to famous wits,


Or hospitable, in her sweet recess


City or suburban, studious walks or shades.


See, there the olive groves of Academe,


Plato’s retirement, where the attic bird


Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.


There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound


Of bees’ industrious murmurs, oft invites


To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls


His whispering stream; within the walls there view


The schools of ancient sages, his who bred


Great Alexander to subdue the world!”


 







LETTER XXVI.




The Piræus—The Sacra Via—Ruins of Eleusis—Gigantic Medallion—Costume
of the Athenian Women—The Tomb of Themistocles—The
Temple of Minerva—Autographs.




Piræus.—With a basket of ham and claret in the stern-sheets,
a cool awning over our heads, and twelve men at the oars, such
as the coxswain of Themistocles’ galley might have sighed for,
we pulled away from the ship at an early hour, for Eleusis. The
conqueror of Salamis delayed the battle for the ten o’clock
breeze, and as nature (which should be called he instead of she,
for her constancy) still ruffles the Ægæan at the same hour, we
had a calm sea through the strait, where once lay the “ships by
thousands.”


We soon rounded the point, and shot along under the




 

                      “Rocky brow


Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis.”


 



It is a bare, bold precipice, a little back from the sea, and
commands an entire view of the strait. Here sat Xerxes, “on
his throne of gold,[11] with many secretaries about him to write
down the particulars of the action.” The Athenians owed their
victory to the wisdom of Themistocles, who managed to draw the
Persians into the strait (scarce a cannon shot across just here),
where only a small part of their immense fleet could act at one
time. The wind, as the wily Greek had foreseen, rose at the
same time, and rendered the lofty-built Persian ships unmanageable;
while the Athenian galleys, cut low to the water, were
easily brought into action in the most advantageous position. It
is impossible to look upon this beautiful and lovely spot and
imagine the stirring picture it presented. The wild sea-bird
knows no lonelier place. Yet on that rock once sat the son of
Darius, with his royal purple floating to the wind, and, below
him, within these rocky limits, lay “one thousand two hundred
ships-of-war, and two thousand transports,” while behind him on
the shores of the Piræus, were encamped “seven hundred
thousand foot, and four hundred thousand horse,”—“amounting,”
says Potter, in his notes, “with the retinue of women and
servants that attended the Asiatic princes in their military
expeditions, to more than five millions.” How like a king must
the royal Persian have felt, when




 

“He counted them at break of day!”


 



With an hour or two of fast pulling, we opened into the broad
bay of Eleusis. The first Sabbath after the creation could not
have been more absolutely silent. Megara was away on the
left, Eleusis before us at the distance of four or five miles, and
the broad plains where agriculture was first taught by Triptolemus,
the poetical home of Ceres, lay an utter desert in the
sunshine. Behind us, between the mountains, descended the
Sacra Via, by which the procession came to Athens to celebrate
the “Eleusinian mysteries”—a road of five or six miles, lined, in
the time of Pericles; with temples and tombs. I could half
fancy the scene, as it was presented to the eyes of the invading
Macedonians—when the procession of priests and virgins,
accompanied by the whole population of Athens, wound down
into the plain, guarded by the shining spears of the army of
Alcibiades. It is still doubtful, I believe, whether these
imposing ceremonies were the pure observances of a lofty and
sincere superstition, or the orgies of licentious saturnalia.


We landed at Eleusis, and were immediately surrounded by a
crowd of people, as simple and curious in their manners, and
resembling somewhat in their dress and complexion, the Indians
of our country. The ruins of a great city lay about us, and their
huts were built promiscuously among them. Magnificent fragments
of columns and blocks of marble interrupted the path
through the village, and between two of the houses lay, half
buried, a gigantic medallion of Pentelic marble, representing, in
alto-rilievo, the body and head of a warrior in full armour. A
hundred men would move it with difficulty. Commodore Patterson
attempted it six years ago, in the “Constitution,” but his
launch was found unequal to its weight.


The people here gathered more closely round the ladies of our
party, examining their dress with childish curiosity. They were
doubtless the first females ever seen at Eleusis in European
costume. One of the ladies happening to pull off her glove,
there was a general cry of astonishment. The brown kid had
clearly been taken as the colour of the hand. Some curiosity was
then shown to see their faces, which were covered with thick
green veils, as a protection against the sun. The sight of their
complexion (in any country remarkable for a dazzling whiteness)
completed the astonishment of these children of Ceres.


We, on our part, were scarcely less amused by their costumes
in turn. Over the petticoat was worn a loose jacket of white
cloth reaching to the knee, and open in front—its edges and
sleeves wrought very tastefully with red cord. The head-dress
was composed entirely of money. A fillet of gold sequins was
first put, à la feronière, around the forehead, and a close cap,
with a throat-piece like the gorget of a helmet, fitted the skull
exactly, stitched with coins of all values, folded over each other
according to their sizes, like scales. The hair was then braided
and fell down the back, loaded also with money. Of the fifty or
sixty women we saw, I should think one half had money on
her head to the amount of from one to two hundred dollars.
They suffered us to examine them with perfect good-humour.
The greater proportion of pieces were paras, a small and thin
Turkish coin of very small value. Among the larger pieces
were dollars of all nations, five-franc pieces, Sicilian piastres,
Tuscan colonati, Venetian swansicas, &c. &c. I doubted much
whether they were not the collection of some piratical caique.
There is no possibility of either spending or getting money
within many miles of Eleusis, and it seemed to be looked upon
as an ornament which they had come too lightly by to know
its use.


We walked over the foundations of several large temples with
the remains of their splendour lying unvalued about them, and
at a mile from the village came to the “well of Proserpine,”
whence, say the poets, the ravished daughter of Ceres emerged
from the infernal regions on her visit to her mother. The modern
Eleusinians know it only as a well of the purest water.


On our return, we stopped at the southern point of the Piræus,
to see the tomb of Themistocles. We were directed to it by
thirteen or fourteen frusta of enormous columns, which once
formed the monument to his memory. They buried him close to
the edge of the sea, opposite Salamis. The continual beat of
the waves for so many hundred years has worn away the
promontory, and his sarcophagus, which was laid in a grave cut
in the solid rock, is now filled by every swell from the Ægæan.
The old hero was brought back from his exile to be gloriously
buried. He could not lie better for the repose of his spirit (if it
returned with his bones from Argos). The sea on which he beat
the haughty Persians with his handful of galleys, sends every
wave to his feet. The hollows in the rock around his grave are
full of snowy salt left by the evaporation. You might scrape up
a bushel within six feet of him. It seems a natural tribute to
his memory.[12]


On a high and lonely rock, stretching out into the midst of the
sea, stands a solitary temple. As far as the eye can reach, along
the coast of Attica and to the distant isles, there is no sign of
human habitation. There it stands, lifted into the blue sky of
Greece, like the unreal “fabric of a vision.”


Cape Colonna and its “temple of Minerva,” were familiar to
my memory, but my imagination had pictured nothing half so
beautiful. As we approached it from the sea, it seemed so
strangely out of place, even for a ruin, so far removed from what
had ever been the haunt of man, that I scarce credited my eyes.
We could soon count them—thirteen columns of sparkling
marble, glittering in the sun. The sea-air keeps them spotlessly
white, and, till you approach them nearly, they have the
appearance of a structure, from its freshness, still in the
sculptor’s hands.


The boat was lowered, and the ship lay off-and-on while we
landed near the rocks where Falconer was shipwrecked, and
mounted to the Temple. The summit of the promontory is
strewn with the remains of the fallen columns, and their smooth
surfaces are thickly inscribed with the names of travellers.
Among others, I noticed Byron’s and Hobhouse’s, and that of
the agreeable author of “A Year in Spain.” Byron, by the way,
mentions having narrowly escaped robbery here, by a band of
Mainote pirates. He was surprised swimming off the point,
by an English vessel containing some ladies of his acquaintance.
He concludes the “Isles of Greece” beautifully with an allusion
to it by its ancient name:—




 

“Place me on Sunium’s marble steep,” &c.


 



The view from the summit is one of the finest in all Greece.
The isle where Plato was sold as a slave, and where Aristides
and Demosthenes passed their days in exile, stretches along the
west; the wide Ægæan, sprinkled with here and there a solitary
rock, herbless, but beautiful in its veil of mist, spreads away
from its feet to the southern line of the horizon, and crossing
each other almost imperceptibly on the light winds of this summer
sea, the red-sailed caique of Greece, the merchantmen from the
Dardanelles, and the heavy men-of-war of England and France,
cruising wherever the wind blows fairest, are seen like broad-winged
and solitary birds, lying low with spread pinions upon
the waters. The place touched me. I shall remember it with
an affection.


There is a small island close to Sunium, which was fortified by
one of the heroes of the Iliad on his return from Troy—why,
heaven only knows. It was here, too, that Phrontes, the pilot
of Menelaus, died and was buried.


We returned on board after an absence of two hours from the
ship, and are steering now straight for the Dardanelles. The
plains of Marathon are but a few hours north of our course, and
I pass them unwillingly; but what is there one would not see?
Greece lies behind, and I have realised one of my dearest
dreams in rambling over its ruins. Travel is an appetite that
“grows by what it feeds on.”














So says Phanodemus, quoted by Plutarch. The commentators upon
the tragedy of Æschylus on this subject, say it was a “silver chair,” and
that it “was afterwards placed in the Temple of Minerva, at Athens, with
the golden-hilted cimeter of Mardonius.”
















Langhorne says in his note on Plutarch, “There is the genuine attic
salt in most of the retorts and observations of themselves. His wit seems
to have been equal to his military and political capacity.”










LETTER XXVII.




Mytilene—The Tomb of Achilles—Turkish Burying Ground—Lost Reputation
of the Scamander—Asiatic Sunsets—Visit to a Turkish Bey—The
Castles of the Dardanelles—Turkish Bath and its consequences.




Lesbos to windward. A caique, crowded with people, is running
across our bow, all hands singing a wild chorus (perhaps the
“Lesboum Carmen,”) most merrily. The island is now called
Mytilene, said to be the greenest and most fertile of the Mediterranean.
The Lesbian wine is still good, but they have had no
poetesses since Sappho. Cause and effect have quarrelled, one
would think.


Tenedos on the lee. The tomb of Achilles is distinguishable
with the glass on the coast of Asia. The column which
Alexander “crowned and anointed and danced around naked,”
in honour of the hero’s ghost, stands above it no longer. The
Macedonian wept over Achilles, says the school-book, and envied
him the blind bard who had sung his deeds. He would have
dried his tears if he had known that his pas seul would be
remembered as long.


Tenedos seems a pretty island as we near it. It was here
that the Greeks hid, to persuade the Trojans that they had
abandoned the siege, while the wooden horse was wheeled into
Troy. The site of the city of Priam is visible as we get nearer
the coast of Asia. Mount Ida and the marshy valley of the
Scamander are appearing beyond Cape Sigæum, and we shall
anchor in an hour between Europe and Asia, in the mouth of
the rapid Dardanelles. The wind is not strong enough to stem
the current that sets down like a mill-race from the Sea of
Marmora.


Went ashore on the Asian side for a ramble. We landed at
the strong Turkish castle that, with another on the European
side, defends the Strait, and passing under their bristling batteries,
entered the small Turkish town in the rear. Our appearance
excited a great deal of curiosity. The Turks, who were sitting
cross-legged on the broad benches extending like a tailor’s board,
in front of the cafés, stopped smoking as we passed, and the
women, wrapping up their own faces more closely, approached
the ladies of our party, and lifted their veils to look at them with
the freedom of our friends at Eleusis. We came unaware upon
two squalid wretches of women in turning a corner, who pulled
their ragged shawls over their heads with looks of the greatest
resentment at having exposed their faces to us.


A few minutes’ walk brought us outside of the town. An
extensive Turkish grave-yard lay on the left. Between fig-trees
and blackberry bushes it was a green spot, and the low tombstones
of the men, crowned each with a turban carved in marble
of the shape befitting the sleepers rank, peered above the grass
like a congregation sitting in a uniform head-dress at a field-preaching.
Had it not been for the female graves, which were
marked with a slab like ours, and here and there the tombstone
of a Greek, carved after the antique, in the shape of a beautiful
shell, the effect of an assemblage sur l’herbe would have been
ludicrously perfect.


We walked on to the Scamander. A ricketty bridge gave us
a passage, toll free, to the other side, where we sat round the
rim of a marble well, and ate delicious grapes, stolen for us by a
Turkish boy from a near vineyard. Six or seven camels were
feeding on the uninclosed plain, picking a mouthful and then
lifting their long, snaky necks into the air to swallow; a stray
horseman, with the head of his bridle decked with red tassels
and his knees up to his chin, scoured the bridle path to the
mountains; and three devilish looking buffaloes scratched their
hides and rolled up their fiendish green eyes under a bramble-hedge
near the river. Voila! a scene in Asia.


The poets lie, or the Scamander is as treacherous as Macassar.
Venus bathed in its waters before contending for the prize of
beauty adjudged to her on this very Mount Ida that I see
covered with brown grass in the distance. Her hair became
“flowing gold” in the lavation. My friends compliment me upon
no change after a similar experiment. My long locks (run riot
with a four months’ cruise) are as dingy and untractable as ever,
and, except in the increased brownness of a Mediterranean complexion,
the cracked glass in the state-room of my friend the
lieutenant gave me no encouragement of a change. It is soft
water, and runs over fine white sand; but the fountain of Callirhoe,
at Athens (she was the daughter of the Scamander, and like
most daughters, is much more attractive than her papa), is softer
and clearer. Perhaps the loss of the Scamander’s virtues is
attributable to the cessation of the tribute paid to the god in
Helen’s time.


The twilights in this part of the world are unparalleled—but I
have described twilights and sunsets in Greece and Italy till I
am ashamed to write the words. Each one comes as if there
never had been and never were to be another, and the adventures
of the day, however stirring, are half forgotten in its glory, and
seem in comparison, unworthy of description; but one look at
the terms that might describe it, written on paper, uncharms
even the remembrance. You must come to Asia and feel sunsets.
You cannot get them by paying postage.




At anchor, waiting for a wind. Called to day on the Bey
Effendi, commander of the two castles, “Europe” and “Asia,”
between which we lie. A pokerish-looking dwarf, with ragged
beard and high turban, and a tall Turk, who I am sure never
smiled since he was born, kicked off their slippers at the
threshold, and ushered us into a chamber on the second story.
It was a luxurious little room, lined completely with cushions, the
muslin-covered pillows of down leaving only a place for the door.
The divan was as broad as a bed, and, save the difficulty of rising
from it, it was perfect as a lounge. A ceiling of inlaid woods,
embrowned with smoke, windows of small panes fantastically
set, and a place lower than the floor for the attendant to stand
and leave their slippers, were all that was peculiar else.




The Bey entered in a few minutes, with a pipe-bearer, an
interpreter, and three or four attendants. He was a young man,
about twenty, and excessively handsome. A clear, olive complexion,
a moustache of silky black, a thin, aquiline nose, with
almost transparent nostrils, cheeks and chin rounded into a perfect
oval, and mouth and eyes expressive of the most resolute
firmness, and at the same time, girlishly beautiful, completed the
picture of the finest-looking fellow I have seen within my recollection.
His person was very slight, and his feet and hands
small, and particularly well shaped. Like most of his countrymen
of later years, his dress was half European, and much less
becoming, of course, than the turban and trowser. Pantaloons,
rather loose, a light fawn-coloured short jacket, a red cap, with a
blue tassel, and stockings, without shoes, were enough to give
him the appearance of a dandy half through his toilet. He
entered with an indolent step, bowed, without smiling, and
throwing one of his feet under him, sunk down upon the divan,
and beckoned for his pipe. The Turk in attendance kicked off
his slippers, and gave him the long tube with its amber mouth-piece,
setting the bowl into a basin in the centre of the room.
The Bey put it to his handsome lips, and drew till the smoke
mounted to the ceiling, and then handed it, with a graceful
gesture, to the commodore.


The conversation went on through two interpretations. The
Bey’s interpreter spoke Greek and Turkish, and the ship’s pilot,
who accompanied us, spoke Greek and English, and the usual
expressions of good feeling, and offers of mutual service, were
thus passed between the puffs of the pipe with sufficient facility.
The dwarf soon entered with coffee. The small gilded cups had
about the capacity of a goodwife’s thimble, and were covered
with gold tops to retain the aroma. The fragrance of the rich
berry filled the room. We acknowledged, at once, the superiority
of the Turkish manner of preparing it. It is excessively strong,
and drunk without milk.


I looked into every corner while the attendants were removing
the cups, but could see no trace of a book. Ten or twelve guns,
with stocks inlaid with pearl and silver, two or three pair of gold-handled
pistols, and a superb Turkish cimetar and belt, hung
upon the walls, but there was no other furniture. We rose, after
a half hour’s visit, and were bowed out by the handsome Effendi,
coldly and politely. As we passed under the walls of the castle,
on the way to the boat, we saw six or seven women, probably a
part of his harem, peeping from the embrasures of one of the
bastions. Their heads were wrapped in white, one eye only left
visible. It was easy to imagine them Zuleikas after having seen
their master.


Went ashore at Castle Europe, with one or two of the officers,
to take a bath. An old Turk, sitting upon his hams, at the
entrance, pointed to the low door at his side, without looking at
us, and we descended, by a step or two, into a vaulted hall, with
a large, circular ottoman in the centre, and a very broad divan
all around. Two tall young Mussulmans, with only turbans and
waistcloths to conceal their natural proportions, assisted us to
undress, and led us into a stone room, several degrees warmer
than the first. We walked about here for a few minutes, and as
we began to perspire, were taken into another, filled with hot
vapour, and, for the first moment or two, almost intolerable. It
was shaped like a dome, with twenty or thirty small windows at
the top, several basins at the sides into which hot water was
pouring, and a raised stone platform in the centre, upon which
we were all requested, by gestures, to lie upon our backs. The
perspiration, by this time, was pouring from us like rain. I lay
down with the others, and a Turk, a dark-skinned, fine-looking
fellow, drew on a mitten of rough grass cloth, and laying one
hand upon my breast to hold me steady, commenced rubbing me
without water, violently. The skin peeled off under the friction,
and I thought he must have rubbed into the flesh repeatedly.
Nothing but curiosity to go through the regular operation of a
Turkish bath prevented my crying out “Enough!” He rubbed
away, turning me from side to side, till the rough glove passed
smoothly all over my body and limbs, and then handing me a
pair of wooden slippers, suffered me to rise. I walked about for
a few minutes, looking with surprise at the rolls of skin he had
taken from me, and feeling almost transparent as the hot air blew
upon me.


In a few minutes my Mussulman beckoned to me to follow him
to a smaller room, where he seated me on a stone beside a fount
of hot water. He then made some thick soap-suds in a basin,
and, with a handful of fine flax, soaped and rubbed me all over
again, and a few dashes of the hot water, from a wooden saucer,
completed the bath.


The next room, which had seemed so warm on our entrance,
was now quite chilly. We remained here until we were dry, and
then returned to the hall in which our clothes were left, where
beds were prepared on the divans, and we were covered in warm
cloths, and left to our repose. The disposition to sleep was
almost irresistible. We rose in a short time, and went to the
coffee-house opposite, when a cup of strong coffee, and a hookah
smoked through a highly ornamented glass bubbling with water,
refreshed us deliciously.


I have had ever since a feeling of suppleness and lightness,
which is like wings growing at my feet. It is certainly a
very great luxury, though, unquestionably, most enervating as
a habit.






LETTER XXVIII.




A Turkish Pic-Nic, on the plain of Troy—Fingers v. Forks—Trieste—The
Boschetto—Graceful freedom of Italian Manners—A Rural Fête—Fireworks—Amateur
Musicians.




Dardanelles.—The oddest invitation I ever had in my life
was from a Turkish Bey to a fête champètre, on the ruins of Troy!
We have just returned, full of wassail and pillaw, by the light of
an Asian moon.


The morning was such a one as you would expect in the
country where mornings were first made. The sun was clear,
but the breeze was fresh, and as we sat on the Bey’s soft divans,
taking coffee before starting, I turned my cheek to the open
window, and confessed the blessing of existence.


We were sixteen, from the ship, and our boat was attended
by his interpreter, the general of his troops, the governor of
Bournabashi (the name of the Turkish town near Troy), and a
host of attendants on foot and horseback. His cook had been
sent forward at daylight with the provisions.


The handsome Bey came to the door, and helped to mount us
upon his own horses, and we rode on, with the whole population
of the village assembled to see our departure. We forded the
Scamander, near the town, and pushed on at a hard gallop over
the plain. The Bey soon overtook us upon a fleet grey mare,
caparisoned with red trappings, holding an umbrella over his head,
which he courteously offered to the commodore on coming up.
We followed a grass path, without hill or stone, for nine or ten
miles, and after having passed one or two hamlets, with their
open threshing-floors, and crossed the Simois, with the water to
our saddle-girths, we left a slight rising ground by a sudden turn,
and descended to a cluster of trees, where the Turks sprang from
their horses, and made signs for us to dismount.


It was one of nature’s drawing-rooms. Thickets of brush and
willows enclosed a fountain, whose clear waters were confined in
a tank, formed of marble slabs, from the neighbouring ruins. A
spreading tree above, and soft meadow-grass to its very tip, left
nothing to wish but friends and a quiet mind to perfect its
beauty. The cook’s fires were smoking in the thicket, the
horses were grazing without saddle or bridle in the pasture
below, and we laid down upon the soft Turkish carpets,
spread beneath the trees, and reposed from our fatigues for an
hour.


The interpreter came when the sun had slanted a little across
the trees, and invited us to the Bey’s gardens, hard by. A path,
overshadowed with wild brush, led us round the little meadow
to a gate, close to the fountain-head of the Scamander. One of
the common cottages of the country stood upon the left, and in
front of it a large arbour, covered with a grape-vine, was under-laid
with cushions and carpets. Here we reclined, and coffee
was brought us with baskets of grapes, figs, quinces, and pomegranates,
the Bey and his officers waiting on us themselves with
amusing assiduity. The people of the house, meantime, were
sent to the fields for green corn, which was roasted for us, and
this with nuts, wine, and conversation, and a ramble to the
source of the Simois, which bursts from a cleft in the rock very
beautifully, whiled away the hours till dinner.


About four o’clock we returned to the fountain. A white
muslin cloth was laid upon the grass between the edge and the
overshadowing tree, and all around it were spread the carpets
upon which we were to recline while eating. Wine and melons
were cooling in the tank, and plates of honey and grapes, and
new-made butter (a great luxury in the Archipelago), stood on
the marble rim. The dinner might have fed Priam’s army.
Half a lamb, turkeys, and chickens, were the principal meats,
but there was, besides, “a rabble rout” of made dishes, peculiar
to the country, of ingredients at which I could not hazard even a
conjecture.


We crooked our legs under us with some awkwardness, and
producing our knives and forks (which we had brought with the
advice of the interpreter), commenced, somewhat abated in
appetite by too liberal a lunch. The Bey and his officers sitting
upright with, their feet under them, pinched off bits of meat
dexterously with the thumb and forefinger, passing from one to
the other a dish of rice, with a large spoon, which all used
indiscriminately. It is odd that eating with the fingers seemed
only disgusting to me in the Bey. His European dress probably
made the peculiarity more glaring. The fat old governor who
sat beside me was greased to the elbows, and his long grey beard
was studded with rice and drops of gravy to his girdle. He rose
when the meats were removed, and waddled off to the stream
below, where a wash in the clean water made him once more a
presentable person.


It is a Turkish custom to rise and retire while the dishes are
changing, and after a little ramble through the meadow, we
returned to a lavish spread of fruits and honey, which concluded
the repast.


It is doubted where Troy stood. The reputed site is a rising
ground, near the fountain of Bournabashi, to which we strolled
after dinner. We found nothing but quantities of fragments of
columns, believed by antiquaries to be the ruins of a city that
sprung up and died long since Troy.


We mounted and rode home by a round moon, whose light
filled the air like a dust of phosphoric silver. The plains were
in a glow with it. Our Indian summer nights, beautiful as they
are, give you no idea of an Asian moon.


The Bey’s rooms were lit, and we took coffee with him once
more, and, fatigued with pleasure and excitement, got to our
boats, and pulled up against the arrowy current of the Dardanelles
to the frigate.




A long, narrow valley, with precipitous sides, commences
directly at the gate of Trieste, and follows a small stream into
the mountains of Friuli. It is a very sweet, green place, and
studded on both sides with cottages and kitchen-gardens, which
supply the city with flowers and vegetables. The right hand
slope is called the Boschetto, and is laid out with pretty avenues
of beech and elm as a public walk, while, at every few steps,
stands a bowling-alley or drinking arbour, and here and there a
trim little restaurant, just large enough for a rural party. It is
perhaps a mile and a half in length, and one grand café in the
centre, usually tempts the better class of promenaders into the
expense of an ice.


It was a Sunday afternoon, and all Trieste was pouring out
to the Boschetto. I had come ashore with one of the officers,
and we fell into the tide. Few spots in the world are so variously
peopled as this thriving seaport, and we encountered every
style of dress and feature. The greater part were Jewesses.
How instantly the most common observer distinguishes them in
a crowd! The clear sallow skin, the sharp black eye and broad
eyebrow, the aquiline nose, the small person, the slow, cautious
step of the old, and the quick, restless one of the young, the
ambitious ornaments, and the look of cunning, which nothing
but the highest degree of education does away, mark the race
with the definiteness of another species.


We strolled on to the end of the walk, amused constantly with
the family groups sitting under the trees with their simple repast
of a fritata and a mug of beer, perfectly unconscious of the
presence of the crowd. There was something pastoral and
contented in the scene that took my fancy. Almost all the
female promenaders were without bonnets, and the mixture of
the Greek style of head-dress with the Parisian coiffure, had a
charming effect. There was just enough of fashion to take off
the vulgarity.


We coquetted along, smiled upon by here and there a group
that had visited the ship, and on our return sat down at a table
in front of the café, surrounded by some hundreds of people of
all classes, conversing and eating ices. I thought as I glanced
about me, how oddly such a scene would look in America. In
the broad part of an open walk, the whole town passing and
repassing, sat elegantly dressed ladies, with their husbands or
lovers, mothers with their daughters, and occasionally a group of
modest girls alone, eating or drinking with as little embarrassment
as at home, and preserving toward each other that courtesy
of deportment which in these classes of society can result only
from being so much in public.


Under the next tree to us sat an excessively pretty woman
with two gentlemen, probably her husband and cavalier. I
touched my hat to them as we seated ourselves, and this common
courtesy of the country was returned with smiles that put us
instantly upon the footing of a half acquaintance. A caress to
the lady’s greyhound, and an apology for smoking, produced a
little conversation, and when they rose to leave us, the compliments
of the evening were exchanged with a cordiality that in
America would scarce follow an acquaintance of months. I
mention it as an every-day instance of the kind-hearted and open
manners of Europe. It is what makes these countries so agreeable
to the stranger and the traveller. Every café, on a second
visit, seems like a home.




We were at a rural fête last night, given by a wealthy merchant
of Trieste, at his villa in the neighbourhood. We found
the company assembled on a terraced observatory, crowning a
summer-house, watching the sunset over one of the sweetest
landscapes in the world. We were at the head of a valley,
broken at the edge of the Adriatic by the city, and beyond
spread the golden waters of the gulf toward Venice, headed in on
the right by the long chain of the Friuli. The country around
was green and fertile, and small white villas peeped out everywhere
from the foliage, evidences of the prosperous commerce of
the town. We watched the warm colours out of the sky, and the
party having by this time assembled, we walked through the
long gardens to a house open with long windows from the ceiling
to the floor, and furnished only with the light and luxurious
arrangement of summer.


Music is the life of all amusement within the reach of Italy,
and the waltzing was mingled with performances on the piano
(and very wonderful ones to me) by an Italian count and his
friend, a German. They played duets in a style I have seldom
heard even by professors.


The supper was fantastically rural. The table was spread
under a large tree, from the branches of which was trailed a
vine, by a square frame of lattice-work in the proportions of a
pretty saloon. The lamps were hung in coloured lanterns among
the branches, and the trunk of the tree passed through the
centre of the table hollowed to receive it. The supper was
sumptuously splendid, and the effect of the party within, seen
from the grounds about, through the arched and vine-concealed
doors, was the most picturesque imaginable.


A waltz or two followed, and we were about calling for our
horses, when the whole place was illuminated with a discharge
of fireworks. Every description of odd figures was described in
flame during the hour they detained us, and the bright glare on
the trees, and the figures of the party strolling up and down the
gravelled walks, was admirably beautiful.


They do these things so prettily here! We were invited out
on the morning of the same day, and expected nothing but a
drive and a cup of tea, and we found an entertainment worthy
of a king. The simplicity and frankness with which we were
received, and the unpretendingness of the manner of introducing
the amusements of the evening, might have been lessons in
politeness to nobles.


A drive to town by starlight, and a pull off to the ship in the
cool and refreshing night air, concluded a day of pure pleasure.
It has been my good fortune of late to number many such.






LETTER XXIX.




The Dardanelles—Visit from the Pacha—His Delight at hearing the Piano—Turkish
Fountains—Caravan of Mules laden with Grapes—Turkish
Mode of Living—Houses, Cafés, and Women—The Mosque and the
Muezzin—American Consul of the Dardanelles, another “Caleb
Quotem.”




Coast of Asia.—We have lain in the mouth of the Dardanelles
sixteen mortal days, waiting for a wind. Like Don Juan
(who passed here on his way to Constantinople)—




 

“Another time we might have liked to see ’em,


But now are not much pleased with Cape Sigæum.”


 



An occasional trip with the boats to the watering-place, a
Turkish bath, and a stroll in the bazaar of the town behind the
castle, gazing with a glass at the tombs of Ajax and Achilles,
and the long, undulating shores of Asia, eating often and
sleeping much, are the only appliances to our philosophy. One
cannot always be thinking of Hero and Leander, though he lie
in the Hellespont.


