Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII
V >> Various >> Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII[Illustration: THE PARTHENON]
SEEING EUROPE
WITH FAMOUS
AUTHORS
SELECTED AND EDITED
WITH
INTRODUCTIONS, ETC.
BY
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
_Editor of "Great Epochs in American History"
Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"
and of "The Best of the World's Classics," etc._
IN TEN
VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
Vol. VIII
ITALY, SICILY, AND GREECE
PART TWO
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[_Printed in the United States of America_]
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VIII
Italy, Sicily, and Greece--Part Two
IV. THREE FAMOUS CITIES
PAGE
IN THE STREETS OF GENOA--By Charles Dickens 1
MILAN CATHEDRAL--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 4
PISA'S FOUR GLORIES--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 7
THE WALLS AND "SKYSCRAPERS" OF PISA--By Janet Ross and
Nelly Erichson 11
V. NAPLES AND ITS ENVIRONS
IN AND ABOUT NAPLES--By Charles Dickens 18
THE TOMB OF VIRGIL--By Augustus J. C. Hare 24
TWO ASCENTS OF VESUVIUS--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 26
ANOTHER ASCENT--By Charles Dickens 31
CASTELLAMARE AND SORRENTO--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 37
CAPRI--By Augustus J. C. Hare 42
POMPEII--By Percy Bysshe Shelley 45
VI. OTHER ITALIAN SCENES
VERONA--By Charles Dickens 52
PADUA--By Theophile Gautier 55
FERRARA--By Theophile Gautier 59
LAKE LUGANO--By Victor Tissot 62
LAKE COMO--By Percy Bysshe Shelley 64
BELLAGIO ON LAKE COMO--By W. D. M'Crackan 66
THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO--By Joseph Addison 69
PERUGIA--By Nathaniel Hawthorne 73
SIENA---By Mr. and Mrs. Edwin H. Blashfield 75
THE ASSISSI OF ST. FRANCIS--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 78
RAVENNA--By Edward A. Freeman 80
BENEDICTINE SUBIACO--By Augustus J. C. Hare 83
ETRUSCAN VOLTERRA--By William Cullen Bryant 86
THE PAESTUM OF THE GREEKS--By Edward A. Freeman 88
VII. SICILIAN SCENES
PALERMO--By Will S. Monroe 91
GIRGENTI--By Edward A. Freeman 93
SEGESTE--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 97
TAORMINA--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 99
MOUNT AETNA--By Will S. Monroe 101
SYRACUSE--By Rufus B. Richardson 104
MALTA--By Theophile Gautier 107
VIII. THE MAINLAND OF GREECE
ARRIVING IN ATHENS--THE ACROPOLIS--By J. P. Mahaffy 112
A WINTER IN ATHENS HALF A CENTURY AGO--By Bayard Taylor 119
THE ACROPOLIS AS IT WAS--By Pausanias 122
THE ELGIN MARBLES--By J. P. Mahaffy 127
THE THEATER OF DIONYSUS--By J. P. Mahaffy 130
WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED--By J. P. Mahaffy 134
FROM ATHENS TO DELPHI ON HORSEBACK--By Bayard Taylor 136
CORINTH--By J. P. Mahaffy 140
OLYMPIA--By Philip S. Marden 143
THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA AS IT WAS--By Pausanias 146
THERMOPYLAE--By Rufus B. Richardson 152
SALONICA--By Charles Dudley Warner 155
FROM THE PIERIAN PLAIN TO MARATHON--By Charles Dudley Warner 157
SPARTA AND MAINA--By Bayard Taylor 160
MESSENIA--By Bayard Taylor 164
TIRYNS AND MYCENAE--By J. P. Mahaffy 169
IX. THE GREEK ISLANDS
A TOUR OF CRETE--By Bayard Taylor 175
THE COLOSSAL RUINS AT CNOSSOS--By Philip S. Marden 179
CORFU--By Edward A. Freeman 182
RHODES--By Charles Dudley Warner 185
MT. ATHOS--By Charles Dudley Warner 189
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VIII
FRONTISPIECE
THE PARTHENON
PRECEDING PAGE 1
VENICE: SANTA MARIA DEL SALUTE
FEEDING THE DOVES IN FRONT OF ST. MARK'S
VENICE: STATUE OF COLLEONI
PALACE IN ST. MARK'S PLACE
GONDOLA ON THE GRAND CANAL
GENERAL VIEW OF FLORENCE
PALACE OF THE DUKES OF ESTE, FERRARA
LAKE LUGANO
TITIAN'S BIRTHPLACE AT CADORE
THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
VERONA: TOMB OF THE SCALIGERS
MILAN CATHEDRAL
BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER OF PISA
FOLLOWING PAGE 96
CITY AND BAY OF NAPLES WITH VESUVIUS
IN THE DISTANCE
TEMPLE OF THESEUS AT ATHENS
PALERMO, SICILY, FROM THE SEA
GREEK THEATER, SEGESTA, SICILY
TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI, SICILY
TEMPLE OF JUNO, GIRGENTI, SICILY
AMPHITHEATER AT SYRACUSE, SICILY
GREEK TEMPLE AT SEGESTA, SICILY
HARBOR OF SYRACUSE, SICILY
THE SO-CALLED "SHIP OF ULYSSES," OFF CORFU
TEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AT ATHENS
THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI
THE ROAD NEAR DELPHI
ENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM AT OLYMPIA
THRONE OF MINOS IN CRETE
[Illustration: VENICE: SANTA MARIA DEL SALUTE]
[Illustration: FEEDING THE DOVES IN FRONT OF ST. MARK'S
(See Vol. VII for article on these doves)]
[Illustration: VENICE: STATUE OF COLLEONI
Courtesy John C. Winston Co.]