A merchant-brig from Smyrna is anchored just astern of us,
waiting like ourselves for this eternal northeaster to blow itself
out. She has forty or fifty passengers for Constantinople, among
whom are the wife of an American merchant (a Greek lady),
and Mr. Schauffler, a missionary, in whom I recognised a
quondam fellow-student. They were nearly starved on board
the brig, as she was provisioned but for a few days, and the
commodore has courteously offered them a passage in the
frigate. Fifty or sixty sail lie below Castle Europe, in the
same predicament. With the “cap of King Erricus,” this
cruising, pleasant as it is, would be a thought pleasanter to my
fancy.




Still wind-bound. The angel that




 

    “Looked o’er my almanac


And crossed out my ill-days,”


 



suffered a week or so to escape him here. Not that the ship is
not pleasant enough, and the climate deserving of its Sybarite
fame, and the sunsets and stars as much brighter than those of
the rest of the world, as Byron has described them to be (vide
letter to Leigh Hunt), but life has run in so deep a current with
me of late, that the absence of incident seems like water without
wine. The agreeable stir of travel, the incomplete adventure,
the change of costumes and scenery, the busy calls upon the
curiosity and the imagination, have become, in a manner, very
breath to me. Hitherto upon the cruise, we have scarce ever
been more than one or two days at a time out of port. Elba,
Sicily, Naples, Vienna, the Ionian Isles, and the various ports of
Greece have come and gone so rapidly, and so entirely without
exertion of my own, that I seem to have lived in a magic panorama.
After dinner on one day I visit a city here, and the day
or two after, lounging and reading and sleeping meanwhile quietly
at home, I find myself rising from table, hundreds of miles
farther to the north or east, and another famous city before me,
having taken no care, and felt no motion, nor encountered danger
or fatigue. A summer cruise in the Mediterranean is certainly
the perfection of sight-seeing. With a sea as smooth as a river,
and cities of interest, classical and mercantile, everywhere on the
lee, I can conceive of no class of persons to whom it would not
be delightful. A company of pleasure, in a private vessel, would
see all Greece and Italy with less trouble and expense than is
common on a trip to the lakes.




“All hands up anchor!” The dog-vane points at last to
Constantinople. The capstan is manned, the sails loosed, the
quarter-master at the wheel, and the wind freshens every
moment from the “sweet south.” “Heave round merrily!”
The anchor is dragged in by this rushing Hellespont, and holds
on as if the bridge of Xerxes were tangled about the flukes.
“Up she comes at last,” and, yielding to her broad canvass, the
gallant frigate begins to make headway against the current.
There is nothing in the whole world of senseless matter, so like
a breathing creature as a ship! The energy of her motion, the
beauty of her shape and contrivance, and the ease with which
she is managed by the one mind upon her quarter-deck, to
whose voice she is as obedient as the courser to the rein, inspire
me with daily admiration. I have been four months a guest in
this noble man-of-war, and to this hour, I never set my foot on
her deck without a feeling of fresh wonder. And then Cooper’s
novels read in a ward-room as grapes eat in Tuscany. It were
missing one of the golden leaves of a life not to have thumbed
them on a cruise.


The wind has headed us off again, and we have dropped
anchor just below the castles of the Dardanelles. We have
made but eight miles, but we have new scenery from the ports,
and that is something to a weary eye. I was as tired of “the
shores of Ilion” as ever was Ulysses. The hills about our
present anchorage are green and boldly marked, and the frowning
castles above us give that addition to the landscape which is
alone wanting on the Hudson. Sestos and Abydos are six or
seven miles up the stream. The Asian shore (I should have
thought it a pretty circumstance, once, to be able to set foot
either in Europe or Asia in five minutes) is enlivened by numbers
of small vessels, tracking up with buffaloes, against wind and
tide. And here we lie, says the old pilot, without hope till the
moon changes. The “fickle moon,” quotha! I wish my friends
were half as constant!


The Pacha of the Dardanelles has honoured us with a visit.
He came in a long caique, pulled by twenty stout rascals, his
Excellency of “two tails” sitting on a rich carpet on the bottom
of the boat, with his boy of a year old in the same uniform as
himself, and his suite of pipe and slipper-bearers, dwarf and
executioner, sitting cross-legged about him. He was received
with the guard and all the honour due to his rank. His face is that
of a cold, haughty, and resolute, but well-born man, and his son
is like him. He looked at everything attentively, without
expressing any surprise, till he came to the pianoforte, which one
of the ladies played to his undisguised delight. It was the first
he had ever seen. He inquired, through his interpreter, if she
had not been all her life in learning.




The poet says, “The seasons of the year come in like
masquers.” To one who had made their acquaintance in New-England,
most of the months would literally pass incog. in Italy.
But here is honest October, the same merry old gentleman,
though I meet him in Asia, and I remember him, last year, at
the baths of Lucca, as unchanged as here. It has been a clear,
bright, invigorating day, with a vitality in the air as rousing to
the spirits as a blast from the “horn of Astolpho.” I can
remember just such a day ten years ago. It is odd how a little
sunshine will cling to the memory when loves and hates that, in
their time, convulsed the very soul, are so easily forgotten.


We heard yesterday that there was a Turkish village seven
or eight miles in the mountains on the Asian side, and, as a
variety to the promenade on the quarter-deck, a ramble was
proposed to it.


We landed, this morning, on the bold shore of the Dardanelles,
and, climbing up the face of a sand-hill, struck across a broad
plain, through bush and brier, for a mile. On the edge of a
ravine we found a pretty road, half-hedged over with oak and
hemlock, and a mounted Turk, whom we met soon after, with a
gun across his pummel, and a goose looking from his saddle-bag,
directed us to follow it till we reached the village.


It was a beautiful path, flecked with the shade of leaves of all
the variety of eastern trees, and refreshed with a fountain at
every mile. About half way we stopped at a spring welling
from a rock, under a large fig-tree, from which the water poured,
as clear as crystal, into seven tanks, and one after the other
rippling away from the last into a wild thicket, whence a stripe
of brighter green marked its course down the mountain. It was
a spot worthy of Tempé. We seated ourselves on the rim of the
rocky basin, and, with a drink of bright water, and a half hour’s
repose, re-commenced our ascent, blessing the nymph of the
fount, like true pilgrims of the East.


A few steps beyond we met a caravan of the pacha’s tithe-gatherers,
with mules laden with grapes; the turbaned and
showily-armed drivers, as they came winding down the dell,
produced the picturesque effect of a theatrical ballet. They
laid their hands on their breasts, with grave courtesy, as they
approached, and we helped ourselves to the ripe, blushing clusters,
as the panniers went by, with Arcadian freedom.


We reached the summit of the ridge a little before noon, and
turned our faces back for a moment to catch the cool wind from
the Hellespont. The Dardanelles came winding out from the
hills, just above Abydos, and sweeping past the upper castles of
Europe and Asia, rushed down by Tenedos into the Archipelago.
Perhaps twenty miles of its course lay within our view. Its
colours were borrowed from the divine sky above, and the rainbow
is scarce more varied or brighter. The changing purple
and blue of the mid-stream, specked with white crests, the
chrysoprase green of the shallows, and the dyes of the various
depths along the shore, gave it the appearance of a vein of
transparent marble, inlaid through the valley. The frigate
looked like a child’s boat on its bosom. To our left, the tombs
of Ajax and Achilles were just distinguishable in the plains
of the Scamander, and Troy (if Troy ever stood) stood back
from the sea, and the blue-wreathed isles of the Archipelago
bounded the reach of the eye. It was a view that might “cure
a month’s grief in a day.”


We descended now into a kind of cradle valley, yellow with
rich vineyards. It was alive with people gathering in the
grapes. The creaking wagons filled the road, and shouts and
laughter rang over the mountain-sides merrily. The scene would
have been Italian, but for the turbans peering out everywhere
from the leaves, and those diabolical-looking buffaloes in the
wagons. The village was a mile or two before us, and we
loitered on, entering here and there a vineyard, where the only
thing evidently grudged us was our peep at the women. They
scattered like deer as we stepped over the walls.


Near the village we found a grave Turk, of whom one of the
officers made some inquiries, which were a part of our errand to
the mountains. It may spoil the sentiment of my description,
but, in addition to the poetry of the ramble, we were to purchase
beef for the mess. His bullocks were out at grass (feeding in
pastoral security, poor things!), and he invited us to his house,
while he sent his boy to drive them in. I recognised them, when
they came, as two handsome steers, which had completed the
beauty of an open glade, in the centre of a clump of forest trees,
on our route. The pleasure they have afforded to the eye will
be repeated upon the palate—a double destiny not accorded to
all beautiful creatures.


Our host led us up a flight of rough stone steps to the second
story of his house, where an old woman sat upon her heels,
rolling out paste, and a younger one nursed a little Turk at her
bosom. They had, like every man, woman, or child I have seen
in this country, superb eyes and noses. No chisel could improve
the meanest of them in these features. Our friend’s wife seemed
ashamed to be caught with her face uncovered, but she offered
us cushions on the floor before she retired, and her husband
followed up her courtesy with his pipe.


We went thence to the café, where a bubbling hookah, a cup
of coffee, and a divan, refreshed us a little from our fatigues.
While the rest of the party were lingering over their pipes, I
took a turn through the village in search of the house of the
Aga. After strolling up and down the crooked streets for half an
hour, a pretty female figure, closely enveloped in her veil, and
showing, as she ran across the street, a dainty pair of feet in
small yellow slippers, attracted me into the open court of the
best-looking house in the village. The lady had disappeared,
but a curious-looking carriage, lined with rich Turkey carpeting
and cushions, and covered with red curtains, made to draw
close in front, stood in the centre of the court. I was going up
to examine it, when an old man, with a beard to his girdle, and
an uncommonly rich turban, stepped from the house and
motioned me angrily away. A large wolf-dog, which he held
by the collar, added emphasis to his command, and I retreated
directly. A giggle and several female voices from the closely-latticed
window, rather aggravated the mortification. I had
intruded on the premises of the Aga, a high offence in Turkey,
when a woman is in the case.


It was “deep i’ the afternoon,” when we arrived at the beach,
and made signal for a boat. We were on board as the sky
kindled with the warm colours of an Asian sunset—a daily offset
to our wearisome detention which goes far to keep me in temper.
My fear is that the commodore’s patience is not “so good a
continuer” as this “vento maledetto,” as the pilot calls it, and
in such a case I lose Constantinople most provokingly.


Walked to the Upper Castle Asia, some eight miles above our
anchorage. This is the main town on the Dardanelles, and
contains forty or fifty thousand inhabitants. Sestos and Abydos
are a mile or two farther up the Strait.


We kept along the beach for an hour or two, passing
occasionally a Turk on horseback, till we were stopped by a
small and shallow creek without a bridge, just on the skirts of
the town. A woman with one eye peeping from her veil,
dressed in a tunic of fine blue cloth, stood at the head of a large
drove of camels on the other side, and a beggar with one eye,
smoked his pipe on the sand at a little distance. The water was
knee-deep, and we were hesitating on the brink, when the beggar
offered to carry us across on his back—a task he accomplished
(there were six of us) without taking his pipe from his mouth.


I tried in vain to get a peep at the camel-driver’s wife or
daughter, but she seemed jealous of showing even her eyebrow,
and I followed on to the town. The Turks live differently from
every other people, I believe. You walk through their town and
see every individual in it, except perhaps the women of the
pacha. Their houses are square boxes, the front side of which
lifts on a hinge in the day-time, exposing the whole interior, with
its occupants squatted in the corners or on the broad platform
where their trades are followed. They are scarce larger than
boxes in the theatre, and the roof projects into the middle of the
street, meeting that of the opposite neighbour, so that the
pavement between is always dark and cool. The three or four
Turkish towns I have seen, have the appearance of cabins
thrown up hastily after a fire. You would not suppose they were
intended to last more than a month at the farthest.


We roved through the narrow streets an hour or more,
admiring the fine bearded old Turks, smoking cross-legged in
the cafés, the slipper-makers with their gay morocco wares in
goodly rows around them, the wily Jews with their high caps and
caftans (looking, crouched among their merchandise, like the
“venders of old bottles and abominable lies,” as they are drawn
in the plays of Queen Elizabeth’s time), the muffled and
gliding spectres of the Moslem women, and the livelier-footed
Greek girls, in their velvet jackets and braided hair, and by this
time we were kindly disposed to our dinners.


On our way to the consul’s, where we were to dine, we passed
a mosque. The minaret (a tall peaked tower, about of the shape
and proportions of a pencil-case) commanded a view down the
principal streets; and a stout fellow, with a sharp clear voice,
leaned over the balustrade at the top, crying out the invitation to
prayer in a long drawling sing-song, that must have been audible
on the other side of the Hellespont. Open porches, supported
by a paling, extended all around the church, and the floors were
filled with kneeling Turks, with their pistols and ataghans lying
beside them. I had never seen so picturesque a congregation.
The slippers were left in hundreds at the threshold, and the bare
and muscular feet and legs, half concealed by the full trowsers,
supported as earnest a troop of worshippers as ever bent forehead
to the ground. I left them rising from a flat prostration,
and hurried after my companions to dinner.


Our consul of the Dardanelles is an American. He is absent
just now, in search of a runaway female slave of the sultan’s;
and his wife, a gracious Italian, full of movement and hospitality,
does the honours of his house in his absence. He is a physician
as well as consul and slave-catcher, and the presents of a hand-organ,
a French clock, and a bronze standish, rather prove him
to be a favourite with the “brother of the sun.”


We were smoking the hookah after dinner, when an intelligent-looking
man, of fifty or so, came in to pay us a visit. He is at
present an exile from Constantinople, by order of the Grand
Seignior, because a brother physician, his friend, failed in an
attempt to cure one of the favourites of the imperial harem!
This is what might be called “sympathy upon compulsion.” It
is unnecessary, one would think, to make friendship more
dangerous than common human treachery renders it already.






LETTER XXX.




Turkish Military Life—A Visit to the Camp—Turkish Music—Sunsets—The
Sea of Marmora.




A half hour’s walk brought us within sight of the pacha’s
camp. The green and white tents of five thousand Turkish
troops were pitched on the edge of a stream, partly sheltered by
a grove of noble oaks, and defended by wicker batteries at
distances of thirty or forty feet. We were stopped by the
sentinel on guard, while a message was sent in to the pacha for
permission to wait upon him. Meantime a number of young
officers came out from their tents, and commenced examining
our dresses with the curiosity of boys. One put on my gloves,
another examined the cloth of my coat, a third took from me a
curious stick I had purchased at Vienna, and a more familiar
gentleman took up my hand, and after comparing it with his own
black fingers, stroked it with an approving smile that was meant
probably as a compliment. My companions underwent the same
review, and their curiosity was still unsated when a good-looking
officer, with his cimetar under his arm, came to conduct us to the
commander-in-chief.


The long lines of tents were bent to the direction of the
stream, and, at short distances, the silken banner stuck in the
ground under the charge of a sentinel, and a divan covered with
rich carpets under the shade of the nearest tree, marked the tent
of an officer. The interior of those of the soldiers exhibited
merely a stand of muskets and a raised platform for bed and
table, covered with coarse mats, and decked with the European
accoutrements now common in Turkey. It was the middle of
the afternoon, and most of the officers lay asleep on low ottomans,
with their tent-curtains undrawn, and their long chibouques
beside them, or still at their lips. Hundreds of soldiers loitered
about, engaged in various occupations, sweeping, driving their
tent-stakes more firmly into the ground, cleaning arms, cooking,
or with their heels under them playing silently at dominoes.
Half the camp lay on the opposite bank of the stream, and there
was repeated the same warlike picture, the white uniform and
the loose red cap with its gold bullion and blue tassel, appearing
and disappearing between the rows of tents, and the bright red
banners clinging to the staff in the breathless sunshine.


We soon approached the splendid pavilion of the pacha,
unlike the rest in shape, and surrounded by a quantity of
servants, some cooking at the root of a tree, and all pursuing
their vocation with a singular earnestness. A superb banner of
bright crimson silk, wrought with long lines of Turkish characters,
probably passages from the Koran, stood in a raised
socket guarded by two sentinels. Near the tent, and not far
from the edge of the stream, stood a gaily-painted kiosk, not
unlike the fantastic summer-houses sometimes seen in a European
garden, and here our conductor stopped, and kicking off
his slippers, motioned for us to enter.


We mounted the steps, and passing a small entrance-room
filled with guards, stood in the presence of the commander-in-chief.
He sat on a divan, cross-legged, in a military frock-coat
wrought with gold on the collar and cuffs, a sparkling diamond
crescent on his breast, and a cimetar at his side, with a belt
richly wrought, and held by a buckle of dazzling brilliance. His
aide sat beside him, in a dress somewhat similar, and both
appeared to be men of about forty. The pacha is a stern, dark,
soldier-like man, with a thick, straight beard as black as jet, and
features which look incapable of a smile. He bowed without
rising when we entered, and motioned for us to be seated. A
little conversation passed between him and the consul’s son, who
acted as our interpreter, and coffee came in almost immediately.
There was an aroma about it which might revive a mummy.
The small china-cups, with thin gold filagree sockets, were soon
emptied and taken away, and the officer in waiting introduced a
soldier to go through the manual exercise by way of amusing us.


He was a powerful fellow, and threw his musket about with
so much violence, that I feared every moment the stock, lock,
and barrel would part company. He had taken off his shoes
before venturing into the presence of his commander, and looked
oddly enough, playing the soldier in his stockings. I was
relieved of considerable apprehension when he ordered arms, and
backed out to his slippers.


The next exhibition was that of a military band. A drum-major,
with a proper gold-headed stick, wheeled some sixty
fellows with all kinds of instruments under the windows of the
kiosk, and with a whirl of his baton, the harmony commenced.
I could just detect some resemblance to a march. The drums
rolled, the “ear-piercing fifes” fulfilled their destiny, and trombone,
serpent, and horn showed of what they were capable.
The pacha got upon his knees to lean out of the window, and as
I rose from my low seat at the same time, he pulled me down
beside him, and gave me half his carpet, patting me on the back,
and pressing me to the window with his arm over my neck. I
have observed frequently among the Turks this singular familiarity
of manners both to strangers and to one another. It is
an odd contrast with their habitual gravity.


The sultan, I think unwisely, has introduced the European
uniform into his army. With the exception of the Tunisian
cap, which is substituted for a thick and handsome turban, the
dress is such as is worn by the soldiers of the French army.
Their tailors are of course bad, and their figures, accustomed
only to the loose and graceful costume of the East, are awkward
and constrained. I never saw so uncouth a set of fellows as the
five thousand Mussulmans in this army of the Dardanelles; and
yet in their Turkish trowsers and turban, with the belt stuck
full of arms, and their long moustache, they would be as martial-looking
troops as ever followed a banner.


We embarked at sunset to return to the ship. The shell-shaped
caique, with her tall sharp extremities and fantastic sail,
yielded to the rapid current of the Hellespont; and our two
boatmen, as handsome a brace of Turks as were ever drawn in a
picture, pulled their legs under them more closely, and commenced
singing the alternate stanzas of a villainous duet. The
helmsman’s part was rather humorous, and his merry black eye
redeemed it somewhat, but his fellow was as grave as a dervish,
and howled as if he were ferrying over Xerxes after his defeat.


If I were to live in the East as long as the wandering Jew,
I think these heavenly sunsets, evening after evening, scarce
varying by a shade, would never become familiar to my eye.
They surprise me day after day, like some new and brilliant
phenomenon, though the thoughts which they bring, as it were
by a habit contracted of the hour, are almost always the same.
The day, in these countries where life flows so thickly, is
engrossed, and pretty busily too, by the present. The past comes
up with the twilight, and wherever I may be, and in whatever
scene mingling, my heart breaks away, and goes down into
the west with the sun. I am at home as duly as the bird settles
to her nest.


It was natural in paying the boatman, after such a musing
passage, to remember the poetical justice of Uhland in crossing
the ferry:—




 

“Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee!


  Take! I give it willingly;


For, invisibly to thee,


  Spirits twain have crossed with me!”


 



I should have paid for one other seat, at least, by this fanciful
tariff. Our unmusical Mussulmans were content, however, and
we left them to pull back against the tide, by a star that cast a
shadow like a meteor.




The moon changed this morning, and the wind, that in this
clime of fable is as constant to her as Endymion, changed too.
The white caps vanished from the hurrying waves of the
Dardanelles, and after an hour or two of calm, the long-expected
breeze came tripping out of Asia, with oriental softness, and is
now leading us gently up the Hellespont.


As we passed between the two castles of the Dardanelles, the
commodore saluted the pacha with nineteen guns, and in half an
hour we were off Abydos, where our friend from the south has
deserted us, and we are compelled to anchor. It would be unclassical
to complain of delay on so poetical a spot. It is beautiful,
too. The shores on both the Asian and European sides are
charmingly varied and the sun lies on them, and on the calm
strait that links them, with a beauty worthy of the fair spirit of
Hero. A small Turkish castle occupies the site of the “torch-lit
tower” of Abydos, and there is a corresponding one at Sestos.
The distance between looks little more than a mile—not a surprising
feat for any swimmer, I should think. Lady-loves in our
day, alas! are not won so lightly. The current of the Hellespont,
however, remains the same, and so does the moral of Leander’s
story. The Hellespont of matrimony may be crossed with the
tide. The deuce is to get back!


Lampsacus on the starboard-bow, and a fairer spot lies on no
river’s brink. Its trees, vineyards, and cottages, slant up almost
imperceptibly from the water’s edge, and the hills around have
the look “of a clean and quiet privacy,” with a rural elegance
that might tempt Shakspeare’s Jaques to come and moralise.
By the way, there have been philosophers here. Did not
Alexander forgive the city its obstinate defence for the sake of
Anaximenes? There was a sad dog of a deity worshipped here
about that time.


I take a fresh look at it from the port, as I write. Pastures,
every one with a bordering of tall trees, cattle as beautiful as
the daughter of Ianchus, lanes of wild shrubbery, a greener
stripe through the fields like the track of a stream, and
smoke curling from every cluster of trees, telling as plainly
as the fancy can read, that there is both poetry and pillaw at
Lampsacus.


Just opposite stands the modern Gallipoli, a Turkish town of
some thirty thousand inhabitants, at the head of the Hellespont.
The Hellespont gets broader here, and a few miles farther up we
open into the Sea of Marmora. A French brig-of-war, that has
been hanging about us for a fortnight (watching our movements
in this unusual cruise for an American frigate, perhaps), is just
ahead, and a quantity of sail are stretching off on the southern
tack, to make the best use of their new sea-room for beating up
to Constantinople.


We hope to see Seraglio Point to-morrow. Mr. Hodgson, the
secretary of our embassy to Turkey, has just come on board from
the Smyrna packet, and the agreeable preparations for going on
shore are already on the stir. I do not find that the edge of
curiosity dulls with use. The prospect of seeing a strange city,
to-morrow, produces the same quick-pulsed emotion that I felt
in the diligence two years ago, rattling over the last post to Paris.
The entrances to Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Athens, are
marked each with as white a stone. He may “gather no moss”
who rolls about the world; but that which the gold of the careful
cannot buy—pleasure—when the soul is most athirst for it, grows
under his feet. Of the many daily reasons I find to thank Providence,
not the least is that of being what Clodio calls himself
in the play, “a here-and-there-ian.”






LETTER XXXI.




Gallipoli—Aristocracy of Beards—Turkish Shopkeepers—The Hospitable
Jew and his lovely Daughter—Unexpected Rencontre—Constantinople—The
Bosphorus, the Seraglio, and the Golden Horn.




What an image of life it is! The good ship dashes bravely
on her course—the spray flies from her prow—her sheets are
steady and full—to look up to her spreading canvass, and feel her
springing away beneath, you would not give her “for the best
horse the sun has in his stable.” The next moment, hey! the
foresail is aback! the wind baffles and dies, the ripples sink from
the sea, the ship loses her “way,” and the pennant drops to the
mast in a breathless calm! “Clear away the anchor!” and here
we are till this “crab in the ascendant” that makes “all our
affairs go backwards,” yields to our better stars.


We went ashore to take a stroll through the streets of Gallipoli
(the ancient Gallipoli of Thrace) as a sop to our patience. A
deeply-laden Spanish merchant lay off the pier, with a crew of
red-capped and olive-complexioned fellows taking in grain from
a Turkish caique, and a crowd of modern Thracians, in the noble
costumes and flowing beards of the country, closed around us as
we stepped from the boat.


A street of cafés led from the end of the pier, and as usual,
they were all crowded with Turks, leaning forward over their
slippers, and crossing their long chibouques as they conversed
together. It is odd that even the habit of a life can make their
painful and unnatural posture an agreeable one. Yet they will
sit with their legs crooked under them, in a way that strains the
unaccustomed knee till it cracks again, motionless by the hour
together.


I had no idea till I came to Turkey how rare a beauty is a
handsome beard. Here no man shaves, and there is as great a
difference in beards as in stature. The men of rank that we
have seen, might have been picked out anywhere by their
superior beauty in this respect. It grows vilely, it seems to me,
on scoundrels. The beggars ashore, the low Jews who board us
with provisions, the greater part of the soldiers and petty shop-keepers
of the towns, have all some mark in their beards, that
nature never intended them for gentlemen. Your smooth chin
is a great leveller, trust me!


These Turkish towns have a queer look altogether. Gallipoli
is so seldom touched by a Christian foot, that it preserves all its
peculiarities entire, and is likely to do so for the next century.
We walked on, ascending a narrow street completely shut in by
the roofs of the low houses meeting above. There are no
carriages or carts, and the Turks glide over the stones in their
loose slippers with an indolent shuffle that seems rather to add
to the silence. You hear no voice, for they seldom speak, and
never above the key of a bassoon; and what with the odd
costumes, long beards, grave faces, and twilight darkness all about
you, it is like a scene on the stage when the lights are lowered in
some incantation scene.


Each street is devoted to some one trade. We first got among
the grocers. Every shop was a fellow to the other, containing
an old Turk, squatted among soap, jars of oil, raisins, olives,
pickled fish, and sweetmeats, and everything within his reach.
He would sell you his whole stock in trade without taking his
pipe from his mouth, or disturbing his yellow slipper.


The next turn brought us into the Jews’ quarter. They were all
tailors, and their shops were as dark as Erebus. The light crept
through the chinks in the roof, falling invariably on the same
aquiline nose and ragged beard, with now and then a pair of
copper spectacles, while in the back of the dim tenement sat an
old woman with a group of handsome little Hebrews, (they are
always handsome when very young, with their clear skins and
dark eyes) the whole family stitching away most diligently. It
was laughable to see how every shop in the street presented the
same picture.


We then got among the slipper-makers, and vile work they
turned out. We were hesitating between two turnings when an
old Jew, with a high lamb’s-wool cap and long black caftan,
rather shabby for wear, addressed me in a sort of lingua Franca,
half Italian, half French, with a sprinkling of Spanish, and
inquiring whether I belonged to the frigate in the harbour, offered
to supply us with provisions, &c. &c. I declined his services,
and he asked us directly to his house to take coffee—as plump a
non sequitur as I have met in my travels.


We followed the old man to a very secluded part of the town,
stopping a moment by the way to look at the remains of an old
fort built by the Genoese in the stout times of Andrea Doria.
(Where be their galleys now?) Hajji (so he was called, he said
from having been to Jerusalem) stopped at last at the door of a
shabby house, and throwing it open with a hospitable smile, bade
us welcome. We mounted a creaking stair, and found things
within better than the promise of the exterior. One half the
floor of the room was raised perhaps a foot, and matted neatly,
and a nicely carpeted and cushioned divan ran around the three
sides, closed at the two extremities by a lattice-work like the
arm of a sofa. The windows were set in fantastical arabesque
frames, the upper panes coarsely coloured, but with a rich effect,
and the view hence stretched over the Hellespont toward
the south, with a delicious background of the valleys about
Lampsacus. No palace window looks on a fairer scene. The
broad Strait was as smooth as the amber of the old Hebrew’s
pipe, and the vines that furnished Themistocles with wine during
his exile in Persia, looked of as golden a green in the light of the
sunset, as if the honour of the tribute still warmed their classic
juices.


The rich Turkish coffee was brought in by an old woman, who
left her slippers below as she stepped upon the mat, and our host
followed with chibouques and a renewed welcome. A bright
pair of eyes had been peeping for some time from one of the
chambers, and with Hajji’s permission I called out a graceful
creature of fourteen, with a shape like a Grecian Cupidon and a
timid sweetness of expression that might have descended to her
from the gentle Ruth of Scripture. There are lovely beings all
over the world. It were a desert else. But I did not think to
find such a diamond in a Hebrew’s bosom. I have forgotten to
mention her hair, which was very remarkable. I thought at
first it was dyed with henna. It covered her back and shoulders
in the greatest profusion, braided near the head, and floating
below in glossy and silken curls of a richness you would deny
nature had you seen it in a painting. The colour was of the
deep burnt brown of a berry, almost black in the shade, but
catching the light at every motion like threads of gold. In my
life I have seen nothing so beautiful. It was the “hair
lustrous and smiling” of quaint old Burton.[13] There was something
in it that you could scarce avoid associating with the
character of the wearer—as if it stole its softness from some
inborn gentleness in her heart. I shall never thread my fingers
through such locks again!


We shook our kind host by the hand, and stepped gingerly
down in the fading twilight to our boat. As we were crossing
an open space between the bazaars, two gentlemen in a costume
half European, half Oriental, with spurs and pistols, and a
quantity of dust on their moustaches, passed, and immediately
turned and called me by name. The last place in which I should
have looked for acquaintances, would be Gallipoli. They were
two French exquisites whom I had known at Rome, travelling to
Constantinople with no more serious object, I dare be sworn,
than to return with long beards from the East. They had just
arrived on horseback, and were looking for a khan. I commended
them to my old friend the Jew, who offered at once to
lodge them at his house, and we parted in this by-corner of
Thrace, as if we had but met for the second time in a morning
stroll to St. Peter’s.




We lay till noon in the glassy harbour of Gallipoli, and then
the breeze came slowly up the Hellespont, its advancing edge
marked by a crowd of small sail keeping even pace with its
wings. We soon opened into the extending sea of Marmora,
and the cloudy island of the same name is at this moment on
our lee. The sun is setting gorgeously over the hills of Thrace,
and thankful for sea-room once more, and a good breeze, we
make ourselves certain of seeing Constantinople to-morrow.




We were ten miles distant when I came on deck this morning.
A long line of land with a slightly waving outline began to
emerge from the mist of sunrise, and with a glass I could distinguish
the clustering masses and shining eminences of a distant
and far extending city. We were approaching it with a cloud of
company. A Turkish ship-of-war, with the crescent and star
fluttering on her blood-red flag, a French cutter bearing the
handsome tricolor at her peak, and an uncounted swarm of
merchantmen, taking advantage of the newly-changed wind,
were spreading every thread of canvass, and stretching on as
eagerly as we toward the metropolis of the East. There was
something in the companionship which elated me. It seemed as
if all the world shared in my anticipations—as if all the world
were going to Constantinople.


I approached the mistress of the East with different feelings
from that which had inspired me in entering the older cities of
Europe. The interest of the latter sprang from the past. Rome,
Florence, Athens, were delightful from the store of history and
poetry I brought with me and had accumulated in my youth—from
what they once were, and for that of which they preserved
the ruins. Constantinople, on the contrary, is still the gem of
the Orient—still the home of the superb Turk, and the resort of
many nations of the East—still all that fires curiosity and excites
the imagination in the descriptions of the traveller. I was
coming to a living city, full of strange people and strange
costumes, language, and manners. It was, to the places I had
seen, like the warm and breathing woman perfect in life, to the
interesting but lifeless and mutilated statue.


As the distance lessened, the tall, slender, glittering minarets
of a hundred mosques were first distinguishable. Towers, domes,
and dark spots of cypresses next emerged to the eye, and a sea
of buildings, followed undulating in many swells and widening
along the line of the sea as if we were approaching a continent
covered to its farthest limits with one unbroken city.


We kept on with unslackened sail to the shore which seemed
closed before us. A few minutes opened to us a curving bay,
winding in and lost to the eye behind a swelling eminence, and
as if mosques, towers, and palaces, had spread away and opened
to receive us into their bosom, we shot into the heart of a busy
city, and dropped anchor at the feet of a cluster of hills, studded
from base to summit with buildings of indescribable splendour.


An American gentleman had joined us in the Dardanelles,
and stood with us, looking at the transcendent panorama.
“What is this lovely point, gemmed with gardens and fantastic
palaces, and with every variety of tree and building on its gentle
slope descending so gracefully to the sea?” The Seraglio!
“What is this opening of bright water, crowded with shipping,
and sprinkled with these fairy boats so gaily decked and so
slender, shooting from side to side like the crossing flight of a
thousand arrows?” The Golden Horn, that winds up through
the city and terminates in the valley of Sweet Waters! “And
what is this other stream, opening into the hills to the east, and
lined with glittering palaces as far as the eye can reach?” The
Bosphorus. “And what is this, and that, and the other exquisite
and surpassing beauty—features of a scene to which the earth
surely has no shadow of a parallel?” Patience! patience! We
have a month before us, and we will see.














“Hair lustrous and smiling. The trope is none of mine. Æneas
Sylvius hath crines ridentes.”—Anatomy of Melancholy.










LETTER XXXII.




Constantinople—An Adventure with the Dogs of Stamboul—The Sultan’s
Kiosk—The Bazaars—Georgians—Sweetmeats—Hindoostanee Fakeers—Turkish
Women and their Eyes—The Jews—A Token of Home—The
Drug Bazaar—Opium Eaters.




The invariable “Where am I?” with which a traveller awakes
at morning was to me never more agreeably answered. At Constantinople!
The early ship-of-war summons to “turn out,” was
obeyed with alacrity, and with the first boat after breakfast I
was set ashore at Tophana, the landing place of the Frank
quarter of Stamboul.


A row of low-built cafés, with a latticed enclosure and a plentiful
shade of plane-trees on the right; a large square, in the
centre of which stood a magnificent Persian fountain, as large as
a church, covered with lapis-lazuli and gold, and endless inscriptions
in Turkish; a mosque buried in cypresses on the left; a
hundred indolent-looking, large-trousered, moustached, and withal
very handsome men, and twice the number of snarling, wolfish,
and half-starved dogs, are some of the objects which the first
glance, as I stepped on shore, left on my memory.


I had heard that the dogs of Constantinople knew and hated a
Christian. By the time I had reached the middle of the square,
a wretched puppy at my heels had succeeded in announcing the
presence of a stranger. They were upon me in a moment from
every heap of garbage, and every hole and corner. I was beginning
to be seriously alarmed, standing perfectly still, with at
least a hundred infuriated dogs barking in a circle around me,
when an old Turk, selling sherbet under the shelter of the projecting
roof of the Persian fountain, came kindly to my relief.
A stone or two well aimed, and a peculiar cry, which I have
since tried in vain to imitate, dispersed the hungry wretches, and
I took a glass of the old man’s raising water, and pursued my
way up the street. The circumstance, however, had discoloured
my anticipations; nothing looked agreeably to me for an hour
after it.


I ascended through narrow and steep lanes, between rows of
small wooden houses, miserably built and painted, to the main
street of the quarter of Pera. Here live all Christians and
Christian ambassadors, and here I found our secretary of
legation, Mr. H., who kindly offered to accompany me to old
Stamboul.


We descended to the water-side, and stepping into an egg-shell
caique, crossed the Golden Horn, and landed on a pier between
the sultans green kiosk and the seraglio. I was fortunate in a
companion who knew the people and spoke the language. The
red-trousered and armed kervas, at the door of the kiosk, took
his pipe from his mouth, after a bribe and a little persuasion,
and motioned to a boy to show us the interior. A circular room,
with a throne of solid silver embraced in a double colonnade of
marble pillars, and covered with a roof laced with lapis lazuli
and gold, formed the place from which Sultan Mahmoud formerly
contemplated, on certain days, the busy and beautiful panorama
of his matchless bay. The kiosk is on the edge of the water,
and the poorest caikjee might row his little bark under its
threshold, and fill his monarch’s eye, and look on his monarch’s
face with the proudest. The green canvass curtains, which
envelop the whole building, have, for a long time, been unraised,
and Mahmoud is oftener to be seen on horseback, in the dress
of a European officer, guarded by troops in European costume
and array. The change is said to be dangerously unpopular.


We walked on to the square of Sultana Valide. Its large
area was crowded with the buyers and sellers of a travelling
fair—a sort of Jews’ market held on different days in different
parts of this vast capital. In Turkey every nation is distinguished
by its dress, and almost as certainly by its branch of
trade. On the right of the gate, under a huge plane-tree,
shedding its yellow leaves among the various wares, stood the
booths of a group of Georgians, their round and rosy-dark faces
(you would know their sisters must be half houris) set off with
a tall black cap of curling wool, their small shoulders with a
tight jacket studded with silk buttons, and their waist with a
voluminous silken sash, whose fringed ends fell over their heels
as they sat cross-legged, patiently waiting for custom. Hardware
is the staple of their shops, but the cross-pole in front is
fantastically hung with silken garters and tasselled cords, and
their own Georgian caps, with a gay crown of cashmere, enrich
and diversify the shelves. I bought a pair or two of blushing
silk garters of a young man, whose eyes and teeth should have
been a woman’s, and we strolled on to the next booth.


Here was a Turk, with a table covered by a broad brass
waiter, on which was displayed a tempting array of mucilage,
white and pink, something of the consistency of blanc-mange.
A dish of sugar, small gilded saucers, and long-handled, flat,
brass spoons, with a vase of rose-water, completed his establishment.
The grave Mussulman cut, sugared, and scented the
portions for which we asked, without condescending to look at us
or open his lips, and, with a glass of mild and pleasant sherbet
from his next neighbour, as immovable a Turk as himself, we
had lunched, extremely to my taste, for just five cents American
currency.


A little farther on I was struck with the appearance of two
men, who stood bargaining with a Jew. My friend knew them
immediately as fakeers, or religious devotees from Hindoostan.
He addressed them in Arabic, and, during their conversation of
ten minutes, I studied them with some curiosity. They were
singularly small, without any appearance of dwarfishness, their
limbs and persons slight, and very equally and gracefully proportioned.
Their features were absolutely regular, and, though
small as a child’s of ten or twelve years, were perfectly developed.
They appeared like men seen through an inverted opera-glass.
An exceedingly ashy, olive complexion, hair of a kind of glittering
black, quite unlike in texture and colour any I have ever
before seen; large, brilliant, intense black eyes, and lips (the
most peculiar feature of all), of lustreless black,[14] completed the
portraits of two as remarkable-looking men as I have anywhere
met. Their costume was humble, but not unpicturesque. A well-worn
sash of red silk enveloped the waist in many folds, and
sustained trowsers tight to the legs, but of the Turkish ampleness
over the hips. Their small feet, which seemed dried up to the
bone, were bare. A blanket, with a hood marked in a kind of
arabesque figure, covered their shoulders, and a high quilted
cap, with a rim of curling wool, was pressed down closely over
the forehead. A crescent-shaped tin vessel, suspended by a
leather strap to the waist, and serving the two purposes of a
charity-box, and a receptacle for bread and vegetables, seemed a
kind of badge of their profession. They were lately from Hindoostan,
and were begging their way still farther into Europe.
They received our proffered alms without any mark of surprise
or even pleasure, and laying their hands on their breasts, with
countenances perfectly immoveable, gave us a Hindoostanee
blessing, and resumed their traffic. They see the world, these
rovers on foot! And I think, could I see it myself in no other
way, I would e’en take sandal and scrip, and traverse it as a
dervish or beggar!


The alleys between the booths were crowded with Turkish
women, who seemed the chief purchasers. The effect of their
enveloped persons, and eyes peering from the muslin folds of the
yashmack, is droll to a stranger. It seemed to me like a masquerade,
and the singular sound of female voices, speaking through
several thicknesses of a stuff, bound so close on the mouth as to
show the shape of the lips exactly, perfected the delusion. It
reminded me of the half-smothered tones beneath the masks in
carnival-time. A clothes-bag with yellow slippers would have
about as much form, and might be walked about with as much
grace as a Turkish woman. Their fat hands, the finger-nails dyed
with henna, and their unexceptionably magnificent eyes, are all
that the stranger is permitted to peruse. It is strange how
universal is the beauty of the eastern eye. I have looked in vain
hitherto, for a small or inexpressive one. It is quite startling
to meet the gaze of such large liquid orbs, bent upon you from
their long silken fringes, with the unwinking steadiness of look
common to the females of this country. Wrapped in their veils,
they seem unconscious of attracting attention, and turn and look
you full in the face, while you seek in vain for a pair of lips to
explain by their expression the meaning of such particular
notice.


The Jew is more distinguishable at Constantinople than elsewhere.
He is compelled to wear the dress of his tribe (and its
“badge of sufferance,” too), and you will find him, wherever
there is trafficking to be done, in a small cap, not ungracefully
shaped, twisted about with a peculiar handkerchief of a small
black print, and set back so as to show the whole of his national
high and narrow forehead. He is always good humoured and
obsequious, and receives the curse with which his officious offers
of service are often repelled, with a smile, and a hope that he
may serve you another time. One of them, as we passed his
booth, called our attention to some newly-opened bales, bearing
the stamp, “TREMONT MILL, LOWELL, MASS.” It was a long distance
from home to meet such familiar words!


We left the square of the sultan mother, and entered a street
of confectioners. The East is famous for its sweetmeats, and truly
a more tempting array never visited the Christmas dream of a
schoolboy. Even Felix, the patissier nonpareil of Paris, might
take a lesson in jellies. And then for “candy” of all colours of
the rainbow (not shut enviously in with pitiful glass cases, but
piled up to the ceiling in a shop all in the street, as it might be
in Eutopia, with nothing to pay), it is like a scene in the Arabian
Nights. The last part of the parenthesis is almost true, for with
a small coin of the value of two American cents, I bought of a
certain kind called, in Turkish, “peace to your throat” (they
call things by such poetical names in the East), the quarter of
which I could not have eaten, even in my best “days of
sugar candy.” The women of Constantinople, I am told,
almost live on confectionery. They eat incredible quantities.
The sultan’s eight hundred wives and women employ five hundred
cooks, and consume two thousand five hundred pounds of sugar
daily! It is probably the most expensive item of the seraglio
kitchen.


A turn or two brought us to the entrance of a long dark passage,
of about the architecture of a covered bridge in our country.
A place richer in the oriental and picturesque could scarce
be found between the Danube and the Nile. It is the bazaar
of drugs. As your eye becomes accustomed to the light, you
distinguish vessels of every size and shape, ranged along the
receding shelves of a stall, and filled to the uncovered brim with
the various productions of the Orient. The edges of the baskets
and jars are turned over with rich coloured papers (a peculiar
colour to every drug), and broad spoons of boxwood are
crossed on the top. There is the henna, in a powder of deep
brown, with an envelope of deep Tyrian purple, and all the
precious gums in their jars, golden-leafed, and spices and dyes
and medicinal roots, and above hang anatomies of curious monsters,
dried and stuffed, and in the midst of all, motionless as the
box of sulphur beside him, and almost as yellow, sits a venerable
Turk, with his beard on his knees, and his pipe-bowl thrust
away over his drugs, its ascending smoke-curls his only sign
of life. This class of merchants is famous for opium eaters,
and if you pass at the right hour, you find the large eye of the
silent smoker dilated and wandering, his fingers busy in
tremulously counting his spice-wood beads, and the roof of his
stall wreathed with clouds of smoke, the vent to every species
of eastern enthusiasm. If you address him, he smiles, and
puts his hand to his forehead and breast, but condescends to
answer no question till it is thrice reiterated, and then in the
briefest word possible, he answers wide of your meaning, strokes
the smoke out of his moustache, and slipping the costly amber
between his lips, abandons himself again to his exalted revery.
I write this after being a week at Constantinople, during which
the Egyptian bazaar has been my frequent and most fancy-stirring
lounge. Of its forty merchants, there is not one whose picturesque
features are not imprinted deeply in my memory. I have
idled up and down in the dim light, and fingered the soft henna,
and bought small parcels of incense-wood for my pastille lamp,
studying the remarkable faces of the unconscious old Mussulmans,
till my mind became somehow tinctured of the East,
and (what will be better understood) my clothes steeped in the
mixed and agreeable odours of the thousand spices. Where are
the painters, that they have never found this mine of admirable
studies? There is not a corner of Constantinople, nor a man in
its streets, that were not a novel and a capital subject for the
pencil. Pray, Mr. Cole, leave things that have been painted so
often, as aqueducts and Italian ruins (though you do make
delicious pictures, and could never waste time or pencils on anything),
and come to the East for one single book of sketches!
How I have wished I was a painter since I have been here!














I have since met many of them in the streets of Constantinople, and I
find it a distinguishing feature of their race. They look as if their lips
were dead—as if the blood had dried beneath the skin.










LETTER XXXIII.




The Sultan’s Perfumer—Etiquette of Smoking—Temptations for Purchasers—Exquisite
Flavour of the Turkish Perfumes—The Slave
Market of Constantinople—Slaves from various Countries, Greek,
Circassian, Egyptian, Persian—African female Slaves—An Improvisatrice—Exposure
for Sale—Circassian Beauties prohibited to
Europeans—First sight of one, eating a Pie—Shock to romantic
Feelings—Beautiful Arab Girl chained to the Floor—The Silk
Merchant—A cheap Purchase.




An Abyssinian slave, with bracelets on his wrists and ankles,
a white turban, folded in the most approved fashion around his
curly head, and a showy silk sash about his waist, addressed us
in broken English as we passed a small shop on the way to the
Bozestein. His master was an old acquaintance of my polyglot
friend, and, passing in at a side door, we entered a dimly-lighted
apartment in the rear, and were received, with a profusion of
salaams, by the sultan’s perfumer. For a Turk, Mustapha
Effendi was the most voluble gentleman in his discourse that I
had yet met in Stamboul. A sparse grey beard just sprinkled a
pair of blown-up cheeks, and a collapsed double chin that fell in
curtain folds to his bosom, a moustache, of seven or eight hairs on
a side, curled demurely about the corners of his mouth, his heavy
oily black eyes twinkled in their pursy recesses, with the salacious
good humour of a satyr; and, as he coiled his legs under him on
the broad ottoman in the corner, his boneless body completely
lapped over them, knees and all, and left him, apparently, bolt
upright on his trunk, like a man amputated at the hips. A string
of beads in one hand, and a splendid narghilé, or rose-water pipe
in the other, completed as fine a picture of a mere animal as I
remember to have met in my travels.


My learned friend pursued the conversation in Turkish, and
in a few minutes, the black entered, with pipes of exquisite
amber filled with the mild Persian tobacco. Leaving his slippers
at the door, he dropped upon his knee, and placed two small
brass dishes in the centre of the room to receive the hot pipe
bowls, and, with a showy flourish of his long, naked arm, brought
round the rich mouth-pieces to our lips. A spicy atom of some
aromatic composition, laid in the centre of the bowl, removed
from the smoke all that could offend the most delicate organs,
and, as I looked about the perfumer’s retired sanctum, and my
eye rested on the small heaps of spice-woods, the gilded pastilles,
the curious bottles of attar of roses and jasmine, and thence to
the broad soft divans extending quite around the room, piled in
the corners with cushions of down, I thought Mustapha, the
perfumer, among those who lived by traffic, had the cleanliest
and most gentlemanlike vocation.


Observing that I smoked but little, Mustapha gave an order to
his familiar, who soon appeared, with two small gilded saucers;
one containing a jelly of incomparable delicacy and whiteness,
and the other a candied liquid, tinctured with quince and cinnamon.
My friend explained to me that I was to eat both, and
that Mustapha said, “on his head be the injury it would do me.”
There needed little persuasion. The cook to a court of fairies
might have mingled sweets less delicately.


For all this courtesy Mustapha finds his offset in the opened
hearts of his customers, when the pipes are smoked out, and there
is nothing to delay the offer of his costly wares. First calling
for a jar of jessamine, than which the sultan himself perfumes
his beard with no rarer, he turned it upside down, and, leaning
towards me, rubbed the moistened cork over my nascent moustache,
and waited with a satisfied certainty for my expression of
admiration as it “ascended me into the brain.” There was
no denying it was of celestial flavour. He held up his fingers:
“One? two? three? ten? How many bottles shall your slave
fill for you?” It was a most lucid pantomime. An interpreter
would have been superfluous.


The attar of roses stood next on the shelf. It was the best
ever sent from Adrianople. Bottle after bottle of different extracts
were passed under nasal review; each, one might think,
the triumph of the alchemy of flowers, and of each a specimen
was laid aside for me in a slender vial, dexterously capped with
vellum, and tied with a silken thread by the adroit Abyssinian.
I escaped emptying my purse by a single worthless coin, the fee
I required for my return boat over the Golden Horn—but I had
seen Mustapha the perfumer.


My friend led the way through several intricate windings, and
passing through a gateway, we entered a circular area, surrounded
with a single building divided into small apartments,
faced with open porches. It was the slave-market of Constantinople.
My first idea was to look round for Don Juan and
Johnson. In their place we found slaves of almost every eastern
nation, who looked at us with an “I wish to heaven that
somebody would buy us” sort of an expression, but none so
handsome as Haidee’s lover. In a low cellar, beneath one of the
apartments, lay twenty or thirty white men chained together by
the legs, and with scarce the covering required by decency. A
small-featured Arab stood at the door, wrapped in a purple-hooded
cloak, and Mr. H. addressing him in Arabic, inquired
their nations. He was not their master, but the stout fellow in
the corner, he said, was a Greek by his regular features, and the
boy chained to him was a Circassian by his rosy cheek and curly
hair, and the black-lipped villain with the scar over his forehead,
was an Egyptian doubtless, and the two that looked like brothers
were Georgians or Persians, or perhaps Bulgarians. Poor devils!
they lay on the clay floor with a cold easterly wind blowing in
upon them, dispirited and chilled, with the prospect of being sold
to a taskmaster for their best hope of relief.


A shout of African laughter drew us to the other side of the
bazaar. A dozen Nubian damsels, flat-nosed and curly-headed,
but as straight and fine-limbed as pieces of black statuary, lay
around on a platform in front of their apartment, while one sat
upright in the middle, and amused her companions by some
narration, accompanied by grimaces irresistibly ludicrous. Each
had a somewhat scant blanket, black with dirt, and worn as
carelessly as a lady carries her shawl. Their black, polished
frames were disposed about, in postures a painter would scarce
call ungraceful, and no start or change of attitude when we
approached, betrayed the innate coyness of the sex. After
watching the improvisatrice awhile, we were about passing on,
when a man came out from the inner apartment, and beckoning
to one of them to follow him, walked into the middle of the
bazaar. She was a tall, arrow-straight lass of about eighteen,
with the form of a nymph, and the head of a baboon. He commenced
by crying in a voice that must have been educated in
the gallery of a minaret, setting forth the qualities of the animal
at his back, who was to be sold at public auction forthwith. As
he closed his harangue, he slipped his pipe back into his mouth,
and lifting the scrimped blanket of the ebon Venus, turned her
twice round, and walked to the other side of the bazaar, where
his cry and the exposure of the submissive wench were repeated.


We left him to finish his circuit, and walked on in search of
the Circassian beauties of the market. Several turbaned slave-merchants
were sitting round a manghal, or brass vessel of
coals, smoking or making their coffee, in one of the porticoes,
and my friend addressed one of them with an inquiry on the
subject. “There were Circassians in the bazaar,” he said, “but
there was an express firman, prohibiting the exposing or selling
of them to Franks, under heavy penalties.” We tried to bribe
him. It was of no use. He pointed to the apartment in which
they were, and, as it was upon the ground floor, I took advice of
modest assurance, and approaching the window, sheltered my
eyes with my hand, and looked in. A great fat girl, with a pair
of saucer-like black eyes, and cheeks as red and round as a
cabbage-rose, sat facing the window, devouring a pie most
voraciously. She had a small carpet spread beneath her, and
sat on one of her heels, with a row of fat, red toes, whose nails
were tinged with henna, just protruding on the other side from
the folds of her ample trousers. The light was so dim that I
could not see the features of the others, of whom there were
six or seven in groups in the corners. And so faded the bright
colours of a certain boyish dream of Circassian beauty! A fat
girl eating a pie!


As we were about leaving the bazaar, the door of a small
apartment near the gate opened, and disclosed the common
cheerless interior of a chamber in a khan. In the centre burned
the almost extinguished embers of a Turkish manghal, and, at
the moment of my passing, a figure rose from a prostrate position,
and exposed, as a shawl dropped from her face in rising,
the exquisitely small features and bright olive skin of an Arab
girl. Her hair was black as night, and the bright braid of it
across her forehead seemed but another shade of the warm dark
eye that lifted its heavy and sleepy lids, and looked out of the
accidentally-opened door as if she were trying to remember how
she had dropped out of “Araby the blest” upon so cheerless a
spot. She was very beautiful. I should have taken her for a
child, from her diminutive size, but for a certain fulness in the
limbs and a womanly ripeness in the bust and features. The
same dusky lips which give the males of her race a look of
ghastliness, either by contrast with a row of dazzlingly white
teeth, or from their round and perfect chiselling, seemed in her
almost a beauty, I had looked at her several minutes before she
chose to consider it as impertinence. At last she slowly raised
her little symmetrical figure (the “Barbary shape” the old poets
talk of), and slipping forward to reach the latch, I observed that
she was chained by one of her ankles to a ring in the floor. To
think that only a “malignant and turbaned Turk” may possess
such a Hebe! Beautiful creature! Your lot,




 

“By some o’er-hasty angel was misplaced,


In Fate’s eternal volume.”


 



And yet it is very possible she would eat pies, too!


We left the slave-market, and wishing to buy a piece of Brusa
silk for a dressing-gown, my friend conducted me to a secluded
khan in the neighbourhood of the far-famed “burnt column.”
Entering by a very mean door, closed within by a curtain, we
stood on fine Indian mats in a large room, piled to the ceiling
with silks enveloped in the soft satin-paper of the East. Here
again coffee must be handed round before a single fold of the old
Armenian’s wares could see the light, and fortunate it is, since
one may not courteously refuse it, that Turkish coffee is very
delicious, and served in acorn cups for size. A handsome boy
took away the little filagree holders at last, and the old trader,
setting his huge calpack firmly on his shaven head, began to
reach down his costly wares. I had never seen such an array.
The floor was soon like a shivered rainbow, almost paining the
eye with the brilliancy and variety of beautiful fabrics. And all
this to tempt the taste of a poor description-monger, who wanted
but a plain robe de chambre to conceal from a chance visitor the
poverty of an unmade toilet! There were stuffs of gold for a
queen’s wardrobe; there were gauze-like fabrics interwoven
with flowers of silver; and there was no leaf in botany, nor
device in antiquity, that was not imitated in their rich borderings.
I laid my hand on a plain pattern of blue and silver, and half-shutting
my eyes to imagine how I should look in it, resolved
upon the degree of depletion which my purse could bear, and
inquired the price. As “green door and brass knocker” says of
his charges in the farce, it was “ridiculously trifling.” It is a
cheap country, the East! A beautiful Circassian slave for a
hundred dollars (if you are a Turk), and an emperor’s dressing-gown
for three! The Armenian laid his hand on his breast, as
if he had made a good sale of it, the coffee-bearer wanted but a
sous, and that was charity; and thus, by a mere change of place,
that which were but a gingerbread expenditure becomes a rich
man’s purchase.






LETTER XXXIV.




The Bosphorus—Turkish Palaces—The Black Sea—Buyukdere.




We left the ship with two caïques, each pulled by three men,
and carrying three persons, on an excursion to the Black Sea.
We were followed by the captain in his fast-pulling gig with six
oars, who proposed to beat the feathery boats of the country in
a twenty miles’ pull against the tremendous current of the
Bosphorus.


The day was made for us. We coiled ourselves à la Turque,
in the bottom of the sharp caique, and as our broad-brimmed
pagans, after the first mile, took off their shawled turbans,
unwound their cashmere girdles, laid aside their gold-broidered
jackets, and with nothing but the flowing silk shirt and ample
trowsers to embarrass their action, commenced “giving way,” in
long energetic strokes—I say, just then, with the sunshine and
the west wind attempered to half a degree warmer than the blood
(which I take to be the perfection of temperature), and a long,
long autumn day, or two, or three, before us, and not a thought
in the company that was not kindly and joyous—just then, I say,
I dropped a “white stone” on the hour, and said, “Here is a
moment, old Care, that has slipped through your rusty fingers!
You have pinched me the past somewhat, and you will doubtless
mark your cross on the future—but the present, by a thousand
pulses in this warm frame laid along in the sunshine, is care-free,
and the last hour of Eden came not on a softer pinion!”


We shot along through the sultan’s fleet (some eighteen or
twenty lofty ships-of-war, looking, as they lie at anchor in this
narrow strait, of a supernatural size), and then, nearing the
European shore to take advantage of the counter-current, my
kind friend, Mr. H., who is at home on these beautiful waters,
began to name to me the palaces we were shooting by, with many
a little history of their occupants between, to which in a letter,
written with a traveller’s haste, and in moments stolen from
fatigue, or pleasure, or sleep, I could not pretend to do justice.


The Bosphorus is quite—there can be no manner of doubt of
it—the most singularly beautiful scenery in the world. From
Constantinople to the Black Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the
two shores of Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of
bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each with its
splendid palace or two, its mosque and minarets, and its hundred
small houses buried in trees, each with its small dark cemetery
of cypresses and turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley
stretching back into the hills, of which every summit and swell
is crowned with a fairy kiosk. There is no tide, and the palaces
of the sultan and his ministers, and of the wealthier Turks and
Armenians, are built half over the water, and the ascending
caique shoots beneath his window, within the length of the
owner’s pipe; and with his own slender boat lying under the
stairs, the luxurious oriental makes but a step from the cushions
of his saloon to those of a conveyance, which bears him (so built
on the water’s edge is this magnificent capital) to almost every
spot that can require his presence.


A beautiful palace is that of the “Marble Cradle,” or Beshiktash,
the sultan’s winter residence. Its bright gardens with latticed
fences (through which, as we almost touched in passing, we saw
the gleam of the golden orange and lemon-trees, and the thousand
flowers, and heard the splash of fountains, and the singing of
birds) lean down to the lip of the Bosphorus, and declining to
the south, and protected from everything but the sun by an
enclosing wall, enjoy, like the terrace of old King René, a perpetual
summer. The brazen gates open on the water, and the
palace itself, a beautiful building, painted in the oriental style,
of a bright pink, stands between the gardens, with its back to
the wall.


The summer palace, where the “unmuzzled lion,” as his
flatterers call him, resides at present, is just above on the Asian
side, at a village called Beylerbey. It is an immense building,
painted yellow, with white cornices, and has an extensive terrace-garden,
rising over the hill behind. The harem has eight
projecting wings, each occupied by one of the sultan’s lawful
wives.


Six or seven miles from Constantinople, on the European shore,
stands the serai of the sultan’s eldest sister. It is a Chinese-looking
structure, but exceedingly picturesque, and like everything
else on the Bosphorus, quite in keeping with the scene.
There is not a building on either side, from the Black Sea to
Marmora, that would not be ridiculous in other countries; and
yet, here, their gingerbread balconies, imitation perspectives,
lattices, bird-cages, and kiosks, seem as naturally the growth of
the climate as the pomegranate and the cypress. The old maid
sultana lives here with a hundred or two female slaves of condition,
a little empress in an empire sufficiently large (for a woman);
seeing no bearded face, it is presumed, except her black eunuchs’
and her European physician’s, and having, though a sultan’s
sister, less liberty than she gives even her slaves, whom she
permits to marry if they will. She can neither read nor write,
and is said to be fat, indolent, kind, and childish.


A little farther up, the sultan is repairing a fantastical little
palace for his youngest sister, Esmeh Sultana, who is to be
married to Haleil Pacha, the commander of the artillery. She
is about twenty, and, report says, handsome and spirited. Her
betrothed was a Georgian slave, bought by the sultan when a
boy, and advanced by the usual steps of favouritism. By the
laws of imperial marriages in this empire, he is to be banished to
a distant pachalick after living with his wife a year, his connexion
with blood-royal making him dangerously eligible to the throne.
His bride remains at Stamboul, takes care of her child (if she has
one), and lives the remainder of her life in a widow’s seclusion,
with an allowance proportioned to her rank. His consolation is
provided for by the Mussulman privilege of as many more wives
as he can support. Heaven send him resignation—if he needs it
notwithstanding.


The hakim, or chief physician to the sultan, has a handsome
palace on the same side of the Bosphorus; and the Armenian
seraffs, or bankers, though compelled, like all rayahs, to paint
their houses of a dull lead colour (only a Mussulman may live in
a red house in Constantinople), are said, in those dusky-looking
tenements, to maintain a luxury not inferior to that of the sultan
himself. They have a singular effect, those black, funereal
houses, standing in the foreground of a picture of such light and
beauty!


We pass Orta-keni, the Jew village; the Arnaout-keni, occupied
mostly by Greeks; and here, if you have read “The
Armenians,” you are in the midst of its most stirring scenes.
The story is a true one, not much embellished in the hands of
the novelist; and there, on the hill opposite, in Anatolia, stands
the house of the heroine’s father, the old seraff Oglou, and,
behind the garden, you may see the small cottage, inhabited,
secretly, by the enamoured Constantine; and here, in the pretty
village of Bebec, lives, at this moment, the widowed and
disconsolate Veronica, dressed ever in weeds, and obstinately
refusing all society but her own sad remembrance. I must try
to see her. Her “husband of a night” was compelled to marry
again by the hospidar, his father (but this is not in the novel,
you will remember), and there is late news that his wife is dead,
and the lovers of romance in Stamboul are hoping he will return
and make a happier sequel than the sad one in the story. The
“orthodox catholic Armenian, broker and money-changer to
boot,” who was to have been her forced husband, is a very
amiable and good-looking fellow, now in the employ of our chargé
d’affaires as second dragoman.


We approach Roumeli Hissar, a jutting point almost meeting
a similar projection from the Asian shore, crowned, like its
vis-a-vis, with a formidable battery. The Bospborus here is but
half an arrow-flight in width, and Europe and Asia, here at their
nearest approach, stand looking each other in the face, like
boxers, with foot forward, fist doubled, and a most formidable
row of teeth on either side. The current scampers through
between the two castles, as if happy to get out of the way, and,
up-stream, it is hard pulling for a caique. They are beautiful
points, however, and I am ashamed of my coarse simile, when I
remember how green was the foliage that half-enveloped the
walls, and how richly picturesque the hills behind them. Here,
in the European castle, were executed the greater part of the
janisaries, hundreds in a day, of the manliest frames in the empire,
thrown into the rapid Bosphorus, headless and stripped, to float,
unmourned and unregarded, to the sea.


Above Roumeli-Hissar, the Bosphorus spreads again, and a
curving bay, which is set like a mirror, in a frame of the softest
foliage and verdure, is pointed out as a spot at which the
crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Raymond of Toulouse,
encamped on their way to Palestine. The hills beyond this are
loftier, and the Giant’s Mountain, upon which the Russian army
encamped at their late visit to the Porte, would be a respectable
eminence in any country. At its foot, the Strait expands into
quite a lake; and on the European side, in a scoop of the shore,
exquisitely placed, stand the diplomatic villages of Terapia and
Buyukdere. The English, French, Russian, Austrian and other
flags were flying over half-a-dozen of the most desirable residences
I have seen since Italy.


We soon pulled the remaining mile or two, and our spent
caikjees drew breath, and lay on their oars in the Black Sea.
The waves were breaking on the “blue Symplegades,” a mile on
our left; and, before us, toward the Cimmerian, Bosphorus; and,
south, toward Colchis and Trebizond, spread one broad, blue
waste of waters, apparently as limitless as the ocean. The Black
Sea is particularly blue.


We turned our prow to the west, and I sighed to remember
that I had reached my farthest step into the East. Henceforth
I shall be on the return. I sent a long look over the waters to
the bright lands beyond, so famed in history and fiction, and
wishing for even a metamorphosis into the poor sea-bird flying
above us (whose travelling expenses Nature pays), I lay back in
the boat with a “change in the spirit of my dream.”


We stopped on the Anatolian shore to visit the ruins of a fine
old Genoese castle, which looks over the Black Sea, and after
a lunch upon grapes and coffee, at a small village at the foot
of the hill on which it stands, we embarked and followed our
companions. Running down with the current to Buyukdere, we
landed and walked along the thronged and beautiful shore to
Terapia, meeting hundreds of fair Armenians and Greeks (all
beautiful, it seemed to me), issuing forth for their evening
promenade, and, with a call of ceremony on the English
ambassador, for whom I had letters, we again took to the
caique, and fled down with the current like a bird. Oh what a
sunset was there!


We were to dine and pass the night at the country-house of
an English gentleman at Bebec, a secluded and lovely village, six
or eight miles from Constantinople. We reached the landing as
the stars began to glimmer, and, after one of the most agreeable
and hospitable entertainments I remember to have shared, we
took an early breakfast with our noble host, and returned to the
ship. I could wish my friends no brighter passage in their lives
than such an excursion as mine to the Black Sea.






LETTER XXXV.




The Golden Horn and its Scenery—The Sultan’s Wives and Arabians—The
Valley of Sweet Waters—Beauty of the Turkish Minarets—The
Mosque of Sulymanye—Mussulmans at their Devotions—The Muezzin—The
Bazaar of the Opium-eaters—The Mad House of Constantinople,
and Description of its Inmates—Their Wretched Treatment—The
Hippodrome and the Mosque of Sultan Achmet—The Janizaries—Reflections
on the Past, the Present, and the Future.




The “Golden Horn” is a curved arm of the sea, the broadest
extremity meeting the Bosphorus and forming the harbour of
Constantinople, and the other tapering away till it is lost in the
“Valley of Sweet Waters.” It curls through the midst of the
“seven-hilled” city, and you cross it whenever you have an
errand in old Stamboul. Its hundreds of shooting caïques, its
forests of merchantmen and men-of-war, its noise and its confusion,
are exchanged in scarce ten minutes of swift pulling for
the breathless and Eden-like solitude of a valley that has not its
parallel, I am inclined to think, between the Mississippi and the
Caspian. It is called in Turkish khyat-khana. Opening with a
gentle curve from the Golden Horn, it winds away into the hills
toward Belgrade, its long and even hollow thridded by a lively
stream, and carpeted by a broad belt of unbroken green sward
swelling up to the enclosing hills, with a grass so verdant and
silken that it seems the very floor of faëry. In the midst of its
longest stretch to the eye (perhaps two miles of level meadow)
stands a beautiful serai of the sultan’s, unfenced and open, as if
it had sprung from the lap of the green meadow like a lily. The
stream runs by its door, and over a mimic fall whose lip is of
scalloped marble, is built an oriental kiosk, all carving and gold,
that is only too delicate and fantastical for reality.


Here, with, the first grass of spring, the sultan sends his fine-footed
Arabians to pasture; and here come the ladies of his
harem (chosen, women and horses, for much the same class of
qualities), and in the long summer afternoon, with mounted
eunuchs on the hills around, forbidding on pain of death, all
approach to the sacred retreat, they venture to drop their jealous
veils and ramble about in their unsunned beauty.


After a gallop of three or four miles over the broad waste
table plains, in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, we checked
our horses suddenly on the brow of a precipitous descent, with
this scene of beauty spread out before us. I had not yet
approached it by water, and it seemed to me as if the earth had
burst open at my feet, and revealed some realm of enchantment.
Behind me, and away beyond the valley to the very horizon, I
could see only a trackless heath, brown and treeless, while a
hundred feet below lay a strip of very Paradise, blooming in all
the verdure and heavenly freshness of spring. We descended
slowly, and crossing a bridge half hidden by willows, rode in upon
the elastic green sward (for myself) with half a feeling of profanation.
There were no eunuchs upon the hills, however, and
our spirited Turkish horses threw their wild heads into the air,
and we flew over the verdant turf like a troop of Delhis, the
sound of the hoofs on the yielding carpet scarcely audible. The
fair palace in the centre of this domain of loveliness was closed,
and it was only after we had walked around it that we observed
a small tent of the prophet’s green couched in a small dell on
the hill-side, and containing probably the guard of its imperial
master.


We mounted again and rode up the valley for two or three
miles, following the same level and verdant curve, the soft carpet
broken only by the silver thread of the Barbyses, loitering
through it on its way to the sea. A herd of buffaloes, tended by
a Bulgarian boy, stretched on his back in the sunshine, and a
small caravan of camels bringing wood from the hills, and
keeping to the soft valley as a relief to their spongy feet, were
the only animated portions of the landscape. I think I shall
never form to my mind another picture of romantic rural beauty
(an employment of the imagination I am much given to when
out of humour with the world) that will not resemble the
“Valley of Sweet Waters”—the khyat-khana of Constantinople.
“Poor Slingsby” never was here.[15]


The lofty mosque of Sulymanye, the bazaars of the opium-eaters,
and the Timar-hané, or mad-house of Constantinople, are
all upon one square in the highest part of the city. We entered
the vast court of the mosque from a narrow and filthy street,
and the impression of its towering plane-trees and noble area,
and of the strange, but grand and costly pile in its centre, was
almost devotional. An inner court, enclosed by a kind of
romanesque wall, contained a sacred marble fountain of light
and airy architecture, and the portico facing this was sustained
by some of those splendid and gigantic columns of porphyry and
jasper, the spoils of the churches of Asia Minor.[16]


I think the most beautiful spire that rises into the sky is the
Turkish minaret. If I may illustrate an object of such magnitude
by so trifling a comparison, it is exactly the shape and
proportions of an ever-pointed pencil-case—the silver bands
answering to the encircling galleries, one above another, from
which the muezzin calls out the hour of prayer. The minaret
is painted white, the galleries are fantastically carved, and
rising to the height of the highest steeples in our country
(four and sometimes six to a single mosque), these slender
and pointed fingers of devotion seem to enter the very sky.
Remembering, dear reader, that there are two hundred and
twenty mosques and three hundred chapels in Constantinople,
raising, perhaps, in all, a thousand minarets to heaven, you may
get some idea of the magnificence of this seven-hilled capital of
the East.


It was near the hour of prayer, and the devout Mussulmans
were thronging into the court of Sulymanye by every gate.
Passing the noble doors, with their strangely-carved arches of
arabesque, which invite all to enter but the profaning foot of the
Christian, the turbaned crowd repaired first to the fountains.
From the walls of every mosque, by small conduits pouring into
a marble basin, flow streams of pure water for the religious ablutions
of the faithful. The Mussulman approaches, throws off his
flowing robe, steps out of his yellow slippers, and unwinds his
voluminous turban with devout deliberateness. A small marble
step, worn hollow with pious use, supports his foot while he
washes from the knee downward. His hands and arms, with the
flowing sleeve of his silk shirt rolled to the shoulder, receive the
same lavation, and then, washing his face, he repeats a brief
prayer, resumes all but his slippers, and enters the mosque,
barefooted. The mihrab (or niche indicating the side toward the
tomb of the prophet), fixes his eye. He folds his hands together,
prays a moment standing, prostrates himself flat on his face
toward the hallowed quarter, rises upon his knees, and continues
praying and prostrating himself for perhaps half an hour. And
all this process is required by the mufti, and performed by every
good Mussulman five times a day! A rigid adherence to it is
almost universal among the Turks. In what an odour of sanctity
would a Christian live, who should make himself thus “familiar
with heaven!”


As the muezzin from the minaret was shouting his last “mash-allah!”
with a voice like a man calling out from the clouds, we
left the court of the majestic mosque, with Byron’s reflection:—




 

“Alas! man makes that great, which makes him little!”


 



and, having delivered ourselves of this scrap of poetical philosophy,
we crossed over the square to the opium-eaters.


A long row of half-ruined buildings, of a single story, with
porticoes in front, and the broad, raised platform beneath, on
which the Turks sit cross-legged at public places, is the scene of
what was once a peculiarly oriental spectacle. The mufti has
of late years denounced the use of opium, and the devotees to
its sublime intoxication have either conquered the habit, or what
is more probable, indulge it in more secret places. The shops
are partly ruinous, and those that remain in order are used as
cafés, in which, however, it is said that the dangerous drug may
still be procured. My companion inquired of a good-humoured-looking
caféjee whether there was any place at which a confirmed
opium-eater could be seen under its influence. He said there
was an old Turk, who was in the habit of frequenting his shop,
and, if we could wait an hour or two, we might see him in the
highest state of intoxication. We had no time to spare, if the
object had been worth our while.


And here, thought I, as we sat down and took a cup of coffee
in the half-ruined café, have descended upon the delirious brains
of these noble drunkards, the visions of Paradise so glowingly
described in books—visions, it is said, as far exceeding the poor
invention of the poet, as the houris of the prophet exceed the
fair damsels of this world. Here men, otherwise in their senses,
have believed themselves emperors, warriors, poets; these
wretched walls and bending roof, the fair proportions of a
palace; this gray old caféjee, a Hylas or a Ganymede. Here
men have come to cast off, for an hour, the dull thraldom of the
body; to soar into the glorious world of fancy at a penalty of a
thousand times the proportion of real misery; to sacrifice the
invaluable energies of health, and deliberately poison the very
fountain of life, for a few brief moments of magnificent and
phrensied blessedness. It is powerfully described in the “Opium
Eater” of De Quincy.


At the extremity of this line of buildings, by a natural proximity,
stands the Timar-hané. We passed the porter at the gate
without question, and entered a large quadrangle, surrounded
with the grated windows of cells on the ground-floor. In every
window was chained a maniac. The doors of the cells were all
open, and, descending by a step upon the low stone floor of the
first, we found ourselves in the presence of four men chained to
rings in the four corners by massy iron collars. The man in the
window sat crouched together, like a person benumbed (the day
was raw and cold as December), the heavy chain of his collar
hanging on his naked breast, and his shoulders imperfectly
covered with a narrow blanket. His eyes were large and fierce,
and his mouth was fixed in an expression of indignant sullenness.
My companion asked him if he were ill. He said he should be
well, if he were out—that he was brought there in a fit of intoxication,
two years ago, and was no more crazy than his keeper.
Poor fellow! It might easily be true! He lifted his heavy collar
from his neck as he spoke, and it was not difficult to believe
that misery like his for two long years would, of itself, destroy
reason. There was a better dressed man in the opposite corner,
who informed us, in a gentlemanly voice, that he had been a
captain in the sultan’s army, and was brought there in the
delirium of a fever. He was at a loss to know, he said, why he
was imprisoned still.


We passed on to a poor, half-naked wretch in the last stage of
illness and idiocy, who sat chattering to himself, and, though
trembling with the cold, interrupted his monologue continually
with fits of the wildest laughter. Farther on sat a young man
of a face so full of intellectual beauty, an eye so large and mild,
a mouth of such mingled sadness and sweetness, and a forehead
so broad, and marked so nobly, that we stood, all of us, struck
with a simultaneous feeling of pity and surprise. A countenance
more beaming with all that is admirable in human nature, I
have never seen, even in painting. He might have sat to
Da Vinci for the “beloved apostle.” He had tied the heavy
chain by a shred to a round of the grating, to keep its weight
from his neck, and seemed calm and resigned, with all his
sadness. My friend spoke to him, but he answered obscurely,
and seeing that our gaze disturbed him, we passed unwillingly
on. Oh what room there is in the world for pity! If that
poor prisoner be not a maniac (as he may not be), and if nature
has not falsified in the structure of his mind the superior impress
on his features, what Prometheus-like agony has he suffered!
The guiltiest felon is better cared for. And, allowing his mind
to be a wreck, and allowing the hundred human minds, in the
same cheerless prison, to be certainly in ruins, oh what have
they done to be weighed down with iron on their necks, and
exposed, like caged beasts, shivering and naked, to the eye of
pitiless curiosity? I have visited lunatic asylums in France,
Italy, Sicily, and Germany, but, culpably neglected as most of
them are, I have seen nothing comparable to this in horror.


“Is he never unchained?” we asked. “Never!” And yet
from the ring to the iron collar there was just chain enough to
permit him to stand upright! There were no vessels near them,
not even a pitcher of water. Their dens were cleansed and the
poor sufferers fed at appointed hours, and, come wind or rain,
there was neither shutter nor glass to defend them from the
inclemency of the weather.


We entered most of the rooms, and found in all the same
dampness, filth, and misery. One poor wretch had been chained
to the same spot for twenty years. The keeper said he never
slept. He talked all the night long. Sometimes at mid-day his
voice would cease, and his head nod for an instant, and then with
a start as if he feared to be silent, he raved on with the same
incoherent rapidity. He had been a dervish. His collar and chain
were bound with rags, and a tattered coat was fastened up on
the inside of the window, forming a small recess in which he sat,
between the room and the grating. He was emaciated to the
last degree. His beard was tangled and filthy, his nails curled
over the ends of his fingers, and his appearance, save only an eye
of the keenest lustre, that of a wild beast.


In the last room we entered, we found a good-looking young
man, well-dressed, healthy, composed, and having every appearance
of a person in the soundest state of mind and body. He
saluted us courteously, and told my friend that he was a renegade
Greek. He had turned Mussulman a year or two ago, had lost
his reason, and so was brought here. He talked of it quite as a
thing of course, and seemed to be entirely satisfied that the best
had been done for him. One of the party took hold of his chain.
He winced as the collar stirred on his neck, and said the lock was
on the outside of the window (which was true), and that the boys
came in and tormented him by pulling it sometimes, “There
they are,” he said, pointing to two or three children who had just
entered the court, and were running round from one prisoner to
another. We bade him good morning, and he laid his hand to his
breast, and bowed with a smile. As we passed toward the gate,
the chattering lunatic on the opposite side screamed after us,
the old dervish laid his skinny hands on the bars of his window,
and talked louder and faster, and the children, approaching close
to the poor creatures, laughed with delight at their excitement.


It was a relief to escape the common sights and sounds of the
city. We walked on to the Hippodrome. The only remaining
beauty of this famous square is the unrivalled mosque of Sultan
Achmet, which, though inferior in size to the renowned Santa
Sophia, is superior in elegance both within and without. Its
six slender and towering minarets are the handsomest in Constantinople.
The wondrous obelisk in the centre of the square,
remains perfect as in the time of the Christian emperors, but the
brazen tripod is gone from the twisted column, and the serpent-like
pillar itself is leaning over with its brazen folds to its fall.


Here stood the barracks of the powerful Janisaries, and from
the side of Sultan Achmet the cannon were levelled upon them,
as they rushed from the conflagration within. And here, when
Constantinople was “the second Rome,” were witnessed the
triumphal processions of Christian conquest, the march of the
crusaders, bound for Palestine, and the civil tumults which
Justinian, walking among the people with the Gospel in his hand,
tried in vain to allay ere they burnt the great edifice built of the
ruins of the temple of Solomon. And around this now neglected
area, the captive Gelimer followed in chains the chariot of the
conquering Belisarius, repeating the words of Solomon, “Vanity
of vanities! all is vanity!” while the conqueror himself, throwing
aside his crown, prostrated himself at the feet of the beautiful
Theodora, raised from a Roman actress to be the Christian empress
of the East. From any elevated point of the city, you may still
see the ruins of the palace of the renowned warrior, and read
yourself a lesson on human vicissitudes, remembering the school-book
story of “an obolon for Belisarius!”


The Hippodome was, until late years, the constant scene of
the games of the jereed. With the destruction of the Janisaries,
and the introduction of European tactics, this graceful exercise
has gone out of fashion. The East is fast losing its picturesqueness.
Dress, habits, character, everything seems to be undergoing a
gradual change, and when, as the Turks themselves predict, the
Moslem is driven into Asia, this splendid capital will become
another Paris, and with the improvements in travel, a summer
in Constantinople will be as little thought of as a tour in Italy.
Politicians in this part of the world predict such a change as
about to arrive.














Irving says, in one of his most exquisite passages—“He who has
sallied forth into the world like poor Slingsby, full of sunny anticipations,
finds too soon how different the distant scene becomes when visited. The
smooth place roughens as he approaches; the wild place becomes tame and
barren; the fairy teints that beguiled him on, still fly to the distant hill, or
gather upon the land he has left behind, and every part of the landscape is
greener than the spot he stands on.” Full of merit and beautiful
expression as this is, I, for one, have not found it true. Bright as I had
imagined the much-sung lands beyond the water, I have found many a
scene in Italy and the East that has more than answered the craving for
beauty in my heart. Val d’Arno, Vallombrosa, Venice, Terni, Tivoli,
Albano, the Isles of Greece, the Bosphorus, and the matchless valley I have
described, have, with a hundred other spots less famous, far outgone in
their exquisite reality, even the brightest of my anticipations. The
passage is not necessarily limited in its meaning to scenery, however, and
of moral disappointment it is beautifully true. There is many a “poor
Slingsby,” the fate of whose sunny anticipations of life it describes but too
faithfully.
















Sulymanye was built of the ruins of the church St. Euphemia, at
Chalcedonia.










LETTER XXXVI.




Sultan Mahmoud at his Devotions—Comparative Splendour of Papal,
Austrian, and Turkish Equipages—The Sultan’s Barge or Caïque—Description
of the Sultan—Visit to a Turkish Lancasterian School—The
Dancing Dervishes—Visit from the Sultan’s Cabinet—The
Seraskier and the Capitan Pacha—Humble Origin of Turkish
Dignitaries.




I had slept on shore, and it was rather late before I remembered
that it was Friday (the Moslem Sunday), and that Sultan
Mahmoud was to go in state to mosque at twelve. I hurried
down the precipitous street of Pera, and, as usual, escaping
barely with my life from the Christian-hating dogs of Tophana,
embarked in a caique, and made all speed up the Bosphorus.
There is no word in Turkish for faster, but I was urging on my
caikjees by a wave of the hand and the sight of a bishlik (about the
value of a quarter of a dollar), when suddenly a broadside was
fired from the three-decker, “Mahmoudier,” the largest ship in the
world, and to the rigging of every man-of-war in the fleet through
which I was passing, mounted, simultaneously, hundreds of blood-red
flags, filling the air about us like a shower of tulips and roses.
Imagine twenty ships of war, with yards manned, and scarce a
line in their rigging to be seen for the flaunting of colours! The
jar of the guns, thundering in every direction close over us,
almost lifted our light boat out of the water, and the smoke
rendered our pilotage between the ships and among their
extending cables rather doubtful. The white cloud lifted after
a few minutes, and, with, the last gun, down went the flags
altogether, announcing that the “Brother of the Sun” had left
his palace.


He had but crossed to the mosque of the small village on the
opposite side of the Bosphorus, and was already at his prayers
when I arrived. His body-guard was drawn up before the door,
in their villainous European dress, and, as their arms were
stacked, I presumed it would be some time before the sultan
reappeared, and I improved the interval in examining the
handja-bashes or state-caïques, lying at the landing. I have
arrived at my present notions of equipage by three degrees.
The pope’s carriages at Rome rather astonished me. The
emperor of Austria’s sleighs diminished the pope in my admiration,
and the sultan’s caïques, in their turn, “pale the fires” of
the emperor of Austria. The handja-bash is built something
like the ancient galley, very high at the prow and stem, carries
some fifty oars, and has a roof over her poop, supported by four
columns, and loaded with the most sumptuous ornaments, the
whole gilt brilliantly. The prow is curved over, and wreathed
into every possible device that would not affect the necessary
lines of the model; her crew are dressed in the beautiful
costume of the country, rich and flowing, and with the costly and
bright-coloured carpets hanging over her side, and the flashing
of the sun on her ornaments of gold, she is really the most
splendid object of state equipage (if I may be allowed the
misnomer) in the world.


I was still examining the principal barge, when the troops
stood to their arms, and preparation was made for the passing out
of the sultan. Thirty or forty of his highest military officers
formed themselves into two lines from the door of the mosque to
the landing, and behind them were drawn up single files of soldiers.
I took advantage of the respect paid to the rank of
Commodore Patterson, and obtained an excellent position, with
him, at the side of the caique. First issued from the door two
Georgian slaves, bearing censers, from which they waved the
smoke on either side, and the sultan immediately followed, supported
by the capitan-pacha, the seraskier, and Haleil Pacha
(who is to marry the Sultana Esmeh). He walked slowly down
to the landing, smiling and talking gaily with the seraskier,
and, bowing to the commodore in passing, stepped into his
barge, seated himself on a raised sofa, while his attendants
coiled their legs on the carpet below, and turned his prow across
the Bosphorus.


I have perhaps never set my eyes on a handsomer man than
Sultan Mahmoud. His figure is tall, straight, and manly, his air
unembarrassed and dignified, and his step indicative of the well-known
firmness of his character. A superb beard of jetty blackness,
with a curling moustache, conceals all the lower part of his
face; the decided and bold lines of his mouth just marking themselves
when he speaks. It is said he both paints and dyes his
beard, but a manlier brown upon a cheek, or a richer gloss upon
a beard, I never saw. His eye is described by writers as having
a doomed darkness of expression, and it is certainly one that
would well become a chief of bandits—large, steady, and overhung
with an eyebrow like a thunder cloud. He looks the
monarch. The child of a seraglio (where mothers are chosen
for beauty alone) could scarce escape being handsome. The
blood of Circassian upon Circassian is in his veins, and the
wonder is, not that he is the handsomest man in his empire, but
that he is not the greatest slave. Our “mother’s humour,” they
say, predominates in our mixtures. Sultan Mahmoud, however,
was marked by nature for a throne.


I accompanied Mr. Goodell and Mr. Dwight, American
missionaries at Constantinople, to visit a Lancasterian school
established with their assistance in the Turkish barracks. The
building stands on the ascent of one of the lovely valleys that
open into the Bosphorus, some three miles from the city, on the
European side. We were received by the colonel of the regiment;
a young man of fine appearance, with the diamond crescent and
star glittering on the breast of his military frock, and after the
inevitable compliment of pipes and coffee, the drum was beat and
the soldiers called to school.


The Sultan has an army of boys. Nine-tenths of those I have
seen are under twenty. They marched in, in single file, and
facing about, held up their hands at the word of command,
while a subaltern looked that each had performed the morning
ablution. They were healthy-looking lads, mostly from the
interior provinces, whence they are driven down likes cattle to
fill the ranks of their sovereign. Duller-looking subjects for an
idea it has not been my fortune to see.


The Turkish alphabet hung over the teacher’s desk (the
colonel is the schoolmaster, and takes the greatest interest in his
occupation), and the front seats are faced with a long box covered
with sand, in which the beginners write with their fingers. It
is fitted with a slide that erases the clumsy imitation when
completed, and seemed to me an ingenious economy of ink and
paper. (I would suggest to the mind of the benevolent, a
school on the same principle for beginners in poetry. It would
save the critics much murder, and tend to the suppression of
suicide.) The classes having filed into their seats, the school
opened with a prayer by the colonel. The higher benches then
commenced writing, on slates and paper, sentences dictated from
the desk, and I was somewhat surprised at the neatness and
beauty of the characters.


We passed afterward into another room where arithmetic and
geography were taught, and then mounted to an apartment on
the second story occupied by students in military drawing. The
proficiency of all was most creditable, considering the brief
period during which the schools have been in operation—something
less than a year. Prejudiced as the Turks are against
European innovation, this advanced step towards improvement
tells well. Our estimable and useful missionaries appear, from
the respect everywhere shown them, to be in high esteem, and
with the Sultan’s energetic disposition for reform, they hope
everything in the way of an enlightened change in the moral
condition of the people.




We went to the chapel of the dancing dervishes. It is a
beautiful marble building, with a court-yard ornamented with a
small cemetery shaded with cypresses, and a fountain enclosed in
a handsome edifice, and defended by gilt gratings from the street
of the suburb of Pera, in which it stands. They dance here
twice a week. We arrived before the hour, and were detained
at the door by a soldier on guard, who would not permit us
to enter without taking off our boots—a matter about which,
between straps and their very muddy condition, we had some
debate. The dervishes began to arrive before the question was
settled, and one of them, a fine-looking old man, inviting us
to enter, Mr. H. explained the difficulty. “Go in,” said he,
“go in!” and turning to the more scrupulous Mussulman with
the musket, as he pushed us within the door, “Stupid fellow!”
said he, “if you had been less obstinate, they would have given
you a bakshish” (Turkish for a fee). He should have said less
religious—for the poor fellow looked horror-struck as our dirty
boots profaned the clean white Persian matting of the sacred
floor. One would think “the nearer the church the farther
from God,” were as true here as it is said to be in some more
civilised countries.


It was a pretty, octagonal interior, with a gallery, the mihrab
or niche indicating the direction of the prophet’s tomb, standing
obliquely from the front of the building. Hundreds of small
lamps hung in the area, just out of the reach of the dervishes’
tall caps, and all around between the gallery; a part of the floor
was raised, matted, and divided from the body of the church by
a balustrade. It would have made an exceedingly pretty
ball-room.


None but the dervishes entered within the paling, and they
soon began to enter, each advancing first toward the mihrab,
and going through fifteen or twenty minutes’ prostrations and
prayers. Their dress is very humble. A high, white felt cap,
without a rim, like a sugar-loaf enlarged a little at the smaller
end, protects the head, and a long dress of dirt-coloured cloth,
reaching quite to the heels and bound at the waist with a girdle,
completes the costume. They look like men who have made up
their minds to seem religious, and though said to be a set of very
good fellows, they have a Mawworm expression of face generally,
which was very repulsive. I must except the chief of the sect,
however, who entered when all the rest had seated themselves
on the floor, and after a brief genuflexion or two took possession
of a rich Angora carpet placed for him near the mihrab. He
was a small old man, distinguished in his dress only by the
addition of a green band to his cap (the sign of his pilgrimage
to Mecca) and the entire absence of the sanctimonious look. Still
he was serious, and there was no mark in his clear, intelligent
eye and amiable features, of any hesitancy or want of sincerity
in his devotion. He is said to be a learned man, and he is
certainly a very prepossessing one, though he would be taken up
as a beggar in any city in the United States. It is a thing one
learns in “dangling about the world,” by the way, to form
opinions of men quite independently of their dress.


After sitting a while in quaker meditation, the brotherhood
rose one by one (there were ten of them I think), and marched
round the room with their toes turned in, to the music of a drum
and a Persian flute, played invisibly in some part of the gallery.
As they passed the carpet of the cross-legged chief, they twisted
dexterously and made three salaams, and then raising their arms,
which they held out straight during the whole dance, they commenced
twirling on one foot, using the other after the manner of
a paddle to keep up the motion. I forgot to mention that they
laid aside their outer dresses before commencing the dance.
They remained in dirty white tunics reaching to the floor, and
very full at the bottom, so that with the regular motion of their
whirl, the wind blew them out into a circle, like what the
girls in our country call “making cheeses.” They twisted with
surprising exactness and rapidity, keeping clear of each other,
and maintaining their places with the regularity of machines.
I have seen a great deal of waltzing, but I think the dancing
dervishes for precision and spirit, might give a lesson even to
the Germans.


We left them twisting. They had been going for half an hour,
and it began to look very like perpetual motion. Unless their
brains are addled, their devotion, during this dizzy performance
at least, must be quite suspended. A man who could think of
his Maker, while revolving so fast that his nose is indistinct,
must have some power of abstraction.




The frigate was visited to-day by the sultan’s cabinet. The
seraskier pacha came alongside first, in his state caique, and
embraced the commodore as he stepped upon the deck, with
great cordiality. He is a short, fat old man, with a snow-white
beard, and so bow-legged as to be quite deformed. He wore the
red Fez cap of the army, with a long blue frock-coat, the collar
so tight as nearly to choke him, and the body not shaped to the
figure, but made to fall around him like a sack. The red,
bloated skin of his neck fell over, so as to almost cover the gold
with which the collar was embroidered. He was formerly
capitan pacha, or admiral-in-chief of the fleet, and though a
good-humoured, merry-looking old man, has shown himself, both
in his former and present capacity, to be wily, cold, and a butcher
in cruelty. He possesses unlimited influence over the sultan,
and though nominally subordinate to the grand vizier, is really
the second if not the first person in the empire. He was
originally a Georgian slave.


The seraskier was still talking with the commodore in the
gangway, when the present capitan pacha mounted the ladder,
and the old man, who is understood to be at feud with his
successor, turned abruptly away and walked aft. The capitan
pacha is a tall, slender man, of precisely that look and manner
which we call gentlemanly. His beard grows untrimmed in the
Turkish fashion, and is slightly touched with gray. His eye is
anxious, but resolute, and he looks like a man of resource and
ability. His history is as singular as that of most other great
men in Turkey. He was a slave of Mohammed Ali, the rebellious
Pacha of Egypt. Being intrusted by his master with a brig and
cargo for Leghorn, he sold the vessel and lading, lived like a
gentleman in Italy for some years with the proceeds, and as the
best security against the retribution of his old master, offered
his services to the sultan, with whom Ali was just commencing
hostilities. Naval talent was in request, and he soon arrived at
his present dignity. He is said to be the only officer in the fleet
who knows anything of his profession.


Haleil Pacha arrived last. The sultan’s future son-in-law is
a man of perhaps thirty-five. He is light-complexioned, stout,
round-faced, and looks like a respectable grocer, “well to do in
the world.” He has commanded the artillery long enough to
have acquired a certain air of ease and command, and carries
the promise of good fortune in his confident features. He is to
be married almost immediately. He, too, was a Georgian, sent
as a present to the sultan.


The three dignitaries made the rounds of the ship and then
entered the cabin, where the pianoforte (a novelty to the seraskier
and Haleil Pacha, and to most of the attendant officers), and the
commodore’s agreeable society and champagne, promised to
detain them the remainder of the day. They were like children
with a holiday. I was engaged to dine on shore, and left them
aboard.


In a country where there is no education and no rank, except
in the possession of present power, it is not surprising that men
should rise from the lowest class to the highest offices, or that
they should fill those offices to the satisfaction of the sultan.
Yet it is curious to hear their histories. An English physician,
who is frequently called into the seraglio, and whose practice
among all the families in power gives him the best means of
information, has entertained me not a little with these secrets.
I shall make use of them when I have more leisure, merely
mentioning here, in connexion with the above accounts, that
the present grand vizier was a boatman on the Bosphorus, and
the commander of the sultan’s body-guard, a shoemaker. The
latter still employs all his leisure in making slippers, which he
presents to the sultan and his friends, not at all ashamed of
his former vocation. So far, indeed, are any of these mushroom
officers from blushing at their origin, that it is common to
prefix the name of their profession to the title of pacha, and
they are addressed by it as a proper name. This is one respect
in which their European education will refine them to their
disadvantage.






LETTER XXXVII.




The Grand Bazaar of Constantinople, and its infinite Variety of Wonders—Silent
Shopkeepers—Female Curiosity—Adventure with a Black-eyed
Stranger—The Bezestein—The Stronghold of Orientalism—Picture of
a Dragoman—The Kibaub-Shop—A Dinner without Knives, Forks, or
Chairs—Cistern of the Thousand and One Columns.




Bring all the shops of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston,
around the City Hall, remove their fronts, pile up all their goods
on shelves facing the street, cover the whole with a roof, and
metamorphose your trim clerks into bearded, turbaned, and
solemn old Mussulmans, smooth Jews, and calpacked and rosy
Armenians, and you will have something like the grand bazaar
of Constantinople. You can scarcely get an idea of it, without
having been there. It is a city under cover. You walk all
day, and day after day, from one street to another, winding and
turning, and trudging up hill and down, and never go out of
doors. The roof is as high as those of our three-story houses,
and the dim light, so favourable to shop-keepers, comes struggling
down through skylights, never cleaned except by the rains of
heaven.


Strolling through the bazaar is an endless amusement. It is
slow work, for the streets are as crowded as a church-aisle after
service; and, pushed aside one moment by a bevy of Turkish
ladies, shuffling along in their yellow slippers, muffled to the
eyes, the next by a fat slave carrying a child, again by a kervas
armed to the teeth, and clearing the way for some coming
dignitary, you find your only policy is to draw in your elbows,
and suffer the motley crowd to shove you about at their
pleasure.


Each shop in this world of traffic may be two yards wide.
The owner sits cross-legged on the broad counter below, the
height of a chair from the ground, and hands you all you want
without stirring from his seat. One broad bench counter runs
the length of the street, and the different shops are only divided
by the slight partition of the shelves. The purchaser seats
himself on the counter, to be out of the way of the crowd, and
the shopman spreads out his goods on his knees, never condescending
to open his lips except to tell you the price. If he
exclaims “bono,” or “calo,” (the only words a real Turk ever
knows of another language), he is stared at by his neighbours as
a man would be in Broadway who should break out with an
Italian bravura. Ten to one, while you are examining his goods,
the bearded trader creeps through the hole leading to his kennel
of a dormitory in the rear, washes himself, and returns to his
counter, where, spreading his sacred carpet in the direction of
Mecca, he goes through his prayers and prostrations, perfectly
unconscious of your presence, or that of the passing crowd. No
vocation interferes with his religious duty. Five times a day,
if he were running from the plague, the Mussulman would find
time for prayers.


The Frank purchaser attracts a great deal of curiosity. As
he points to an embroidered handkerchief, or a rich shawl, or
a pair of gold-worked slippers, Turkish ladies of the first rank,
gathering their yashmacks securely over their faces, stop close to
his side, not minding if they push him a little to get nearer the
desired article. Feeling not the least timidity, except for their
faces, these true children of Eve examine the goods in barter,
watch the stranger’s countenance, and if he takes off his glove,
or pulls out his purse, take it up and look at it, without even
saying “by your leave.” Their curiosity often extends to your
dress, and they put out their little henna-stained fingers and pass
them over the sleeve of your coat with a gurgling expression of
admiration at its fineness, or if you have rings or a watch-guard,
they lift your hand or pull out your watch with no kind of
scruple, I have met with several instances of this in the course
of my rambles. But a day or two ago I found myself rather
more than usual a subject of curiosity. I was alone in the street
of embroidered handkerchiefs (every minute article has its
peculiar bazaar), and wishing to look at some of uncommon
beauty, I called one of the many Jews always near a stranger
to turn a penny by interpreting for him, and was soon up to the
elbows in goods that would tempt a female angel out of Paradise.
As I was selecting one for a purchase, a woman plumped down
on the seat beside me, and fixed her great, black, unwinking eyes
upon my face, while an Abyssinian slave and another white
woman, both apparently her dependents, stood respectfully at her
back. A small turquoise ring (the favourite colour in Turkey),
first attracted her attention. She took up my hand in her soft,
fat fingers, and dropped it again without saying a word. I looked
at my interpreter, but he seemed to think it nothing extraordinary,
and I went on with my bargain. Presently my fine-eyed
friend pulled me by the sleeve, and as I leaned toward her,
rubbed her forefinger very quickly over my cheek, looking at
me intently all the while. I was a little disturbed with the
lady’s familiarity, and asked my Jew what she wanted. I found
that my rubicund complexion was something uncommon among
these dark-skinned orientals, and she wished to satisfy herself
that I was not painted! I concluded my purchase, and putting
the parcel into my pocket, did my prettiest at an oriental
salaam, but to my mortification, the lady only gathered up her
yashmack, and looked surprised out of her great eyes at my
freedom. My Constantinople friends inform me that I am to lay
no “unction to my soul” from her notice, such liberties being
not at all particular. The husband exacts from his half-dozen
wives only the concealment of their faces, and they have no other
idea of impropriety in public.


In the centre of the bazaar, occupying about as much space as
the body of the City Hall in New York, is what is called the
bezestein. You descend into it from four directions by massive
gates which are shut, and all persons excluded, except between
seven and twelve of the forenoon. This is the core of Constantinople—the
soul and citadel of orientalism. It is devoted to
the sale of arms and to costly articles only. The roof is loftier,
and the light more dim than on the outer bazaars, and the
merchants who occupy its stalls are old and of established
credit. Here are subjects for the pencil! If you can take your
eye from those Damascus sabres, with their jewelled hilts and
costly scabbards, or from those gemmed daggers and guns inlaid
with silver and gold, cast a glance along that dim avenue and
see what a range there is of glorious old grey beards, with their
snowy turbans! These are the Turks of the old régime, before
Sultan Mahmoud disfigured himself with a coat like a “dog of
a Christian,” and broke in upon the customs of the Orients.
These are your opium-eaters, who smoke even in their sleep, and
would not touch wine if it were handed to them by houris!
These are your fatalists, who would scarce take the trouble to
get out of the way of a lion, and who are as certain of the
miracle of Mohammed’s coffin as of the length of the pipe, or of
the quality of the tobacco of Shiraz!


I have spent many an hour in the bezestein, steeping my fancy
in its rich orientalism, and sometimes trying to make a purchase
for myself or others. It is curious to see with what perfect
indifference these old cross-legs attend to the wishes of a Christian.
I was idling round one day with an English traveller, whom I
had known in Italy, when a Persian robe of singular beauty
hanging on one of the stalls arrested my companion’s attention.
He had with him his Turkish dragoman, and as the old merchant
was smoking away and looking right at us, we pointed
to the dress over his head, and the interpreter asked to see it.
The Mussulman smoked calmly on, taking no more notice of us
than of the white clouds curling through his beard. He might have
sat for Michael Angelo’s Moses. Thin, pale, calm, and of a statue-like
repose of countenance and posture, with a large old-fashioned
turban, and a curling beard half mingled with grey, his neck
bare, and his fine bust enveloped in the flowing and bright
coloured drapery of the East—I had never seen a more majestic
figure. He evidently did not wish to have anything to do
with us. At last I took out my snuff-box, and addressing him
with “effendi!” the Turkish title of courtesy, laid my hand on
my breast and offered him a pinch. Tobacco in this unaccustomed
shape is a luxury here, and the amber mouth-piece
emerged from his moustache, and putting his three fingers into
my box, he said “pekkhe!” the Turkish ejaculation of approval.
He then made room for us on his carpet, and with a cloth
measure took the robe from its nail, and spread it before us.
My friend bought it unhesitatingly for a dressing-gown, and
we spent an hour in looking at shawls, of prices perfectly
startling, arms, chalices for incense, spotless amber for pipes,
pearls, bracelets of the time of Sultan Selim, and an endless
variety of things “rich and rare.” The closing of the bezestein
gates interrupted our agreeable employment, and our old friend
gave us the parting salaam very cordially for a Turk. I have
been there frequently since, and never pass without offering my
snuff-box, and taking a whiff or two from his pipe, which I cannot
refuse, though it is not out of his mouth, except when offered
to a friend, from sunrise to midnight.




One of the regular “lions” of Constantinople is a kibaub shop,
or Turkish restaurant. In a ramble with our consul, the other
day, in search of the newly-discovered cistern of a “thousand
and one columns,” we found ourselves, at the hungry hour of
twelve, opposite a famous shop near the slave-market. I was
rather staggered at the first glance. A greasy fellow, with his
shirt rolled to his shoulders, stood near the door, commending
his shop to the world by slapping on the flank a whole mutton
that hung beside him, while, as a customer came in, he dexterously
whipped out a slice, had it cut in a twinkling into bits as
large as a piece of chalk (I have stopped five minutes in vain, to
find a better comparison), strung upon a long iron skewer, and
laid on the coals. My friend is an old Constantinopolitan, and
had eaten kibaubs before. He entered without hesitation, and
the adroit butcher, giving his big trowsers a fresh hitch, and
tightening his girdle, made a new cut for his “narrow-legged”
customers, and wished us a good appetite (the Turks look with
great contempt on our tight pantaloons, and distinguish us by this
epithet). We got up on the platform, crossed our legs under us
as well as we could, and I cannot deny that the savoury missives
that occasionally reached my nostrils, bred a gradual reconciliation
between my stomach and my eyes.


In some five minutes, a tin platter was set between us, loaded
with piping hot kibaubs, sprinkled with salad, and mixed with bits
of bread; our friend the cook, by way of making the amiable,
stirring it up well with his fingers as he brought it along. As
Modely says in the play, “In love or mutton, I generally fall to
without ceremony,” but, spite of its agreeable flavour, I shut my
eyes, and selected a very small bit, before I commenced upon the
kibaubs. It was very good eating, I soon found out, and, my
fingers once greased (for we are indulged with neither knife, fork,
nor skewer, in Turkey), I proved myself as good a trencherman
as my friend.


The middle and lower classes of Constantinople live between
these shops and the cafés. A dish of kibaubs serves them for
dinner, and they drink coffee, which they get for about half a
cent a cup, from morning till night. We paid for our mess
(which was more than any two men could eat at once, unless very
hungry), twelve cents.


We started again with fresh courage, in search of the cistern.
We soon found the old one, which is an immense excavation, with
a roof, supported by five hundred granite columns, employed
now as a place for twisting silk, and escaping from its clamorous
denizens, who rushed up after us to the daylight, begging paras,
we took one of the boys for a guide, and soon found the object of
our search.


Knocking at the door of a half-ruined house, in one of the loneliest
streets of the city, an old, sore-eyed Armenian, with shabby
calpack, and every mark of extreme poverty, admitted us,
pettishly demanding our entrance money, before he let us pass
the threshold. Flights of steps, dangerously ruinous, led us
down, first into a garden, far below the level of the street, and
thence into a dark and damp cavern, the bottom of which was
covered with water. As the eye became accustomed to the
darkness, we could distinguish tall and beautiful columns of
marble and granite, with superb Corinthian capitals, perhaps
thirty feet in height, receding as far as the limits of our obscured
sight. The old man said there were a thousand of them. The
number was doubtless exaggerated, but we saw enough to convince
us, that here was covered up, almost unknown, one of the
most costly and magnificent works of the Christian emperors of
Constantinople.






LETTER XXXVIII.




Belgrade—The Cottage of Lady Montagu—Turkish Cemeteries—Natural
Taste of the Moslems for the Picturesque—A Turkish Carriage—Washerwomen
Surprised—Gigantic Forest Trees—The Reservoir—Return
to Constantinople.




I left Constantinople on horseback with a party of officers,
and two American travellers in the East, early on one of nature’s
holiday mornings, for Belgrade. We loitered a moment in the
small Armenian cemetery, the only suburb that separates the
thickly crowded street from the barren heath that stretches away
from the city on every side to the edge of the horizon. It is
singular to gallop thus from the crowded pavement, at once into
an uncultivated and unfenced desert. We are so accustomed to
suburban gardens that the traveller wonders how the markets of
this overgrown and immense capital are supplied. A glance
back upon the Bosphorus, and toward the Asian shore, and the
islands of the sea of Marmora, explains the secret. The waters
in every direction around this sea-girdled city are alive with
boats, from the larger kachambas and sandals to the egg-shell
caique, swarming into the Golden Horn in countless numbers,
laden with every vegetable of the productive East. It is said,
however, that it is dangerous to thrive too near the eye of the
sultan. The summary mode for rewarding favourites and providing
for the residence of ambassadors, by the simple confiscation
of the prettiest estate desirably situated, is thought to have
something to do with the barrenness of the immediate neighbourhood.


The Turks carry their contempt of the Christian even beyond
the grave. The funereal cypress, so singularly beautiful in its
native East, is permitted to throw its dark shadows only upon
turbaned tombstones. The Armenian rayah, the oppressed Greek,
and the more hated Jew, slumber in their unprotected graves on
the open heath. It almost reconciles one to the haughtiness and
cruelty of the Turkish character, however, to stand on one of
the “seven hills” of Stamboul, and look around upon their own
beautiful cemeteries. On every sloping hill-side, in every rural
nook, in the court of the splendid mosque, stands a dark
necropolis, a small city of the dead, shadowed so thickly by the
close growing cypresses, that the light of heaven penetrates but
dimly. You can have no conception of the beauty it adds to
the landscape. And then from the bosom of each, a slender
minaret shoots into the sky as if pointing out the flight of the
departed spirit, and if you enter within its religious darkness,
you find a taste and elegance unknown in more civilised countries;
the humblest headstone lettered with gold, and the more costly
sculptured into forms the most sumptuous, and fenced and
planted with flowers never neglected.


In the East, the grave-yard is not, as with us, a place abandoned
to its dead. Occupying a spot of chosen loveliness, it is resorted
to by women and children, and on holidays by men, whose indolent
natures find happiness enough in sitting on the green bank
around the resting-place of their relatives and friends. Here,
while their children are playing around them, they smoke in
motionless silence, watching the gay Bosphorus or the busier
curve of the Golden Horn, one of which is visible from every
cemetery in the Stamboul. Occasionally you see large parties
of twenty or thirty, sitting together, their slight feast of
sweetmeats and sherbet spread in some grassy nook, and the
surrounding head-stones serving as leaning-places for the women,
or bounds for the infant gambols of the gaily-dressed little
Mussulmans.


Whatever else we may deny the Turk, we must allow him to
possess a genuine love for rural beauty. The cemeteries we
have described, the choice of his dwelling on the Bosphorus, and
his habit of resorting, whenever he has leisure, to some lovely
scene to sit the livelong day in the sunshine, are proof enough. And
then all over the hills, both in Anatolia and Roumelia, wherever
there is a finer view or greener spot than elsewhere, you find
the small sairgah, the grassy platform on which he spreads his
carpet, and you may look in vain for a spot better selected for
his purpose.


Things are sooner seen than described (I wish it were as
agreeable to describe as to see them!) and all this digression,
and much more which I spare the reader, is the fruit of five
minutes’ reflection while the suridjee tightens his girths in the
Armenian burying-ground. The turbaned Turk once more in
his saddle, then we will canter on some three miles, if you please,
over as naked a heath as the sun looks upon, to the “Valley of
Sweet Waters.” I have described this, I think, before. We five
to learn, and my intelligent friend tells me, as we draw rein, and
wind carefully down the steep descent, that the site of the
Sultan’s romantic serai, in the bosom of the valley, was once
occupied by the first printing-press established in Turkey—the
fruit of an embassy to the Court of Louis the Fifteenth, by
Mehemet Effendi, in the reign of Achmet the Third. And thus
having delivered myself of a fact, a thing for which I have a
natural antipathy in writing, let us gallop up the velvet brink of
the Barbyses.


We had kept our small Turkish horses to their speed for a
mile, with the enraged suridjee crying after us at the top of his
voice, “Ya-wash! ya-wash!” (slowly, slowly!) when, at a bend
of the valley, right through the midst of its velvet verdure, came
rolling along an aruba, loaded with ladies. This pretty word
signifies in Turkish a carriage, and the thing itself reminds you
directly of the fantastic vehicles in which fairy queens come upon
the stage. First appear two grey oxen, with their tails tied to a
hoop bent back from the bend of the pole, their heads and horns
and the long curve of the hoop decked with red and yellow tassels
so profusely, that it looks at a distance like a walking clump of
hollyhocks. As you pass the poor oxen (almost lifted off their
hind legs by the straining of the hoop upon their tails), a four-wheeled
vehicle makes its appearance, the body and wheels
carved elaborately and gilt all over, and the crimson cover rolled
up just so far as to show a cluster of veiled women, cross-legged
upon cushions within, and riding in perfect silence.[17] A eunuch
or a very old Turk walks at the side, and thus the Moslem ladies
“take kaif,” as it is called—in other words go a pleasuring. But
a prettier sight than this gay affair rolling noiselessly over the
pathless greensward of the Valley of Sweet Waters, you may not
see in a year’s travel.


A beautiful Englishwoman, mounted (if I may dare to write
it) on a more beautiful Arabian, came flying toward us as we
approached the head of the valley, the long feathers in her riding
cap all but brushing our admiring eyes out as she passed, and
other living thing met we none till we drew up in the edge of the
forest of Belgrade. A half hour brought us to a bold descent,
and through the openings in the wood we caught a glimpse of the
celebrated retreat of Lady Montagu, a village, tossed into the
lap of as bright a dell as the sun looks upon in his journey. A
lively brook, that curls about in the grass like a silver flower
worked into the green carpet, overcomes at last its unwillingness
to depart, and vanishes from the fair scene under a clump of willows;
and, as if it knew it was sitting for its picture, there must
needs be a group of girls with their trowsers tucked up to the
knee, washing away so busily in the brook, that they did not see
that half a dozen Frank horsemen were upon them, and their
forgotten yashmacks all fallen about their shoulders!


We dismounted, and finding (what I never saw before) a red-headed
Frenchman, walking about in his slippers, we inquired
for the house of Lady Montagu. He had never heard of her! A
cottage, a little separated from the village, untenanted, and
looking as if it should be hers, stood on a swell of the valley, and
we found by the scrawled names and effusions of travellers upon
the gates, that we were not mistaken in selecting it for the shrine
of our sentiment.


I am sorry to be obliged to add, that in the romantic forest of
Belgrade, we listened to the calls of mortal hunger. With some
very sour wine, however, we did drink to the memory of Lady
Mary and the “fair Fatima,” washing down with the same
draught as brown bread as ever I saw, and some very indifferent
filberts.


We mounted once more, and followed our silent guide across
the brook, politely taking it below the spot where our naiads of
the stream were washing, and following its slender valley for a
mile, arrived at one of the gigantic bendts, for which the place is
famous. To give romance its proper precedence over reality,
however, I must first mention, that on the soft bank of the artificial
lake, which I shall presently describe, Constantine Ghika,
disguised as a shepherd, stole an interview with the fair Veronica,
and in the wild forest to the right, they wandered till they lost
their way; an adventure of which they only regretted the sequel,
finding it again! If you have not read “The Armenians,” this
pretty turn in my travels is thrown away upon you.


The valley of Belgrade widens and rounds into a lake-shaped
hollow just here, and across it, to form a reservoir for the supply
of the city by the aqueducts of Valens and Justinian, is built a
gigantic marble wall. There is no water just now, which, for a
lake, is rather a deficiency; but the vast white wall only stands
up against the sky, bolder and more towering, and coming suddenly
upon it in that lonely place, you might take it, if the “fine
phrensy” were on you, for the barrier of some enchanted demesne.


We passed on into the forest, winding after an almost invisible
path, up hill and down dale, till we came to the second bendt.
This, and the third, which is near by, are larger and of more
ornamental architecture than the first, and the forest around
them is one in which, if he turned his back on the lofty walls, a
wild Indian would feel himself at home. I have not seen such
trees since I left America; clear of all underwood, and the long
vistas broken only by the trunk of some noble oak, fallen aslant,
it has for miles the air of a grand old wilderness, unprofaned by
axe or fire. In the midst of such scenery as this, to ride up to
the majestic bendt, faced with a front like a temple, and crowned
by a marble balustrade, with a salient and raised crescent in the
centre, like a throne for some monarch of the forest, it must be a
more staid imagination than mine that would not feel a touch of
the knight of La Mancha, and spur up to find a gate, and a bugle
to blow a blast for the warder! It is just the looking place I
imagined for an enchanted castle, when reading my first romances.


Farther on in the forest we found several circular structures,
like baths, sunk in the earth, with flights of steps winding to the
bottom, but with the same gigantic trees growing at their very
rim, and nothing near them to show the purpose of their costly
masonry. We stopped to form a conjecture or two with the aid
of the genus loci; but the surly suridjee, probably at a loss to
comprehend the object of looking into a hole full of dead leaves,
chose to put his horse to a gallop; and having no Veronica to
make a romance of a lost path, we left our conjectures to gallop
after.


We reached the waste plains above the city at sunset, and
turned a little out of our way to enter through the Turkish
cemetery (poetically called by Mr. MacFarlane “death’s coronal”),
on the summit and sides of the hill behind Pera. Broad daylight,
as it was still without, it was deep twilight among its
thick-planted cypresses; and our horses, starting at the tall,
white tombstones, hurried through its damp hollows and emerged
on a brow overlooking the bright and crowded Bosphorus, bathed
at the moment in a flood of sunset glory. I said again, as I
reined in my horse and gazed down upon those lovely waters,
there is no such scene of beauty in the world! And again I say,
“poor Slingsby” never was here!














Whether the difficulty of talking through the yashmack, which is
drawn tight over the mouth and nose, may account for it, or whether they
have another race of the sex in the East, I am not prepared to say, but
Turkish women are remarkable for their taciturnity.










LETTER XXXIX.




Scutari—Tomb of the Sultana Valide—Mosque of the Howling Dervishes—A
Clerical Shoemaker—Visit to a Turkish Cemetery—Bird’s-Eye
View of Stamboul and its Environs—Seraglio-Point—The Seven
Towers.




Pulled over to Scutari in a caique, for a day’s ramble. The
Chrysopolis, the “golden city” of the ancients, forms the Asian
side of the bay, and though reckoned, generally, as a part of
Constantinople, is in itself a large and populous capital. It is
built on a hill, very bold upon the side washed by the sea of
Marmora, but leaning toward the seraglio, on the opposite shore,
with the grace of a lady (Asia) bowing to her partner (Europe).
You will find the simile very beautifully elaborated in the first
chapter of “The Armenians.”


We strolled through the bazaar awhile, meeting, occasionally,
a caravan of tired and dusty merchants, coming in from Asia,
some with Syrian horses, and some with dusky Nubian slaves,
following barefoot, in their blankets; and, emerging from the
crowded street upon a square, we stopped a moment to look at
the cemetery and gilded fountains of a noble mosque. Close to
the street, defended by a railing of gilt iron, and planted about
closely with cypresses, stands a small temple of airy architecture,
supported on four slender columns, and enclosed by a net of gilt
wire, forming a spacious aviary. Within sleeps the Sultana
Valide. Her costly monument, elaborately inscribed in red and
gold, occupies the area of this poetical sepulchre; small, sweet-scented
shrubs half bury it in their rich flowers, and birds of
the gayest plumage flutter and sing above her in their beautiful
prison. If the soul of the departed Sultana is still susceptible of
sentiment, she must look down with some complacency upon the
disposition of her “mortal coil.” I have not seen so fanciful a
grave in my travels.


We ascended the hill to the mosque of the Howling Dervishes.
It stands in the edge of the great cemetery of Scutari, the
favourite burial-place of the Turks. The self-torturing worship
of this singular class of devotees takes place only on a certain
day of the week, and we found the gates closed. A small café
stood opposite, sheltered by large plane-trees, and on a bench
at the door sat a dervish, employed in the unclerical vocation
of mending slippers. Calling for a cup of the fragrant Turkish
coffee, we seated ourselves on the matted bench beside him, and,
entering into conversation, my friend and he were soon upon
the most courteous terms. He laid down his last, and accepted
a proffered narghilé, and, between the heavily-drawn puff’s of the
bubbling vase, gave us some information respecting his order, of
which the peculiarity that most struck me was a law compelling
them to follow some secular profession. In this point, at least,
they are more apostolic than the clergy of Christendom. Whatever
may be the dervish’s excellence as a “mender of souls,”
thought I, as I took up the last, and looked at the stitching
of the bright new patch, (may I get well out of this sentence
without a pun!) I doubt whether there is a divine within the
Christian pale who could turn out so pretty a piece of work
in any corresponding calling. Our coffee drunk and our
chibouques smoked to ashes, we took leave of our papoosh-mending
friend, who laid his hand on his breast, and said, with
the expressive phraseology of the East, “You shall be welcome
again.”


We entered the gloomy shadow of the vast cemetery, and
found its cool and damp air a grateful exchange for the sunshine.
The author of “Anastasius” gives a very graphic description of
this place, throwing in some horrors, however, for which he is
indebted to his admirable imagination. I never was in a more
agreeable place for a summer-morning’s lounge, and, as I sat
down on a turbaned headstone, near the tomb of Mohammed the
Second’s horse, and indulged in a train of reflections arising from
the superior distinction of the brute’s ashes over those of his
master, I could remember no place, except Plato’s Academy at
Athens, where I had mused so absolutely at my ease.


We strolled on. A slender and elegantly-carved slab, capped
with a small turban, fretted and gilt, arrested my attention.
“It is the tomb,” said my companion, “of one of the ichoglans
or sultan’s pages. The peculiar turban is distinctive of his
rank, and the inscription says, he died at eighteen, after having
seen enough of the world! Similar sentiments are to be found
on almost every stone. Close by stood the ambitious cenotaph
of a former pacha of Widin, with a swollen turban, crossed with
folds of gold, and a footstone painted and carved, only less
gorgeously than the other; and under his name and titles was
written, “I enjoyed not the world.” Farther on, we stopped at
the black-banded turban of a cadi, and read again, underneath,
“I took no pleasure in this evil world.” You would think the
Turks a philosophising people, judging by these posthumous
declarations; but one need not travel to learn that tombstones
are sad liars.


The cemetery of Scutari covers as much ground as a city. Its
black cypress pall spreads away over hill and dale, and terminates,
at last, on a long point projecting into Marmora, as if it
would pour into the sea the dead it could no longer cover. From
the Armenian village, immediately above, it forms a dark, and
not unpicturesque foreground to a brilliant picture of the gulf of
Nicomedia and the clustering Princes’ Islands. With the
economy of room which the Turks practise in their burying-grounds,
laying the dead, literally, side by side, and the immense
extent of this forest of cypresses, it is probable that on no one
spot on the earth are so many of the human race gathered
together.


We wandered about among the tombs till we began to desire to
see the cheerful light of day, and crossing toward the height of
Bulgurlu, commenced its ascent, with the design of descending
by the other side to the Bosphorus, and returning, by caique, to
the city. Walking leisurely on between fields of the brightest
cultivation, we passed, half way up, a small and rural serai, the
summer residence of Esmeh Sultana, the younger sister of the
sultan, and soon after stood, well breathed, on the lofty summit
of Bulgurlu. The constantly-occurring sairgahs, or small grass
platforms, for spreading the carpet and “taking kaif,” show
how well the Turks appreciate the advantages of a position
commanding, perhaps, views unparalleled in the world for
their extraordinary beauty. But let us take breath and look
around us.


We stood some three miles back from the Bosphorus, perhaps
a thousand feet above its level. There lay Constantinople!
The “temptation of Satan” could not have been more sublime.
It seemed as if all the “kingdoms of the earth” were swept confusedly
to the borders of the two continents. From Seraglio
Point, seven miles down the coast of Roumelia, the eye followed
a continued wall; and from the same point, twenty miles up the
Bosphorus, on either shore, stretched one crowded and unbroken
city! The star-shaped bay in the midst, crowded with flying
boats; the Golden Horn sweeping out from behind the hills, and
pouring through the city like a broad river, studded with ships;
and, in the palace-lined and hill-sheltered Bosphorus, the sultan’s
fleet at anchor, the lofty men-of-war flaunting their blood-red
flags, and thrusting their tapering spars almost into the balconies
of the fairy dwellings, and among the bright foliage of the
terraced gardens above them. Could a scene be more strangely
and beautifully mingled?


But sit down upon this silky grass, and let us listen to my
polyglot friend, while he explains the details of the panorama.


First, clear over the sea of Marmora, you observe a snow-white
cloud resting on the edge of the horizon. That is
Olympus. Within sight of his snowy summit, and along toward
the extremity of this long line of eastern hills, lie Bithynia,
Phrygia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and the whole scene of the
apostles’ travels in Asia Minor; and just at his feet, if you will
condescend to be modern, lies Brusa, famous for its silks, and
one of the most populous and thriving of the sultan’s cities.
Returning over Marmora by the Princes’ Islands, at the western
extremity of Constantinople, stands the Fortress of the Seven
Towers, where fell the Emperor Constantine Palæologus, where
Othman the Second was strangled, where refractory ambassadors
are left to come to their senses and the sultan’s terms, and where,
in short, that “zealous public butcher,” the seraskier, cuts any
Gordian knot that may tangle his political meshes; and here
was the famous “Golden Gate,” attended no more by its “fifty
porters with white wands,” and its crowds of “ichoglans and
mutes, turban-keepers, nail-cutters, and slipper-bearers,” as in
the days of the Selims.


Between the Seven Towers and the Golden Horn you may
count the “seven hills” of ancient Stamboul, the towering
arches of the aqueduct of Valens, crossing from one to the other,
and the swelling dome and gold-tipped minarets of a hundred
imperial mosques crowning and surrounding their summits.
What an Orient look do those gallery-bound and sky-piercing
shafts give to the varied picture!


There is but one “Seraglio Point” in the world. Look at
that tapering cape, shaped like a lady’s foot, projecting from
Stamboul toward the shore of Asia, and dividing the bay from
the sea of Marmora. It is cut off from the rest of the city, you
observe, by a high wall, flanked with towers, and the circumference
of the whole seraglio may be three miles. But what a
gem of beauty it is! In what varied foliage its unapproachable
palaces are buried, and how exquisitely gleam from the midst of
the bright leaves its gilded cupolas, its gay balconies, its airy
belvideres, and its glittering domes! And mark the height of
those dark and arrowy cypresses, shooting from every corner of
its imperial gardens, and throwing their deep shadows on every
bright cluster of foliage, and every gilded lattice of the sacred
enclosure. They seem to remind one, that amid all its splendour,
and with all its secluded retirement, this gorgeous sanctuary of
royalty, has been stained, from its first appropriation by the
monarchs of the East till now, with the blood of victims to the
ambition of its changing masters. The cypresses are still young
over the graves of an uncle and a brother, whose cold murder
within those lovely precincts prepared the throne for the present
sultan. The seraglio, no longer the residence of Mahmoud
himself, is at present occupied by his children, two noble boys,
of whom one, by the usual system, must fall a sacrifice to the
security of the other.


Keeping on toward the Black Sea, we cross the Golden Horn
to Pera, the European and diplomatic quarter of the city. The
high hill on which it stands overlooks all Constantinople; and
along its ridge toward the beautiful cemetery on the brow, runs
the principal street of the Franks, the promenade of the
dragoman exquisites, and the Broadway of shops and belles.
Here meet, on the narrow pavé, the veiled Armenian, who
would die with shame to show her chin to a stranger, and the
wife of the European merchant, in a Paris hat and short
petticoats, mutually each other’s sincere horror. Here the
street is somewhat cleaner, the dogs somewhat less anti-Christian,
and hat and trowsers somewhat less objects of
contempt. It is a poor abortion of a place, withal, neither
Turkish nor Christian; and nobody who could claim a shelter
for his head elsewhere, would take the whole of its slate-coloured
and shingled palaces as a gift.


Just beyond is the mercantile suburb of Galatan, which your
dainty diplomatist would not write on his card for an embassy,
but for which, as being honestly what it calls itself, I entertain a
certain respect, wanting in my opinion of its mongrel neighbour.
Heavy gates divide these different quarters of the city, and if
you would pass after sunset, you must anoint the hinges with a
piastre.






LETTER XL.




Beauties of the Bosphorus—Summer-Palace of the Sultan—Adventure with
an old Turkish Woman—The Feast of Bairam—The Sultan his own
Butcher—His evil Propensities—Visit to the Mosques—A formidable
Dervish—Santa Sophia—Mosque of Sultan Achmet—Traces of
Christianity.




From this elevated point, the singular effect of a desert
commencing from the very streets of the city is still more
observable. The compact edge of the metropolis is visible even
upon the more rural Bosphorus, not an enclosure or a straggling
house venturing to protrude beyond the closely pressed limit.
To repeat the figure, it seems, with the prodigious mass of
habitations on either shore, as if all the cities of both Europe
and Asia were swept to their respective borders, or as if the
crowded masses upon the long extending shores were the deposit
of some mighty overflow of the sea.


From Pera commence the numerous villages, separated only
by name, which form a fringe of peculiarly light and fantastic
architecture to the never-wearying Bosphorus. Within the
small limit of your eye, upon that silver link between the two
seas, there are fifty valleys and thirty rivers, and an imperial
palace on every loveliest spot from the Black Sea to Marmora.
The Italians say, “See Naples and die!” but for Naples I
would read Stamboul and the Bosphorus.


Descending unwillingly from this enchanting spot, we entered
a long glen, closed at the water’s edge by the Sultan’s summer-palace,
and present residence of Beylerbey. Half way down, we
met a decrepit old woman, toiling up the path, and my friend,
with a Wordsworthian passion for all things humble and simple,
gave her the Turkish good-morrow, and inquired her business at
the village. She had been to Stavros, to sell ten paras’ worth
of herbs—about one cent of our currency. He put a small piece
of silver into her hand, while, with the still strong habit of
Turkish modesty, she employed the other in folding her tattered
yashmack so as to conceal her features from the gaze of strangers.
She had not expected charity. “What is this for?” she asked,
looking at it with some surprise. “To buy bread for your children,
mother!” “Effendi!” said the poor old creature, her voice
trembling, and the tears streaming from her eyes, “My children
are all dead! There is no one now between me and Allah!”
It were worth a poet’s while to live in the East. Like the
fairy in the tale, they never open their lips but they “speak
pearls.”


We took a caique at the mosque of Sultan Selim, at Beylerbey,
and floated slowly past the imperial palace. Five or six
eunuchs, with their red caps and long blue dresses, were talking
at a high tenor in the court-yard of the harem, and we gazed
long and earnestly at the fine lattices above, concealing so many
of the picked beauties of the empire. A mandolin, very indifferently
strummed in one of the projecting wings, betrayed the
employment of some fair Fatima, and there was a single moment
when we could see, by the relief of a corner window, the outline
of a female figure; but the caique floated remorselessly on, and
our busy imaginations had their own unreal shadows for their
reward. As we approached the central façade the polished
brazen gates flew open, and a band of thirty musicians came out
and ranged themselves on the terrace beneath the palace-windows,
announcing, in their first flourish, that Sultan Mahmoud
had thrust his fingers into his pilaw, and his subjects were at
liberty to dine. Not finding their music much to our taste, we
ordered the caikjees to assist the current a little, and shooting
past Stavros, we cut across the Strait from the old palace of
Shemsheh the vizier, and, in a few minutes, I was once more in
my floating home, under the “star-spangled banner.”




Constantinople was in a blaze last night, with the illumination
for the approach of the Turkish feast of Bairam. The minarets
were extremely beautiful, their encircling galleries hung with
coloured lamps, and illuminated festoons suspended from one to
the other. The ships of the fleet were decked also with thousands
of lamps, and the effect was exceedingly fine, with the
reflection in the Bosphorus, and the waving of the suspended
lights in the wind. The Sultan celebrates the festa by taking a
virgin to his bed, and sacrificing twenty sheep with his own hand.
I am told by an intelligent physician here, that this playing the
butcher is an every-day business with the “Brother of the Sun,”
every safe return from a ride, or an excursion in his sultanethe
caique, requiring him to cut the throat of his next day’s mutton.
It may account partly for the excessive cruelty of character
attributed to him.


Among other bad traits, Mahmoud is said to be very avaricious.
It is related of his youth, that he was permitted occasionally,
with his brother (who was murdered to make room for him
on the throne), to walk out in public on certain days with their
governor; and that, upon these occasions, each was intrusted
with a purse to be expended in charity. The elder brother soon
distributed his piastres, and borrowed of his attendants to continue
his charities; while Mahmoud quietly put the purse in his
pocket, and added it to his private hoard on his return. It is
said, too, that he has a particular passion for upholstery, and in
his frequent change from one serai to another, allows no nail to
be driven without his supervision. Add to this a spirit of
perverse contradiction, so truculent that none but the most
abject flatterers can preserve his favour, and you have a pretty
handful of offsets against a character certainly not without some
royal qualities.




With one of the reis effendi’s and one of the seraskier’s
officers, followed by four kervasses in the Turkish military dress,
and every man a pair of slippers in his pocket, we accompanied
the commodore, to-day, on a visit to the principal mosques.


Landing first at Tophana, on the Pera side, we entered the
court of the new mosque built by the present sultan, whose
elegant exterior of white marble and two freshly-gilded minarets
we had admired daily, lying at anchor without sound of the
muezzin. The morning prayers were just over, and the retiring
Turks looked, with lowering brows at us, as we pulled off our
boots on the sacred threshold.


We entered upon what, but for the high pulpit, I should have
taken for rather a superb ball-room. An unencumbered floor
carpeted gaily, a small arabesque gallery over the door quite like
an orchestra, chandeliers and lamps in great profusion, and walls
painted of the brightest and most varied colours, formed an
interior rather wanting in the “dim religious light” of a place
of worship. We were shuffling around in our slippers from one
side to the other, examining the marble mihrab and the narrow
and towering pulpit, when a ragged and decrepid dervish, with
his papooshes in his hand, and his toes and heels protruding from
a very dirty pair of stockings, rose from his prayers, and began
walking backward and forward, eyeing us ferociously and
muttering himself into quite a passion. His charity for infidels
was evidently at a low ebb. Every step we took upon the holy
floor seemed to add to his fury. The kervasses observed him, but
his sugar-loaf cap carried some respect with it, and they evidently
did not like to meddle with him. He followed us to the door,
fixing his hollow grey eyes with a deadly glare upon each one as
he went out, and the Turkish officers seemed rather glad to
hurry us out of his way. He left us in the vestibule, and we
mounted a handsome marble staircase to a suite of apartments
above, communicating with the sultan’s private gallery. The
carpets here were richer, and the divans with which the half
dozen saloons were surrounded, were covered with the most
costly stuffs of the East. The gallery was divided from the
area of the mosque by a fine brazen grating curiously wrought,
and its centre occupied by a rich ottoman, whereon the imperial
legs are crossed in the intervals of his prostrations. It was
about the size and had the air altogether of a private box at
the opera.


We crossed the Golden Horn, and passing the eunuch’s guard,
entered the gardens of the seraglio on our way to Santa Sophia.
An inner wall still separated us from the gilded kiosks, at whose
latticed windows peering above the trees, we might have clearly
perused the features of any peeping inmate; but the little cross-bars
revealed nothing but their own provoking eye of the size of
a rose-leaf in the centre, and we reached the upper gate without
even a glimpse of a waved handkerchief to stir our chivalry to
the rescue.


A confused mass of buttresses without form or order, is all
that you are shown for the exterior of that “wonder of the
world,” the mosque of mosques, the renowned Santa Sophia.
We descended a dark avenue, and leaving our boots in a vestibule
that the horse of Mohammed the Second, if he was lodged as
ambitiously living as dead, would have disdained for his stable,
we entered the vaulted area. A long breath and an admission of
its almost attributable supernatural grandeur, followed our too
hasty disappointment. It is indeed a “vast and wondrous
dome!” Its dimensions are less than those of St. Peter’s at
Rome, but its effect, owing to its unity and simplicity of design,
is, I think, superior. The numerous small galleries let into its
sides add richness to it without impairing its apparent magnitude,
and its vast floor, upon which a single individual is almost lost,
the sombre colours of its walls untouched probably for centuries,
and the dim sepulchral light that struggles through the deep-niched
and retiring windows, form altogether an interior from
which the imagination returns, like the dove to the ark, fluttering
and bewildered.


Our large party separated over its wilderness of a floor, and
each might have had his hour of solitude, had the once Christian
spirit of the spot (or the present pagan demon) affected him
religiously. I found, myself, a singular pleasure in wandering
about upon the elastic mats (laid four or five thick all over the
floor), examining here a tattered banner hung against the wall,
and there a rich cashmere which had covered the tomb of the
prophet; on one side a slab of transparent alabaster from the
temple of Solomon (a strange relic for a Mohammedan mosque!)
and on the other, a dark mihrab surrounded by candles of incredible
proportions, looking like the marble columns of some
friezeless portico. The four “six-winged cherubim” on the roof
of the dome, sole remaining trace as they are of the religion to
which the building was first dedicated, had better been left to
the imagination. They are monstrous in mosaic. It is said
that the whole interior of the mosque is cased beneath its dusky
plaster with the same costly mosaic which covers the ceiling.
To make a Mohammedan mosque of a Christian church, however,
it was necessary to erase Christian emblems from the walls;
besides which the Turks have a superstitious horror of all
imitative arts, considering the painting of the Iranian features
particularly, as a mockery of the handiwork of Allah.


We went hence to the more modern mosque of Sultan Achmet,
which is in imitation of Santa Sophia within, but its own beautiful
prototype in exterior. Its spacious and solemn court, its six
heaven-piercing minarets, its fountains, and the mausoleums of
the sultans, with their gilded cupolas and sarcophagi covered with
cashmeres (the murdering sultan and his murdered brothers
lying in equal splendour side by side!), are of a style of richness
peculiarly oriental and imposing. We visited in succession
Sultan Bajazet, Sulymanye, and Sultana Valide, all of the same
arabesque exterior, and very similar within. The description of
one leaves little to be said of the other, and, with the exception
of Santa Sophia, of which I should like to make a lounge when
I am in love with my own company, the mosques of Constantinople
are a kind of “lion” well killed in a single visit.






LETTER XLI.




Unerring Detection of Foreigners—A Cargo of Odalisques—The Fanar, or
Quarter of the Greeks—Street of the Booksellers—Aspect of Antiquity—Purchases—Charity
for Dogs and Pigeons—Punishment of Canicide—A
Bridal Procession—Turkish Female Physiognomy.




Pulling up the Golden Horn to-day in a caique without any
definite errand (a sort of excursion particularly after my own
heart), I was amused at the caikjee’s asking my companion, who
shaves clean like a Christian, and has his clothes from Regent-street,
and looks for aught I can see, as much like a foreigner in
Constantinople as myself, “in what vessel I had arrived.” We
asked him if he had ever seen either of us before. “No!”
How then did he know that my friend, who had not hitherto
spoken a word of Turkish, was not as lately arrived as myself?
What is it that so infallibly, in every part of the world, distinguishes
the stranger?


We passed under the stern of an outlandish-looking vessel just
dropping her anchor. Her deck was crowded with men and
women in singular costumes, and near the helm, apparently under
the protection of a dark-visaged fellow in a voluminous turban,
stood three young, and, as well as we could see, uncommonly
pretty girls. The captain answered to our hail that he was from
Trebizond, and his passengers were slaves for the bazaar. How
redolent of the East! Were one but a Turk, now, to forestall
the market and barter for a pair of those dark eyes while they
are still full of surprise and innocence!


We landed at the Fanar. Bow-windows crowded with fair
faces, in enormous pink turbans, naked shoulders (which I am
already so orientalised as to think very indecent), puffed curls
and pinched waists, reminded us at every step that we were in a
Christian quarter of Constantinople. From this paltry and
miserable suburb, spring the modern princes of Greece, the
Mavrocordatos, and Ghikas, the Hospodars of Wallachia and
Moldavia, the subtle, insinuating, intriguing, but talented and
ever-successful Fanariotes. One hears so much of them in
Europe, and so much is made of a stray scion from the very far-traced
root of Palæologus or some equally boasted blood of the
Fanar (I met a Fanariote princess G—— at the baths of Lucca
last year, whom I except from every disparaging remark), that
he is a little disappointed with the dirty alleys and the stuffed
windows shown him as hereditary homes of these very sounding
names. There are a hundred families at least in the Fanar,
that trace their origin back to no less than an imperial stock,
and there is not a house in the whole quarter that would pass
in our country for a respectable barn. In personal appearance
they are certainly very inferior to any other race of their own
nation. The Albanians and the Greeks I saw at Napoli and
in the Morea, were (except the North American Indians) the
finest people, physically, I have ever been among; while it
would be difficult to find a more diminutive and degenerate-looking
body of men and women, than swarm in this nest of
Grecian princes.


We re-entered our little bark, and gliding along leisurely
through the crowd of piades, kachambas, and caïques, landed at
Stamboul, and walked on toward the bazaar. Always discovering
new passages in that labyrinth of shops, we found ourselves,
after an hour’s rambling, in a long street of booksellers. This is
rather the oldest and narrowest part of the bazaar, and the light
of heaven meets with the additional interruption of two rows of
pillars with arched friezes standing in the middle of the street.
On entering the literary twilight of the passage in the rear of
these columns, the classic nostril detects instantly the genuine
odour of manuscript, black-letter, and ancient binding; and the
trained eye, accustomed to the dim niches of libraries, wanders
over the well-piled shelves with their quaint rows of volumes in
vellum, and appreciates at once their varied riches. Here is
nothing of the complexion of a shelf at the Harpers’, or the
Hendees’, or the Careys’—no fresh and uncut novel, no new-born
poem, no political pamphlet or gay souvenir! And the priceless
treasures of learning are not here doled out by a talkative publisher
or dapper clerk, skilled only in the lettered backs of the
volumes he barters. But in sombre and uneven rows, or laid in
heaps, whose order is not in their similarity of binding, but in
the correspondence of their contents, lie venerable and much-thumbed
tomes of Arabic or Persian; while the venerable
bibliopole, seated motionless on his hams, with his grey beard
reaching to his crossed slippers, peruses an illuminated volume of
Hafiz, lifting his eyes from the page only to revolve some sweet
image in his mind, and murmur a low “pekke!” of approbation.


We had stepped back into the last century. Here was the
calamus still in use. The small, brown reed, not yet superseded
by the more useful but less classic quill, stood in every clotted
inkstand, and nothing less than the purchase of a whole scrivener’s
furniture, from a bearded bookworm, whose benevolent face took
my fancy, would suffice my enthusiasm. Not to waste all our
oriental experience at a single stall, we strolled farther on to buy
an illuminated Hafiz. We stopped simultaneously before an old
Armenian who seemed, by his rusty calpack and shabby robe, to
be something poorer than even his plainly-clad neighbours: for in
Turkey, as elsewhere, he who lives in a world of his own, has but
a slender portion in that of the vulgar. A choice-looking volume
lay open upon one of the old man’s knees, while from a wooden
bowl he was eating hastily a pottage of rice. His meal was evidently
an interruption. He had not even laid aside his book.


There was something in his handling the volume, as he took
down a pocket-sized Hafiz, that showed an affection for the
author. He turned it over with a slight dilation of countenance,
and opening it with a careful thumb, read a line in mellifluous
Persian. I took it from him open at the place, and marked the
passage with my nail, to look for it in the translation.


With my cheaply-bought treasures in my pockets, we turned
up the street of the diamond merchants, and making a single
purchase more in the bazaar, of a tesbih or Turkish rosary of
spice-wood, emerged to the open air in the neighbourhood of the
mosque of Sultan Bajazet.


Whether slipping the pagan beads through my fingers affected
me devoutly, or whether it was the mellow humour of the moment,
I felt a disposition to forgive my enemies, and indulge in an act
of Mohammedan piety—feeding the unowned dogs of the street.
We stepped into a baker’s shop, and laid out a piastre in bread,
and were immediately observed and surrounded, before we could
break a loaf, by twenty or thirty as ill-looking curs, as ever
howled to the moon. Having distributed about a dozen loaves,
and finding that our largess had by no means satisfied the appetites
of the expecting rabble, we found ourselves embarrassed to
escape. Nothing but the baker’s threshold prevented them from
jumping upon us, in their eagerness, and the array of so many
formidable mouths ferocious with hunger, was rather staggering.
The baker drew off the hungry pack at last, by walking round
the corner with a loaf in his hand, while we made a speedy exit,
patted on the back in passing by several of the assembled
spectators.


It is surprising that the Turks can tolerate this filthy breed of
curs, in such extraordinary numbers. They have a whimsical
punishment for killing one of them. The dead dog is hung by his
heels, so that his nose just touches the ground, and the canicide
is compelled to heap wheat about him, till he is entirely covered;
the wheat is then given to the poor, and the dog buried at the
expense of the culprit. There are probably five dogs to every
man in Constantinople, and besides their incessant barking, they
often endanger the lives of children and strangers. MacFarlane,
I think, tells the story of a drunken sea-captain, who was entirely
devoured by the dogs at Tophana; nothing being found of him
in the morning but his “indigestible pig-tail!”


We entered the court of Sultan Bajazet, and found the majestic
plane-trees that shadow its arabesque fountains, bending beneath
the weight of hundreds of pensionary pigeons. Here, as at
several of the mosques, an old man sits by the gate, whose
business it is to expend the alms given him in distributing grain
to these sacred birds. Not to be outdone in piety, my friend
gave the blind Turk a piastre; and, as he arose and unlocked
the box beneath him, the pigeons descended about us in such a
cloud, as literally to darken the air. Handful after handful was
then thrown among them, and the beautiful creatures ran over
our feet and fluttered round us with a fearlessness that sufficiently
proved the safety in which they haunted the sacred
precincts. In a few minutes they soared altogether again to the
trees, and their Mussulman-feeder resumed his seat upon the box
to wait for another charity.


A crowd of women at the harem gate, in the rear of the seraskier’s
palace, attracted our attention. Upon inquiry, we found
that he had married a daughter to one of the sultan’s military
officers, and the bridal party was expected presently to come out
in arubas, and make the tour of the Hippodrome, on the way to
the house of the bridegroom. We wiled away an hour returning
the gaze of curiosity bent upon us from the idle and bright eyes
of a hundred women, and the first of the gilded vehicles made its
appearance; though in the same style of ornament with the one
I have already described, it differed in being drawn by horses,
and having a frame top, with small round mirrors set in the
corners. Within sat four very young women, one of whom was
the bride; but which, we found no one who could tell us. It is
no description of a face in the East to say, that the eyes were
dark, and the nose regular—all that the jealous yashmack
permitted us to ascertain of the beauty of the bride. Their eyes
are all dark, and their noses are all regular; the Turkish nose
differing from the Grecian, as that of the Antinous from the
Apollo, only in its more voluptuous fulness, and a nostril less
dilated. Four darker pairs of eyes, however, and four brows of
whiter orb, never pined in a harem, or were reflected in those
golden-rimmed mirrors; and as the twelve succeeding arubas
rattled by, and in each suite four young women, with the same
eternal dark eyes, “full of sleep,” and the same curved and
pearly forehead, and noses like the Antinous, I thought of
toujours perdrix, and felt that if there had been but one with a
slight toss in that prominent member, it would not have been
displeasing.


In a conversation with a Greek lady the other day, she remarked
that the veils of the Turkish ladies conceal no charms.
Their mouths, she says, are generally coarse, and their teeth,
from the immoderate use of sweetmeats, or neglect, or some other
cause, almost universally defective. How far the interest excited
by these hidden features may have jaundiced the eyes of my
fair informer, I cannot say; but, as a general fact, uneducated
women, whatever other beauties they may possess, have rarely
expressive or agreeable mouths. Nature forms and colours the
nose, the eyes, the forehead, and the complexion; but the
character, from the cradle up, moulds gradually to its own inward
changes, the plastic and passion-breathing lines of the lips.
Allowing this, it would be rather surprising if there was a mouth
in all Turkey that had more than a pretty silliness at the most—the
art of dyeing their finger nails, and painting their eyebrows,
being the highest branches of female education. How they
came by these “eyes that teach us what the sun is made of,” the
vales of Georgia and Circassia best can tell.


And so having rambled away a sunny autumn day, and
earned some little appetite, if not experience, we will get out of
Stamboul, before the sunset guard makes us prisoners, and climb
up to our dinner in Pera.






LETTER XLII.




The Perfection of Bathing—Pipes—Downy Cushions—Coffee—Rubbing
Down—“Circular Justice,” as displayed in the Retribution of Boiled
Lobsters—A Deluge of Suds—The Shampoo—Luxurious helps to the
Imagination—A Pedestrian Excursion—Story of an American Tar,
burdened with Small Change—Beauty of the Turkish Children—A
Civilised Monster—Glimpse of Sultan Mahmoud in an Ill-Humour.




“Time is (not) money” in the East. We were three hours
to-day at the principal bath of Constantinople, going through the
ordinary process of the establishment, and were outstayed, at
last, by two Turkish officers who had entered with us. During
this time, we had each the assiduous service of an attendant, and
coffee, lemonade, and pipes ad libitum, for the consideration of
half a Spanish dollar.


Although I have once described a Turkish bath, the metropolitan
“pomp and circumstance” so far exceed the provincial
in this luxury, that I think I shall be excused for dwelling a
moment upon it again. The dressing-room opens at once from
the street. We descended half a dozen steps to a stone floor, in
the centre of which stood a large marble fountain. Its basin
was kept full by several jets d’eau, which threw their silver
curves into the air, and the edge was set round with narghilés
(or Persian water-pipes with glass vases), ready for the smokers
of the mild tobacco of Shiraz. The ceiling of this large hall was
lofty, and the sides were encircled by three galleries, one above
the other, with open balustrades, within which the bathers
undressed. In a corner sat several attendants, with only a
napkin around their waists, smoking till their services should be
required; and one who had just come from the inner bath,
streaming with perspiration, covered himself with cloths, and lay
crouched, upon a carpet till he could bear, with safety, the
temperature of the outer air.


A half-naked Turk, without his turban, looks more a Mephistopheles
than a Ganymede, and I could scarce forbear shrinking
as this shaven-headed troop of servitors seized upon us, and,
without a word, pulled off our boots, thrust our feet into slippers,
and led us up into the gallery to undress. An ottoman, piled
with cushions, and overhung, on the wall, by a small mirror, was
allotted to each, and with the assistance of my familiar (who was
quite too familiar!) I found myself stripped, nolens volens, and a
snowy napkin, with gold and embroidered edge, twisted into a
becoming turban around my head.


We were led immediately into the first bath, a small room, in
which the heat, for the first breath or two, seemed rather oppressive.
Carpets were spread for us on the warm marble floor, and
crossing our legs, with more ease than when cased in our unoriental
pantaloons, we were served with pipes and coffee of a delicious
flavour.


After a half hour, the atmosphere, so warm when we entered,
began to feel chilly, and we were taken by the arm, and led by
our speechless Mussulman, through an intermediate room, into
the grand bath. The heat here seemed to me, for a moment
almost intolerable. The floor was hot, and the air so moist with
the suffocating vapour, as to rest like mist upon the skin. It was
a spacious and vaulted room, with perhaps fifty small square
windows in the dome, and four arched recesses in the sides,
supplied with marble seats, and small reservoirs of hot and cold
water. In the centre was a broad platform, on which the bather
was rubbed and shampooed, occupied, just then, by two or three
dark-skinned Turks, lying on their backs, with their eyes shut,
dreaming, if one might judge by their countenances, of Paradise.


After being left to walk about for half an hour, by this time
bathed in perspiration, our respective demons seized upon us
again, and led us to the marble seats in the recesses. Putting a
rough mitten on the right hand, my Turk then commenced upon
my breast, scouring me without water or mercy, from head to foot,
and turning me over on my face or my back, without the least
“by your leave” expression in his countenance, and with an
adroitness which, in spite of the novelty of my situation, I could
not but admire. I hardly knew whether the sensation was
pleasurable or painful. I was less in doubt presently, when he
seated me upright, and, with the brazen cup of the fountain,
dashed upon my peeled shoulders a quantity of half boiling
water. If what Barnacle, in the play, calls “a circular justice,”
existed in the world, I should have thought it a judgment for
eating of lobsters. My familiar was somewhat startled at the
suddenness with which I sprang upon my feet, and, turning some
cold water into the reservoir, laid his hand on his breast, and
looked an apology. The scalding was only momentary, and the
qualified contents of the succeeding cups highly grateful.


We were left again, for a while, to our reflections, and then
reappeared our attendants, with large bowls of the suds of
scented soap, and small bunches of soft Angora wool. With
this we were tenderly washed, and those of my companions who
wished it were shaved. The last operation they described as
peculiarly agreeable, both from the softened state of the skin and
dexterity of the operators.


Rinsed once more with warm water, our snowy turbans were
twisted around our heads again, cloths were tied about our waists,
and we returned to the second room. The transition from the
excessive heat within, made the air, that we had found oppressive
when we entered, seem disagreeably chilly. We wrapped ourselves
in our long cloths, and, resuming our carpets, took coffee
and pipes as before. In a few minutes we began to feel a
delightful glow in our veins, and then our cloths became unpleasantly
warm, and by the time we were taken back to the
dressing-room, its cold air was a relief. They led us to the
ottomans, and piling the cushions so as to form a curve, laid us
upon them, covered with clean white cloths, and bringing us
sherbets, lemonade, and pipes, dropped upon their knees, and
commenced pressing our limbs all over gently with their hands.
My sensations during the half hour we lay here were indescribably
agreeable, I felt an absolute repose of body, a calm, half-sleepy
languor in my whole frame, and a tranquillity of mind, which,
from the busy character of the scenes in which I was daily conversant,
were equally unusual and pleasurable. Scarce stirring
a muscle or a nerve, I lay the whole hour, gazing on the lofty
ceiling, and listening to the murmur of the fountain, while my
silent familiar pressed my limbs with a touch as gentle as a child’s,
and it seemed to me as if pleasure was breathing from every
pore of my cleansed and softened skin. I could willingly have
passed the remainder of the day upon the luxurious couch. I
wonder less than ever at the flowery and poetical character of
the oriental literature, where the mind is subjected to influences
so refining and exhilarating. One could hardly fail to grow a
poet, I should think, even with this habit of eastern luxury
alone. If I am to conceive a romance, or to indite an epithalamium,
send me to the bath on a day of idleness, and, covering
me up with their snowy and lavendered napkins, leave me till
sunset!




With a dinner in prospect at a friend’s house, six or eight
miles up the Bosphorus, we started in the morning on foot, with
the intention of seeing Sultan Mahmoud go to mosque, by the
way. We stopped a moment to look into the marble pavilion,
containing the clocks of the mosque of Tophana, and drank at
the opposite pavilion, from the brass cup chained in the window,
and supplied constantly from the fountain within, and then kept
on through the long street to the first village of Dolma-baktchi,
or the Garden of Gourds.


Determined, with the day before us, to yield to every temptation
on the road, we entered a small café, overlooking a segment of
the Bosphorus, and while the acorn-sized cups were simmering on
the manghal, my friend entered into conversation in Arabic with
a tawny old Egyptian, who sat smoking in the corner. He was a
fine specimen of the “responsible-looking” Oriental, and had
lately arrived from Alexandria on business. Pleasant land of
the East! where, to be the pink of courtesy, you must pass your
snuff-box, or your tobacco-pouch to the stranger, and ask him
those questions of his “whereabouts,” so impertinent in more
civilised Europe!


After a brief dialogue, which was Hebrew to me, our Alexandrian,
knocking the ashes from his pipe, commenced a narration
with a great deal of expressive gesture, at which my friend
seemed very provokingly amused. I sipped my coffee, and
wondered what could have led one of these silent grey-beards
into an amusing story, till a pause gave me an opportunity to
ask a translation. Hearing that we were Americans, the
Egyptian had begun by asking whether there was a superstition
in our country against receiving back money in change. He
explained his question by saying that he was in a café, at
Tophana, when a boat’s crew, from the American frigate, waiting
for some one at the landing, entered, and asked for coffee. They
drank it very quietly, and one of them gave the caféjee a dollar,
receiving in change a handful of the shabby and adulterated
money of Constantinople. Jack was rather surprised at getting
a dozen cups of coffee, and so much coin for his dollar, and
requested the boy, by signs, to treat the company at his expense.
This was done, the Turks all acknowledging the courtesy by
laying their hands upon their foreheads and breast, and still
Jack’s money lay heavy in his hands. He called for pipes, and
they smoked awhile; but finding still that his riches were not
perceptibly diminished, he hitched up his trowsers, and with a
dexterous flirt, threw his piastres and paras all round upon the
company, and rolled out of the café. From the gravity of the
other sailors at this remarkable flourish, the old Egyptian and
his fellow cross-legs had imagined it to be a national custom!


Idling along through the next village, we turned to admire a
Turkish child, led by an Abyssinian slave. There is no country
in the world where the children are so beautiful, and this was a
cherub of a boy, like one of Domenichino’s angels. As we
stopped to look at him, the little fellow commenced crying most
lustily.


“Hush! my rose!” said the Abyssinian, “these are good
Franks! these are not the Franks that eat children! hush!”


It certainly takes the nonsense out of one to travel. I should
never have thought it possible, if I had not been in Turkey, that
I could be made a bugbear to scare a child!


We passed the tomb of Frederick Barbarossa, getting, between
the walls of the palaces on the water’s edge, continual and
incomparable views of the Bosphorus, and arrived at Beshiktash
(or the marble cradle), just as the troops were drawn up to the
door of the mosque. We took our stand under a plane-tree, in
the midst of a crowd of women, and presently the noisy band
struck up the sultan’s march, and the led horses appeared in
sight. They came on with their grooms and their rich housings,
a dozen matchless Arabians, scarce touching the ground with
their prancings! Oh, how beautiful they were! Their delicate
limbs, their small, veined heads and fiery nostrils, their glowing,
intelligent eyes, their quick, light, bounding action, their round
bodies, trembling with restrained and impatient energy, their
curved, haughty necks, and dark manes flowing wildly in the
wind! El Borak, the mare of the prophet, with the wings of a
bird, was not lighter or more beautiful.


The sultan followed, preceded by his principal officers, with a
stirrup-holder running at each side, and mounted on a tame-looking
Hungarian horse. He wore the red Fez cap, and a
cream-coloured cloak, which covered his horse to the tail. His
face was lowering, his firm, powerful jaw, set in an expression of
fixed displeasure, and his far-famed eye had a fierceness within its
dark socket, from which I involuntarily shrank. The women, as
he came along, set up a kind of howl, according to their custom,
but he looked neither to the right nor left, and seemed totally
unconscious of any one’s existence but his own. He was quite
another-looking man from the Mahmoud I had seen smiling in his
handja-bash on the Bosphorus.


As he dismounted and entered the mosque, we went on our
way, moralising sagely on the novel subject of human happiness—our
text, the cloud on the brow of a sultan, and the
quiet sunshine in the bosoms of two poor pedestrians by the
way-side.






LETTER XLIII.




Punishment of Conjugal Infidelity—Drowning in the Bosphorus—Frequency
of its occurrence accounted for—A Band of Wild Roumeliotes—Their
Picturesque Appearance—Ali Pacha, of Yanina—A Turkish
Funeral—Fat Widow of Sultan Selim—A Visit to the Sultan’s Summer
Palace—A Travelling Moslem—Unexpected Token of Home.




A Turkish woman was sacked and thrown into the Bosphorus
this morning. I was idling away the day in the bazaar and did
not see her. The ward-room steward of the “United States,” a
very intelligent man, who was at the pier when she was brought
down to the caique, describes her as a young woman of twenty-two
or three years, strikingly beautiful; and with the exception
of a short quick sob in her throat, as if she had wearied herself
out with weeping, she was quite calm and submitted composedly
to her fate. She was led down by two soldiers, in her usual
dress, her yashmack only torn from her face, and rowed off to
the mouth of the bay, where the sack was drawn over her without
resistance. The plash of her body in the sea was distinctly
seen by the crowd who had followed her to the water.


It is horrible to reflect on these summary executions, knowing
as we do, that the poor victim is taken before the judge, upon
the least jealous whim of her husband or master, condemned
often upon bare suspicion, and hurried instantly from the tribunal
to this violent and revolting death. Any suspicion of commerce
with a Christian particularly, is, with or without evidence,
instant ruin. Not long ago, the inhabitants of Arnaout-keni, a
pretty village on the Bosphorus, were shocked with the spectacle
of a Turkish woman and a young Greek, hanging dead from the
shutters of a window on the water’s side. He had been detected
in leaving her house at daybreak, and in less than an hour the
unfortunate lovers had met their fate. They are said to have
died most heroically, embracing and declaring their attachment
to the last.


Such tragedies occur every week or two in Constantinople, and
it is not wonderful, considering the superiority of the educated
and picturesque Greek to his brutal neighbour, or the daring
and romance of Europeans in the pursuit of forbidden happiness.
The liberty of going and coming, which the Turkish women
enjoy, wrapped only in veils, which assist by their secrecy, is
temptingly favourable to intrigue, and the self-sacrificing nature
of the sex, when the heart is concerned, shows itself here in
proportion to the demand for it.


An eminent physician, who attends the seraglio of the sultan’s
sister, consisting of a great number of women, tells me that
their time is principally occupied in sentimental correspondence,
by means of flowers, with the forbidden Greeks and Armenians.
These platonic passions for persons whom they have only seen
from their gilded lattices, are their only amusement, and they are
permitted by the sultana, who has herself the reputation of being
partial to Franks, and, old as she is, ingenious in contrivances to
obtain their society. My intelligent informant thinks the Turkish
women, in spite of their want of education, somewhat remarkable
for their sentiment of character.


With two English travellers, whom I had known in Italy, I
pulled out of the bay in a caique, and ran down under the wall
of the city, on the side of the sea of Marmora. For a mile or
more we were beneath the wall of the seraglio, whose small
water-gates, whence so many victims have found




 

“Their way to Marmora without a boat,”


 



are beset, to the imaginative eye of the traveller, with the
dramatis personæ of a thousand tragedies. One smiles to detect
himself gazing on an old postern, with his teeth shut hard
together, and his hair on end, in the calm of a pure, silent,
sunshiny morning of September!


We landed some seven miles below, at the Seven Towers, and
dismissed our boat to walk across to the Golden Horn. Our road
was outside of the triple walls of Stamboul, whose two hundred
and fifty towers look as if they were toppling after an earthquake,
and are overgrown superbly with ivy. Large trees, rooted in
the crevices, and gradually bursting the thick walls, overshadow
entirely their once proud turrets, and for the whole length of the
five or six miles across, it is one splendid picture of decay. I
have seen in no country such beautiful ruins.


At the Adrianople gate, we found a large troop of horsemen,
armed in the wild manner of the East, who had accompanied a
Roumeliote chief from the mountains. They were not allowed to
enter the city, and, with their horses picketed upon the plain,
were lying about in groups, waiting till their leader should
conclude his audience with the seraskier. They were as cut-throat
looking a set as a painter would wish to see. The extreme
richness of eastern arms, mounted showily in silver, and of
shapes so cumbersome, yet picturesque, contrasted strangely
with their ragged capotes, and torn leggings, and their way-worn
and weary countenances. Yet they were almost without exception
fine-featured, and with a resolute expression of face, and they
had flung themselves, as savages will, into attitudes that art
would find it difficult to improve.


Directly opposite this gate stand five marble slabs, indicating
the spots in which are buried the heads of Ali Pacha, of Albania,
his three sons and grandson. The inscription states, that the
rebel lost his head for having dared to aspire to independence.
He was a brave old barbarian, however, and, as the worthy
chief of the most warlike people of modern times, one stands
over his grave with regret. It would have been a classic spot
had Byron survived to visit it. No event in his travels made
more impression on his mind than the pacha’s detecting his rank
by the beauty of his hands. His fine description of the wild
court of Yanina, in “Childe Harold,” has already made the poet’s
return of immortality, but had he survived the revolution in
Greece, with his increased knowledge of the Albanian soldier
and his habits, and his esteem for the old chieftain, a hero so
much to his taste would have been his most natural theme. It
remains to be seen whether the age or the language will
produce another Byron to take up the broken thread.


As we were poring over the Turkish inscription, four men,
apparently quite intoxicated, came running and hallooing from
the city gate, bearing upon their shoulders a dead man in his
bier. Entering the cemetery, they went stumbling on over the
foot-stones, tossing the corpse about so violently, that the
helpless limbs frequently fell beyond the limits of the rude
barrow, while the grave-digger, the only sober person, save the
dead man, in the company, followed at his best speed, with his
pick-axe and shovel. These extraordinary bearers set down
their burden not far from the gate, and, to my surprise, walked
laughing off like men who had merely engaged in a moment’s
frolic by the way, while the sexton, left quite alone, composed a
little the posture of the disordered body, and sat down to get
breath for his task.


My Constantinopolitan friend tells me that the Koran blesses
him who carries a dead body forty paces on its way to the grave.
The poor are thus carried out to the cemeteries by voluntary
bearers, who, after they have completed their prescribed paces,
change with the first individual whose reckoning with heaven
may be in arrears.


The corpse we had seen so rudely borne on its last journey,
was, or had been, a middle-aged Turk. He had neither shroud
nor coffin, but




 

“Lay like a gentleman taking a snooze,”


 



in his slippers and turban, the bunch of flowers on his bosom the
only token that he was dressed for any particular occasion. We
had not time to stay and see his grave dug, and “his face laid
toward the tomb of the prophet.”


We entered the Adrianople gate, and crossed the triangle,
which old Stamboul nearly forms, by a line approaching its
hypothenuse. Though in a city so thickly populated, it was one
of the most lonely walks conceivable. We met, perhaps, one
individual in a street; and the perfect silence, and the cheerless
look of the Turkish houses, with their jealously closed windows,
gave it the air of a city devastated by the plague. The population
of Constantinople is only seen in the bazaars or in the
streets bordering on the Golden Horn. In the extensive quarter
occupied by dwelling-houses only, the inhabitants, if at home,
occupy apartments opening on their secluded gardens, or are
hidden from the gaze of the street by their fine dull-coloured
lattices. It strikes one with melancholy after the gay balconies
and open doors of France and Italy!


We passed the Eskai Serai, the palace in which the imperial
widows wear their chaste weeds in solitude; and, weary with our
long walk, emerged from the silent streets at the bazaar of wax-candles,
and took caique for the Argentopolis of the ancients, the
Silver City of Galatia.




The thundering of guns from the whole Ottoman fleet in the
Bosphorus announced, some days since, that the sultan had
changed his summer for his winter serai, and the commodore
received yesterday a firman to visit the deserted palace of
Beylerbey.


We left the frigate at an early hour, our large party of officers
increased by the captain of the “Acteon,” sloop-of-war, some
gentlemen of the English ambassador’s household, and several
strangers who took advantage of the commodore’s courtesy to
enjoy a privilege granted so very rarely.


As we pulled up the Strait, some one pointed out the residence,
on the European shore, of the once favourite wife, and now fat
widow, of Sultan Selim. She is called by the Turks, the “boneless
sultana,” and is the model of shape by the oriental standard.
The poet’s lines,




 

“Who turned that little waist with so much care,


And shut perfection in so small a ring?”


 



though a very neat compliment in some countries, would be
downright rudeness in the East. Near this jelly in weeds lives
a venerable Turk, who was once ambassador to England. He
came back too much enlightened, and the mufti immediately
procured his exile, for infidelity. He passes his day, we are told,
in looking at a large map hung on the wall before him, and
wondering at his own travels.


We were received at the shining brazen gate of Beylerbey, by
Hamik Pacha (a strikingly elegant man, just returned from a
mission to England), deputed by the sultan to do the honours.
A side-door introduced us immediately to the grand hall upon
the lower floor, which was separated only by four marble pillars,
and a heavy curtain rolled up at will, from the gravel walk of
the garden in the rear. We ascended thence by an open staircase
of wood, prettily inlaid, to the second floor, which was one
long suite of spacious rooms, built entirely in the French style,
and thence to the third floor, the same thing over again. It was
quite like looking at lodgings in Paris. There was no furniture,
except, an occasional ottoman turned with its face upon another,
and a prodigious quantity of French musical clocks, three or four
in every room, and all playing in our honour with an amusing
confusion. One other article, by the way—a large, common,
American rocking-chair! The poor thing stood in a great
gilded room all alone, looking pitiably home-sick. I seated
myself in it, malgré a thick coat of dust upon the bottom, as I
would visit a sick countryman in exile.


The harem was locked, and the polite pacha regretted that he
had no orders to open it. We descended to the gardens, which
rise by terraces to a gimcrack temple and orangery, and having
looked at the sultan’s poultry, we took our leave. If his pink
palace in Europe is no finer than his yellow palace in Asia, there
is many a merchant in America better lodged than the padishah
of the Ottoman empire. We have not seen the old seraglio,
however, and in its inaccessible recesses, probably, moulders that
true oriental splendour which this upholsterer monarch abandons
in his rage, for the novel luxuries of Europe.






LETTER XLIV.




Farewell to Constantinople—Europe and the East compared—The
Departure—Smyrna, the great Mart for Figs—An Excursion into
Asia Minor—Travelling Equipments—Character of the Hajjis—Encampment
of Gipsies—A Youthful Hebe—Note—Horror of the
Turks for the “Unclean Animal”—An Anecdote.




I have spent the last day or two in farewell visits to my
favourite haunts in Constantinople. I galloped up the Bosphorus,
almost envying les ames damnées that skim so swiftly and perpetually
from the Symplegades to Marmora, and from Marmora
back to the Symplegades. I took a caique to the Valley of
Sweet Waters, and rambled away an hour on its silken sward. I
lounged a morning in the bazaars, smoked a parting pipe with my
old Turk in the bezestein, and exchanged a last salaam with the
venerable Armenian bookseller, still poring over his illuminated
Hafiz. And last night, with the sundown boat waiting at the
pier, I loitered till twilight in the small and elevated cemetery
between Galata and Pera, and, with feelings of even painful
regret, gazed my last upon the matchless scene around me. In
the words of the eloquent author of “Anastasius,” when taking
the same farewell, “For the last time, my eye wandered over the
dimpled hills, glided along the winding waters, and dived into the
deep and delicious dells, in which branch out its jagged shores.
Reverting from these smiling outlets of its sea-beat suburbs to
its busy centre, I surveyed, in slow succession, every chaplet of
swelling cupolas, every grove of slender minarets, and every
avenue of glittering porticoes, whose pinnacles dart their golden
shafts from between the dark cypress-trees into the azure sky.
I dwelt on them as on things I never was to behold more; and
not until the evening had deepened the veil it cast over the
varied scene from orange to purple, and from purple to the sable
hue of night, did I tear myself away from the impressive spot.
I then bade the city of Constantine farewell for ever, descended
the high-crested hill, stepped into the heaving boat, turned my
back upon the shore, and sank my regrets in the sparkling wave,
across which the moon had already flung a trembling bar of
silvery light, pointing my way, as it were, to other unknown
regions.”


There are few intellectual pleasures like that of finding our
own thoughts and feelings well described by another!


I certainly would not live in the East; and when I sum up its
inconveniences and deprivations to which the traveller from
Europe, with his refined wants, is subjected, I marvel at the
heart-ache with which I turn my back upon it, and the deep dye
it has infused into my imagination. Its few peculiar luxuries do
not compensate for the total absence of comfort; its lovely
scenery cannot reconcile you to wretched lodgings; its picturesque
costumes and poetical people, and golden sky, fine food
for a summer’s fancy as they are, cannot make you forget the
civilised pleasures you abandon for them—the fresh literature,
the arts and music, the refined society, the elegant pursuits, and
the stirring intellectual collision of the cities of Europe.


Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople! If we
could compel all our senses into one, and live by the pleasures of
the eye, it were a paradise untranscended. The Bosphorus—the
superb, peculiar, incomparable Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairy-built
seraglio! the sights within the city so richly strange, and
the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely fair! the voluptuous
softness of the dark eyes haunting your every step on
shore, and the spirit-like swiftness and elegance of your darting
caique upon the waters! In what land is the priceless sight
such a treasure? Where is the fancy so delicately and divinely
pampered?


Every heave at the capstan-bars drew upon my heart; and
when the unwilling anchor at last let go its hold, and the frigate
swung free with the outward current, I felt as if, in that moment,
I had parted my hold upon a land of faëry. The dark cypresses
and golden pinnacles of Seraglio Point, and the higher shafts of
Sophia’s sky-touching minarets were the last objects in my
swiftly-receding eye, and, in a short hour or two, the whole
bright vision had sunk below the horizon.


We crossed Marmora, and shot down the rapid Dardanelles in
as many hours as a passage up had occupied days, and, rounding
the coast of Anatolia, entered between Mitylene and the Asian
shore, and, on the third day, anchored in the bay of Smyrna.


“Everybody knows Smyrna,” says MacFarlane, “it is such a
place for figs!” It is a low-built town, at the head of the long
gulf, which bears its name, and, with the exception of the high
rock immediately over it, topped by the ruins of an old castle,
said to embody in its walls the ancient Christian church, it has no
very striking features. Extensive gardens spread away on every
side, and, without exciting much of your admiration for its
beauty, there is a look of peace and rural comfort about the
neighbourhood that affects the mind pleasantly.


Almost immediately on my arrival, I joined a party for a few
days’ tour in Asia Minor. We were five, and, with a baggage-horse,
and a mounted suridjee, our caravan was rather respectable.
Our appointments were orientally simple. We had each
a Turkish bed (alias, a small carpet), a nightcap, and a “copy-hold”
upon a pair of saddle-bags, containing certain things
forbidden by the Koran, and therefore not likely to be found by
the way. Our attendant was a most ill-favoured Turk, whose
pilgrimage to Mecca (he was a hajji, and wore a green turban)
had, at least, imparted no sanctity to his visage. If he was not
a rogue, nature had mis-labelled him, and I shelter my want of
charity under the Arabic proverb: “Distrust thy neighbour if
he has made a hajji; if he has made two, make haste to leave thy
house.”


We wound our way slowly out of the narrow and ill-paved
streets of Smyrna, and passing through the suburban gardens,
yellow with lemons and oranges, crossed a small bridge over the
Hermus. This is the favourite walk of the Smyrniotes, and if its
classic river, whose “golden sands” (here, at least), are not
golden, and its “Bath of Diana” near by, whose waters would
scarce purify her “silver bow,” are something less than their
sounding names; there is a cool, dark cemetery beyond, less
famous, but more practicable for sentiment, and many a shadowy
vine and drooping tree in the gardens around, that might
recompense lovers, perhaps, for the dirty labyrinth of the intervening
suburb.


We spurred away over the long plain of Hadjilar, leaving to
the right and left the pretty villages, ornamented by the summer
residences of the wealthy merchants of Smyrna, and in two or
three hours reached a small lone café, at the foot of its bounding
range of mountains. We dismounted here to breathe our horses,
and while coffee was preparing, I discovered, in a green hollow
hard by, a small encampment of gipsies. With stones in our
hands, as the caféjee told us the dogs were troublesome, we
walked down into the little round-bottomed dell, a spot selected
with “a lover’s eye for nature,” and were brought to bay by a
dozen noble shepherd-dogs, within a few yards of their outer
tent.


The noise brought out an old sun-burnt woman, and two or
three younger ones, with a troop of boys, who called in the dogs,
and invited us kindly within their limits. The tents were placed
in a half circle, with their doors inward, and were made with
extreme neatness. There were eight or nine of them, very
small and low, with round tops, the cloth stretched tightly over
an inner frame, and bound curiously down on the outside with
beautiful wicker-work. The curtains at the entrance were
looped up to admit the grateful sun, and the compactly-arranged
interiors lay open to our prying curiosity. In the rounded corner
farthest from the door, lay uniformly the same goat-skin beds,
flat on the ground, and in the centre of most of them, stood a
small loom, at which the occupant plied her task like an automaton,
not betraying by any sign a consciousness of our presence.
They sat cross-legged like the Turks, and had all a look of
habitual sternness, which, with their thin, strongly-marked gipsy
features, and wild eyes, gave them more the appearance of men.
It was the first time I had ever remarked such a character upon
a class of female faces, and I should have thought I had
mistaken their sex, if their half-naked figures had not put it
beyond a doubt. The men were probably gone to Smyrna, as
none were visible in the encampment. As we were about returning,
the curtain of the largest tent, which had been dropped on
our entrance, was lifted cautiously, by a beautiful girl, of perhaps
thirteen, who, not remarking that I was somewhat in the rear of
my companions, looked after them a moment, and then fastening
back the dingy folds by a string, returned to her employment of
swinging an infant in a small wicker hammock, suspended in the
centre of the tent. Her dark, but prettily-rounded arm, was
decked with a bracelet of silver pieces, and just between two of
the finest eyes I ever saw, was suspended by a yellow thread,
one of the small gold coins of Constantinople. Her softly-moulded
bust was entirely bare, and might have served for the
model of a youthful Hebe. A girdle round her waist sustained
loosely a long pair of full Turkish trousers, of the colour and
fashion usually worn by women in the East, and caught over her
hip, hung suspended by its fringe the truant shawl that had been
suffered to fall from her shoulders and expose her guarded beauty.
I stood admiring her a full minute, before I observed a middle-aged
woman in the opposite corner, who, bending over her work,
was fortunately as late in observing my intrusive presence. As
I advanced half a step, however, my shadow fell into the tent,
and starting with surprise, she rose and dropped the curtain.


We remounted, and I rode on, thinking of the vision of loveliness
I was leaving in that wild dell. We travel a great way to
see hills and rivers, thought I, but, after all, a human being is a
more interesting object than a mountain. I shall remember the
little gipsy of Hadjilar, long after I have forgotten Hermus and
Sypilus.


Our road dwindled to a mere bridle-path, as we advanced, and
the scenery grew wild and barren. The horses were all sad
stumblers, and the uneven rocks gave them every apology for
coming down whenever they could forget the spur, and so we
entered the broad and green valley of Yackerhem (I write it as
I heard it pronounced), and drew up at the door of a small hovel,
serving the double purpose of a café and a guard-house.


A Turkish officer of the old régime, turbanned and cross-legged,
and armed with pistols and ataghan, sat smoking on one side the
brazier of coals, and the caféjee exercised his small vocation on
the other. Before the door, a raised platform of greensward and
a marble slab, facing toward Mecca, indicated the place for prayer;
and a dashing rider of a Turk, who had kept us company from
Smyrna, flying past us and dropping to the rear alternately, had
taken off his slippers at the moment we arrived, and was commencing
his noon devotions.


We gathered round our commissary’s saddle-bags and shocked
our Mussulman friends, by producing the unclean beast[18] and the
forbidden liquor, which, with the delicious Turkey coffee, never
better than in these way-side hovels, furnished forth a traveller’s
meal.














Talking of hams, two of the Sultan’s chief eunuchs applied to an
English physician, a friend of mine at Constantinople, to accompany them
on board the American frigate. I engaged to wait on board for them on a
certain day, but they did not make their appearance. They gave, as their
apology, that they could not defile themselves by entering a ship polluted
by the presence of that unclean animal, the hog.










LETTER XLV.




Natural Statue of Niobe—The Thorn of Syria and its Tradition—Approach
to Magnesia—Hereditary Residence of the Family of Bey-Oglou—Character
of its Present Occupant—The Truth about Oriental Caravanserais—Comforts
and Appliances they yield to Travellers—Figaro
of the Turks—The Pilaw—Morning Scene at the Departure—Playful
Familiarity of a Solemn old Turk—Magnificent Prospect from Mount
Sypilus.




Three or four hours more of hard riding brought us to a long
glen, opening upon the broad plains of Lydia. We were on the
look-out here for the “natural statue of Niobe,” spoken of by the
ancient writers as visible from the road in this neighbourhood;
but there was nothing that looked like her, unless she was, as
the poet describes her, a “Niobe, all tears,” and runs down
toward the Sarabat, in what we took to be only a very pretty
mountain rivulet. It served for simple fresh water to our volunteer
companion, who darted off an hour before sunset, and had
finished his ablutions and prayers, and was rising from his knees
as we overtook him upon its grassy border. Almost the only
thing that grows in these long mountain passes, is the peculiar
thorn of Syria, said to be the same of which our Saviour’s crown
was plaited. It differs from the common species, in having a
hooked thorn alternating with the straight, adding cruelly to its
power of laceration. It is remarkable that the flower, at this
season withering on the bush, is a circular golden-coloured leaf,
resembling exactly the radiated glory usually drawn around the
heads of Christ and the Virgin.


Amid a sunset of uncommon splendour, firing every peak of the
opposite range of hills with an effulgent red, and filling the valley
between with an atmosphere of heavenly purple, we descended
into the plain.


Mount Sypilus, in whose rocks the magnetic ore is said to
have been first discovered, hung over us in bold precipices;
and, rounding a projecting spur, we came suddenly in sight
of the minarets and cypresses of Magnesia (not pronounced as
if written in an apothecary’s bill), the ancient capital of the
Ottoman empire.


On the side of the ascent, above the town, we observed a large
isolated mansion, surrounded with a wall, and planted about with
noble trees, looking, with the exception that it was too freshly
painted, like one of the fine old castle palaces of Italy. It was
something very extraordinary for the East, where no man builds
beyond the city wall, and no house is very much larger than
another. It was the hereditary residence, we afterwards discovered,
of almost the only noble family in Turkey—that of the
Bey-Oglou. You will recollect Byron’s allusion to it in the
“Bride of Abydos:”




 

“We Moslem reck not much of blood,


  But yet the race of Karaisman,


Unchanged, unchangeable hath stood,


  First of the bold Timareot bands


Who won, and well can keep, their lands;


Enough that he who comes to woo


Is kinsman of the Bey-Oglou.”


 



I quote from memory, perhaps incorrectly.


The present descendant is still in possession of the title, and is
said to be a liberal-minded and hospitable old Turk, of the
ancient and better school. His camels are the finest that
come into Smyrna, and are famous for their beauty and
appointments.


Our devout companion left us at the first turning in the town,
laying his hand to his breast in gratitude for having been
suffered to annoy us all day with his brilliant equitation, and
we stumbled in through the increasing shadows of twilight to
the caravanserai.


It is very possible that the reader has but a slender conception
of an oriental hotel. Supposing it, at least, from the inadequacy
of my own previous ideas, I shall allow myself a little particularity
in the description of the conveniences which the travelling
Zuleikas and Fatimas, the Maleks and Othmans, of eastern story,
encounter in their romantic journeys.


It was near the farther outskirt of the large city of Magnesia
(the accent, I repeat, is on the penult), that we found the way
encumbered with some scores of kneeling camels, announcing our
vicinity to a khan. A large wooden building, rather off its
perpendicular, with a great many windows, but no panes in them,
and only here and there a shutter “hanging by the eyelids,”
presently appeared, and entering its hospitable gateway, which
had neither gate nor porter, we dismounted in a large court, lit
only by the stars, and pre-occupied by any number of mules and
horses. An inviting staircase led to a gallery encircling the
whole area, from which opened thirty or forty small doors; but,
though we made as much noise as could be expected of as many
men and horses, no waiter looked over the balustrades, nor maid
Cicely, nor Boniface, or their corresponding representatives in
Turkey, invited us in. The suridjee looked to his horses, which
was his business, and to look to ourselves was ours; though,
with our stiff limbs and clamorous appetites, we set about it
rather despairingly.


The Figaro of the Turks is a caféjee, who, besides shaving,
making coffee, and bleeding, is supposed to be capable of every
office required by man. He is generally a Greek, the Mussulman
seldom having sufficient facility of character for the vocation.
In a few minutes, then, the nearest Figaro was produced,
who scarce dissembling his surprise at the improvidence of travellers
who went about without pot or kettle, bag of rice or
bottle of oil, led the way with his primitive lamp to our apartment.
We might have our choice of twenty. Having looked at
the other nineteen, we came back to the first, reconciled to it by
sheer force of comparison. Of its two windows, one alone had a
shutter that would fulfill its destiny. It contained neither chair,
table, nor utensil of any description. Its floor had not been
swept, nor its walls whitewashed since the days of Timour the
Tartar. “Kalo! Kalo!” (Greek for you will be very comfortable),
cried our commissary, throwing down some old mats to spread
our carpets upon. But the mats were alive with vermin, and,
for sweeping the room, the dust would not have been laid till
midnight. So we threw down our carpets upon the floor, and
driving from our minds the too luxurious thoughts of clean
straw, and a corner in a warm barn, sat down, by the glimmer
of a flaring taper, to wait, with what patience we might, for a
chicken still breathing freely on his roost, and turn our backs
as ingeniously as possible on a chilly December wind, that came
in at the open window, as if it knew the caravanserai were
free to all comers. There is but one circumstance to add to
this faithful description—and it is one which, in the minds of
many very worthy persons, would turn the scale in favour of the
hotels of the East, with all its disadvantages—there was nothing
to pay!


Ali Bey, in his travels, predicts the fall of the Ottoman empire
from the neglected state of the khans; this inattention to the
public institutions of hospitality, being a falling away from the
leading Mussulman virtue. They never gave the traveller more
than a shelter, however, in their best days; and to enter a cold,
unfurnished room, after a day’s hard travel, even if the floor
were clean, and the windows would shut, is rather comfortless.
Yet such is Eastern travel, and the alternative is to take “the
sky for a great coat,” and find as soft a stone as possible for your
pillow.


We gathered around our pilaw, which came in the progress of
time, and consisted of a chicken, buried in a handsomely-shaped
cone of rice and butter, forming, with a large crater-like black
bowl in which it stood, the cloud of smoke issuing from its peak,
and the lava of butter flowing down its sides, as pretty a
miniature Vesuvius as you would find in a modeller’s window in
the Toledo. Encouraging that sin in Christians, which they
would not commit themselves, they brought us some wine of the
country, the sin of drinking which, one would think, was its own
sufficient punishment. With each a wooden spoon, the immediate
and only means of communication between the dish and
the mouth, we soon solved the doubtful problem of the depth of
the crater, and then casting lots who should lie next the window
to take off the edge of the December blast, we improved upon
some hints taken from the fig-packers of Smyrna, and with an
economy of exposed surface which can only be learned by travel,
disposed ourselves in a solid body to sleep.


The tinkling of the camels’ bells awoke me as the day was
breaking, and my toilet being already made, I sprang readily up
and descended to the court of the caravanserai. It was an
eastern scene, and not an unpoetical one. The patient and
intelligent camels were kneeling in regular ranks to receive
their loads, complaining in a voice almost human, as the driver
flung the heavy bales upon the saddles too roughly, while the
small donkey, no larger than a Newfoundland dog, leader of the
long caravan, took his place at the head of the gigantic file,
pricking back his long ears as if he were counting his spongy-footed
followers, as they fell in behind him. Here and there
knelt six or seven, with their unsightly humps still unburdened,
eating with their peculiar deliberateness from small heaps of
provender, and scattered over the adjacent fields, wandered
separately the caravan of some indolent driver, browsing upon
the shrubs, and looking occasionally with intelligent expectation
toward the khan, for the appearance of their tardy master. Over
all rose the mingled music of the small bells with which their
gay-covered harness was profusely covered, varied by the heavy
beat of the larger ones borne at the necks of the leading and last
camels of the file, while the retreating sounds of the caravans
already on their march, came in with the softer tones which
completed its sweetness.


In a short time my companions joined me, and we started for
a walk in the town. The necessity of attending the daylight
prayers makes all Mussulmans early risers, and we found the
streets already crowded, and the merchants and artificers as
busy as at noon. Turning a corner to get out of the way of a
row of butchers, who were slaughtering sheep revoltingly in front
of their stalls, we met two old Turks coming from the mosque
one of whom, with the familiarity of manners which characterises
the nation, took from my hand a stout English riding-whip which
I carried, and began to exercise it on the bag-like trowsers of
his friend. After amusing himself a while in this manner, he
returned the whip, and, patting me condescendingly on the
cheek, gave me two figs from his voluminous pocket, and walked
on. Considering that I stand six feet in my stockings, an
unwieldy size, you may say, for a pet, this freak of the old
Magnesian would seem rather extraordinary. Yet it illustrates
the Turkish manners, which, as I have often had occasion to
notice, are a singular mixture of profound gravity and the most
childish simplicity.


We found a few fine old marble columns in the porches of the
mosques, but one Turkish town is just like another, and after an
hour or two of wandering about among the wooden houses and
narrow streets, we returned to the khan, and, with a cup of
coffee, mounted and resumed our journey.


I have never seen a finer plain than that of Magnesia. With
an even breadth of seven or eight miles, its length cannot be less
than fifty or sixty, and throughout its whole extent it is one
unbroken picture of fertile field and meadow, shut in by two
lofty ranges of mountains, and watered by the full and winding
Hermus. Without fence, and almost without human habitation,
it is a noble expanse to the eye, possessing all the untrammelled
beauty of a wilderness without its detracting inutility. It is
literally “clothed with flocks.” As we rode on under the eastern
brow of Mount Sypilus, and struck out more into the open plain,
as far as we could distinguish by the eye, spread the snowy
sheep in hundreds, at merely separating distances, checkered
here and there by a herd of the tall jet-black goats of the East,
walking onward in slow and sober procession, with the solemn
state of a funeral. The road was lined with camels coming into
Smyrna by this grand highway of nature, and bringing all the
varied produce of Asia Minor to barter in its busy mart. We
must have passed a thousand in our day’s journey.






LETTER XLVI.




The Eye of the Camel—Rocky Sepulchres—Virtue of an old Passport,
backed by Impudence—Temple of Cybele—Palace of Crœsus—Ancient
Church of Sardus—Return to Smyrna.




Unsightly as the camel is, with its long snaky neck, its
frightful hump, and its awkward legs and action, it wins much
upon your kindness with a little acquaintance. Its eye is
exceedingly fine. There is a lustrous, suffused softness in the
large hazel orb that is the rarest beauty in a human eye, and so
remarkable is this feature in the camel, that I wonder it has
never fallen into use as a poetical simile. They do not shun the
gaze of man like other animals, and I pleased myself often when
the suridjee slackened his pace, with riding close to some
returning caravan, and exchanging steady looks in passing with
the slow-paced camels. It was like meeting the eye of a kind
old man.


The face of Mount Sypilus, in its whole extent, is excavated
into sepulchres. They are mostly ancient, and form a very
singular feature in the scenery. A range of precipices, varying
from one to three hundred feet in height, is perforated for twenty
miles with these airy depositories for the dead, many of them a
hundred feet from the plain. Occasionally they are extended to
considerable caves, hewn with great labour in the rock, and
probably from their numerous niches, intended as family
sepulchres. They are now the convenient eyries of great numbers
of eagles, which circle continually around the summits, and poise
themselves on the wing along the sides of these lonely mountains,
in undisturbed security.


We arrived early in the afternoon at Casabar, a pretty town at
the foot of Mount Tmolus. Having eaten a melon, the only
thing for which the place is famous, we proposed to go on to
Achmet-lee, some three hours farther. The suridjee, however,
whose horses were hired by the day, had made up his mind to
sleep at Casabar, and so we were at issue. Our stock of Turkish
was soon exhausted, and the hajji was coolly unbuckling the
girths of the baggage-horse without condescending even to
answer our appeal with a look. The Mussulman idlers of the
café opposite, took their pipes from their mouths and smiled.
The gay caféjee went about his arrangements for our accommodation,
quite certain that we were there for the night. I had
given up the point myself, when one of my companions, with a
look of the most confident triumph, walked up to the suridjee
and tapping him on the shoulder, held before his eyes a paper
with the seal of the pacha of Smyrna in broad characters at the
top. After the astonished Turk had looked at it for a moment,
he commenced in good round English, and poured upon him a
volume of incoherent rhapsody, slapping the paper violently with
his hand and pointing to the road. The effect was instantaneous.
The girth was hastily rebuckled, and the frightened suridjee put
his hand to his head in token of submission, mounted in the
greatest hurry and rode out of the court of the caravanserai.
The caféjee made his salaam, and the spectators wished us
respectfully a good journey. The magic paper was an old
passport, and our friend had calculated securely on the natural
dread of the incomprehensible, quite sure that there was not
one man in the village that could read, and none short of Smyrna
who could understand his English.


The plain between Casabar and Achmet-lee, is quite a realisation
of poetry. It is twelve miles of soft, bright greensward,
broken only with clumps of luxurious oleanders, an occasional
cluster of the “black tents of Kedar” with their flocks about
them, and here and there a loose and grazing camel indolently
lifting his broad foot from the grass as if he felt the coolness and
verdure to its spongy core. One’s heart seems to stay behind
as he rides onward through such places.


The village of Achmet-lee consists of a coffee-house with a
single room. We arrived about sunset, and found the fire-place
surrounded by six or seven Turks squatted on their hams,
travellers like ourselves, who had arrived before us. There was
fortunately a second fire-place, which was soon blazing with
faggots of fir and oleander, and with, a pilaw between us, we
crooked our tired legs under us on the earthen floor, and made
ourselves as comfortable as a total absence of every comfort
would permit. The mingled smoke of tobacco and the chimney
drove me out of doors as soon as our greasy meal was finished,
and the contrast was enough to make one in love with nature.
The moon was quite full, and pouring her light down through the
transparent and dazzling sky of the East with indescribable
splendour. The fires of twenty or thirty caravans were blazing
in the fields around, and the low cries of the camels and the
hum of voices from the various groups, were mingled with the
sound of a stream that came noiselessly down its rocky channel
from the nearest spur of Mount Tmolus. I walked up and
down the narrow camel-path till midnight; and if the kingly
spirits of ancient Lydia did not keep me company in the neighbourhood
of their giant graves, it was perhaps because the feet
that trod down their ashes came from a world of which Crœsus
and Abyattis never heard.


The sin of late rising is seldom chargeable upon an earthen
bed, and we were in the saddle by sunrise, breathing an air that,
after our smoky cabin, was like a spice-wind from Arabia.
Winding round the base of the chain of mountains which we had
followed for twenty or thirty miles, we ascended a little, after a
brisk trot of two or three hours, and came in sight of the citadel
of ancient Sardis, perched like an eagle’s nest on the summit of
a slender rock. A natural terrace, perhaps a hundred feet above
the plain, expanded from the base of the hill, and this was the
commanding site of the capital of Lydia. Dividing us from it
ran the classic and “golden-sanded” Pactolus, descending from
the mountains in a small, narrow valley, covered with a verdure
so fresh, that it requires some power of fancy to realise that a
crowded empire ever swarmed on its borders. Crossing the
small, bright stream, we rode along the other bank, winding up
its ascending curve, and dismounted at the ruins of the temple of
Cybele, a heap of gigantic fragments strewn confusedly over the
earth, with two majestic columns rising lone and beautiful into
the air.


A Dutch artist, who was of our party, spread his drawing-board
and pencils upon one of the fallen Ionic capitals, the
suridjee tied his horses’ heads together, and laid himself at his
length upon the grass, and the rest of us ascended the long steep
hill to the citadel. With some loss of breath, and a battle with
the dogs of a gipsy encampment, hidden so as almost to be
invisible among the shrubbery of the hill-side, we stood at last
upon a peak, crested with one tottering remnant of a wall, the
remains of a castle whose foundations have crumbled beneath it. It
looks as if the next rain must send the whole mass into the valley.


It puzzled my unmilitary brain to conceive how Alexander and
his Macedonians climbed these airy precipices, if taking the
citadel was a part of his conquest of Lydia. The fortifications
in the rear have a sheer descent from their solid walls of two or
three hundred perpendicular feet, with scarce a vine clinging by
the way. I left my companions discussing the question, and
walked to the other edge of the hill, overlooking the immense
plains below. The tumuli which mark the sepulchres of the
kings of Lydia, rose like small hills on the opposite and distant
bank of the Hermus. The broad fields, which were once the
“wealth of Crœsus,” lay still fertile and green along the banks
of their historic river. Thyatira and Philadelphia were almost
within reach of my eye, and I stood upon Sardis—in the midst
of the sites of the Seven Churches. Below lay the path of the
myriad armies of Persia, on their march to Greece; here Alexander
pitched his tents after the battle of Granicus, wiling away
the winter in the lap of captive Lydia; and over the small ruin
just discernible on the southern bank of the Pactolus, “the angel
of the church of Sardis” brooded with his protecting wings till
the few who had “not defiled their garments,” were called to
“walk in white,” in the promised reward of the Apocalypse.


We descended again to the temple of Cybele, and mounting
our horses, rode down to the palace of Crœsus. Parts of the
outer walls, the bases of the portico, and the marble steps of an
inner court, are all that remain of the splendour that Solon was
called upon in vain to admire. With the permission of six or
seven storks, whose coarse nests were built upon the highest
points of the ruins, we selected the broadest of the marble
blocks, lying in the deserted area, and spreading our travellers’
breakfast upon it, forgot even the kingly builder in our well-earned
appetites.


There are three parallel walls remaining of the ancient church
of Sardis. They stand on a gentle slope, just above the edge of
the Pactolus, and might easily be rebuilt into a small chapel,
with only the materials within them. There are many other
ruins on the site of the city, but none designated by a name.
We loitered about, collecting relics, and indulging our fancies,
till the suridjee reminded us of the day’s journey before us, and
with a drink from the Pactolus, and a farewell look at the
beautiful Ionic columns standing on its lonely bank, we put
spurs to our horses and galloped once more down into the
valley.


Our Turkish saddles grew softer on the third day’s journey,
and we travelled more at ease. I found the freedom and solitude
of the wide and unfenced country growing at every mile more
upon my liking. The heart expands as one gives his horse the
rein and gallops over these wild paths without toll-gate or
obstacle. I can easily understand the feeling of Ali Bey on his
return to Europe from the East.


Our fourth day’s journey lay through the valley between
Tmolus and Semering—the fairest portion of the dominion of
Timour the Tartar. How gracefully shaped were those slopes to
the mountains! How bright the rivers! How green the banks!
How like a new-created and still unpeopled world it seemed, with
every tree and flower and fruit the perfect model of its kind!


Leaving the secluded village of Nymphi nested in the
mountains on our left, as we approached the end of our circuitous
journey, we entered early in the afternoon the long plains of
Hadjilar, and with tired horses and (malgré romance) an agreeable
anticipation of Christian beds and supper, we dismounted
in Smyrna at sunset.






LETTER XLVII.




Smyrna—Charms of its Society—Hospitality of Foreign Residents—The
Marina—The Casino—A narrow Escape from the Plague—Departure
of the Frigate—High Character of the American Navy—A Tribute of
Respect and Gratitude—The Farewell.




What can I say of Smyrna? Its mosques and bazaars scarce
deserve description after those of Constantinople. It has neither
pictures, scenery, nor any peculiarities of costume or manners.
There are no “lions” here. It is only one of the most agreeable
places in the world, exactly the sort of thing, that (without
compelling private individuals to sit for their portraits),[19] is the
least describable. Of the fortnight of constant pleasure that I
have passed here, I do not well know how I can eke out half a
page that would amuse you.


The society of Smyrna has some advantages over that of any
other city I have seen. It is composed entirely of the families
of merchants, who, separated from the Turkish inhabitants,
occupy a distinct quarter of the town, are responsible only to
their consuls, and having no nobility above, and none but dependants
below them, live in a state of cordial republican equality
that is not found even in America. They are of all nations, and
the principal languages of Europe are spoken by everybody.
Hospitality is carried to an extent more like the golden age than
these “days of iron;” and, as a necessary result of the free
mixture of languages and feelings, there is a degree of information
and liberality of sentiment among them, united to a free and
joyous tone of manners and habits of living, that is quite extraordinary
in men of their care-fraught profession. Our own
country, I am proud to say, is most honourably represented.
There is no traveller to the East, of any nation, who does not
carry away with him from Smyrna, grateful recollections of one
at least whose hospitality is as open as his gate. This living
over warehouses of opium, I am inclined to think, is healthy for
the heart.


After having seen the packing of figs, wondered at the enormous
burdens carried by the porters, ridden to Bougiar and the
castle on the hill, and admired the caravan of the Bey-Oglou,
whose camels are the handsomest that come into Smyrna, one has
nothing to do but dine, dance, and walk on the Marina. The
last is a circumstance the traveller does well not to miss. A
long street extends along the bay, lined with the houses of the
rich merchants of the town, and for the two hours before sunset
every family is to be seen sitting outside its door upon the public
pavement, while beaux and belles stroll up and down in all the
gaiety of perpetual holiday. They are the most out-of-doors
people, the Smyrniotes, that I have ever seen. And one reason
perhaps is, that they have a beauty which has nothing to fear
from the daylight. The rich, classic, glowing face of the Greeks,
the paler and livelier French, the serious and impassioned Italian,
the blooming English, and the shrinking and fragile American,
mingle together in this concourse of grace and elegance like the
varied flowers in the garden. I would match Smyrna against the
world for beauty. And then such sociability, such primitive
cordiality of manners as you find among them! It is quite a
Utopia. You would think that little republic of merchants,
separate from the Christian world on a heathen shore, had
commenced de novo, from Eden—ignorant as yet of jealousy,
envy, suspicion, and the other ingredients with which the old
world mingles up its refinements. It is a very pleasant place,
Smyrna!


The stranger, on his arrival, is immediately introduced to the
Casino—a large palace, supported by the subscription of the
residents, containing a reading-room, furnished with all the
gazettes and reviews of Europe, a ball-room frequently used, a
coffee-room whence the delicious mocha is brought to you
whenever you enter, billiard-tables, card-rooms, &c. &c. The
merchants all are members, and any member can introduce a
stranger, and give him all the privileges of the place during his
stay in the city. It is a courtesy that is not a little drawn upon.
English, French, and American ships-of-war are almost always in
the port, and the officers are privileged guests. Every traveller
to the East passes by Smyrna, and there are always numbers at
the Casino. In fact, the hospitality of this kindest of cities has
not the usual demerit of being rarely called upon. It seems to
have grown with the demand for it.




Idling away the time very agreeably at Smyrna, waiting for a
vessel to go—I care not where. I have offered myself as a
passenger in the first ship that sails. I rather lean toward
Palestine and Egypt, but there are no vessels for Jaffa or Alexandria.
A brig, crowded with hajjis to Jerusalem, sailed on the
first day of my arrival at Smyrna, and I was on the point of a
hasty embarkation, when my good angel, in the shape of a sudden
caprice, sent me off to Sardis. The plague broke out on board
immediately on leaving the port, and nearly the whole ship’s
company perished at sea!


There are plenty of vessels bound to Trieste and the United
States, but there would be nothing new to me in Illyria and
Lombardy; and much as I love my country, I am more enamoured
for the present of my “sandal-shoon.” Besides, I have a
yearning to the South, and the cold “Bora” of that bellows-like
Adriatic, and the cutting winter winds of my native shore, chill
me even in the thought. Meantime I breathe an air borrowed
by December of May, and sit with my windows open, warming
myself in a broad beam of the soft sun of Asia. With such
“appliances,” even suspense is agreeable.




The commodore sailed this morning for his winter quarters in
Minorca. I watched the ship’s preparations for departure from
the balcony of the hotel, with, a heavy heart. Her sails dropped
from the yards, her head turned slowly outward as the anchor
brought away, and with a light breeze in her topsails, the gallant
frigate moved majestically down the harbour, and in an hour was
a speck on the horizon. She had been my home for more than
six months. I had seen from her deck, and visited in her boats
some of the fairest portions of the world. She had borne me to
Sicily, to Illyria, to the isles and shores of Greece, to Marmora
and the Bosphorus, and the thousand lovely pictures with which
that long summer voyage had stored my memory, and the
thousand adventures and still more numerous kindnesses and
courtesies, linked with these interesting scenes, crowded on my
mind as the noble ship receded from my eye, with an emotion
that I could not repress.


There is a “pomp and circumstance” about a man-of-war,
which is exceedingly fascinating. Her imposing structure and
appearance, the manly and deferential etiquette, the warlike
appointment and impressive order upon her decks, the ready and
gallantly-manned boat, the stirring music of the band, and the
honour and attention with which her officers are received in
every port, conspire in keeping awake an excitement, a kind of
chivalrous elation, which, it seems to me, would almost make a
hero of a man of straw. From the hoarse “seven bells, sir!”
with which you are turned out of your hammock in the morning,
to the blast of the bugle and the report of the evening gun, it is
one succession of elevating sights and sounds, without any of
that approach to the ridiculous which accompanies the sublime
or the impressive on shore.


From the comparisons I have made between our own and the
ships-of-war of other nations, I think we may well be proud of
our navy. I had learned in Europe, long before joining the
“United States,” that the respect we exact from foreigners is
paid more to Americans afloat, than to a continent they think as
far off at least as the moon. They see our men-of-war, and they
know very well what they have done, and from the appearance
and character of our officers, what they might do again—and
there is a tangibility in the deductions from knowledge and eyesight,
which beats books and statistics. I have heard Englishmen
deny, one by one, every claim we have to political and moral
superiority; but I have found no one illiberal enough to refuse a
compliment, and a handsome one, to Yankee ships.


I consider myself, I repeat, particularly fortunate to have
made a cruise on board an American frigate. It is a chapter of
observation in itself, which is worth much to any one. But, in
addition to this, it was my good fortune to have happened upon
a cruise directed by a mind full of taste and desire for knowledge,
and a cruise which had for its principal objects improvement
and information. Commodore Patterson knew the ground well,
and was familiar with the history and localities of the interesting
countries visited by the ship, and every possible facility
and encouragement was given by him to all to whom the subjects
and places were new. An enlightened and enterprising traveller
himself, he was the best of advisers and the best and kindest of
guides. I take pleasure in recording almost unlimited obligations
to him.


And so, to the gallant ship—to the “warlike world within”—to
the docks I have so often promenaded, and the moonlight
watches I have so often shared—to the groups of manly faces
I have learned to know so well—to the drum-beat and the
bugle-call, and the stirring music of the band—to the hammock
in which I swung and slept so soundly, and last and nearest my
heart, to the gay and hospitable mess with whom for six happy
months I have been a guest and a friend, whose feelings I have
learned but to honour my country more, and whose society has
become to me even a painful want—to all this catalogue of
happiness, I am bidding a heavy-hearted farewell. Luck and
Heaven’s blessing to ship and company!














A courteous old traveller, of the last century, whose book I have
somewhere fallen in with, indulges his recollections of Smyrna with less
scruples. “Mrs. B.,” he says, “who has travelled a great deal, is
mistress of both French and Italian. The Misses W. are all amiable young
ladies. A Miss A., whose name is expressive of the passion she inspires,
without being beautiful, possesses a je ne sais quoi, which fascinates more
than beauty itself. Not to love her, one must never have seen her. And
who would not be captivated by the vivacity of Miss B.?” How charming
thus to go about the world, describing the fairest of its wonders, instead of
stupid mountains and rivers!






THE END.




 

LONDON:


BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.


 



215, Regent Street.


 

WORKS PUBLISHED BY T. BOSWORTH.




M. GUIZOT ON THE FINE ARTS.




THE FINE ARTS:


THEIR NATURE AND RELATIONS.


WITH DETAILED CRITICISMS ON CERTAIN PICTURES OF THE ITALIAN AND


FRENCH SCHOOLS.


BY M. GUIZOT.


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE AUTHOR,


BY GEORGE GROVE.


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN ON WOOD, BY GEORGE SCHARF, JUN.


Medium 8vo, cloth extra. Price 14s.




A HISTORY OF CONVOCATION.




LAST GLIMPSES OF CONVOCATION IN


THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.


BY ARTHUR J. JOYCE.


Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 4s. 6d.


 



 

THE


REVIVAL OF THE FRENCH EMPERORSHIP


ANTICIPATED FROM THE NECESSITY OF PROPHECY.


BY GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B.D.


MASTER OF SHERBURN HOSPITAL, AND PREBENDARY OF SALISBURY.


Third Ed. enlarged.  Price 2s.




Also by the same author,


THE DIFFICULTIES OF ROMANISM IN


RESPECT TO EVIDENCE;


OR,


THE PECULIARITIES OF THE LATIN CHURCH EVINCED TO BE


UNTENABLE ON THE PRINCIPLES OF LEGITIMATE


HISTORICAL TESTIMONY.


Third and Cheaper Ed., revised and remoulded. Price 10s. 6d.




THE COLONY:


A POEM IN FOUR PARTS.


12mo. cloth, gilt edges. Price 2s.




A HUNDRED SHORT TALES FOR


CHILDREN.


FROM THE GERMAN OF VON SCHMID.


BY F. B. WELLS, M.A.


RECTOR OF WOODCHURCH, KENT.


Second Ed., 16mo. cloth. With Frontispiece and Vignette. Price 2s. 6d.


 



 

THE ART OF CONVERSATION.


BY


CAPTAIN ORLANDO SABRETASH.


Third Edition, 12mo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d.




A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON BUSINESS;


OR,


HOW TO GET MONEY, WITH AN INQUIRY INTO THE CHANCES OF


SUCCESS, AND CAUSES OF FAILURE IN BUSINESS.


BY EDWIN T. FREEDLEY.


Sixth Ed. Enlarged. Price 2s. 6d.




THE SLAVE:


AND OTHER POEMS, ENGLISH AND SPANISH.


BY THE


LADY EMMELINE STUART WORTLEY.


Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d.




HALF-A-DOZEN BALLADS ABOUT


AUSTRALIA.


BY MARTIN F. TUPPER.


12mo, sewed, price 6d.




Also, by the same Author,


THINGS TO COME.


A PROPHETIC ODE ON TOPICS OF INSTANT AND EXTRAORDINARY


INTEREST.


8vo, 1s.


 



 

Second Edition.


THE BRITISH WEST INDIA COLONIES


IN CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY, EMANCIPATION, Etc.


BY A


RESIDENT IN THE WEST INDIES FOR THIRTEEN YEARS.


WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUDING REMARKS,


BY A LATE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE IN JAMAICA.


8vo, sewed. Price 1s.




Also by the same Author, price 1s. 6d.


SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO THE


IMPROVEMENT OF THE BRITISH WEST


INDIA COLONIES.


BY MEANS OF INSTRUCTION, BY MINISTERS OF RELIGION, AND SCHOOLS.


THE RELATIONS OF PROPERTY AND LABOUR. AGRICULTURAL AND


OTHER INDUSTRIAL IMPROVEMENTS, &c. &c.


WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO


THE INCREASED CULTIVATION OF THE SUGAR CANE AND COTTON,


IN JAMAICA AND BRITISH GUIANA.


8vo, sewed. Price 1s. 6d.




&c.


BY THE


LADY EMMELINE STUART WORTLEY.


Post 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d.


 



TRANSCRIBER NOTES


Obvious printer and spelling errors have been corrected.


Inconsistent use of hyphens maintained.


Cover created for this ebook edition.


 


[The end of Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board
the American frigate, by N. (Nathaniel) Parker Willis]