[Illustration: PALACE IN ST. MARK'S PLACE, VENICE
(Base of the old Campanile at the right)]
[Illustration: GONDOLA ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE]
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF FLORENCE]
[Illustration: PALACE OF THE DUKES OF ESTE. FERRARA]
[Illustration: LAKE LUGANO]
[Illustration: TITIAN'S BIRTHPLACE AT CADORE
(Cadore is in the Italian part of the Dolomites)]
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, VENICE]
[Illustration: TOMB OF THE SCALIGERS AT VERONA]
[Illustration: MILAN CATHEDRAL
(See Vol. VII for article on Milan Cathedral)]
[Illustration: BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER OF PISA
(See Vol. VII for article on Pisa)]
IV
THREE FAMOUS CITIES
IN THE STREETS OF GENOA[1]
BY CHARLES DICKENS
The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare can
well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to live and
walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind of well, or
breathing-place. The houses are immensely high, painted in all sorts of
colors, and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of
repair. They are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses
in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris....
When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and the
Strada Baldi! The endless details of these rich palaces; the walls of
some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great,
heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier; with here
and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up--a huge marble
platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows,
immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like
arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers; among which the
eye wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by
another--the terrace gardens between house and house, with green arches
of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full
bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street--the painted halls,
moldering and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still
shining out in beautiful colors and voluptuous designs, where the walls
are dry--the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding
wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and downward, and standing in
niches, and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than
elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who on a more
recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out what seems
to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial--the steep,
steep, up-hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all
that), with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways--the
magnificent and innumerable churches; and the rapid passage from a
street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming
with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and
whole worlds of dirty people--make up, altogether, such a scene of
wonder; so lively, and yet so dead; so noisy, and yet so quiet; so
obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering; so wide-awake, and yet so fast
asleep; that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and
on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all
the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure of
an extravagant reality!...
In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great size
notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very dirty; quite
undrained, if my nose be at all reliable; and emit a peculiar fragrance,
like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets.
Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would seem to have been
a lack of room in the city, for new houses are thrust in everywhere.
Wherever it has been possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a
crack or corner, in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in the wall
of a church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort, there you
are sure to find some kind of habitation; looking as if it had grown
there, like a fungus. Against the Government House, against the old
Senate House, round about any large building, little shops stick close,
like parasite vermin to the great carcass. And for all this, look where
you may; up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere; there are irregular
houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their
neighbors, crippling themselves or their friends by some means or other,
until one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the way, and you
can't see any further.
MILAN CATHEDRAL[2]
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
The cathedral, at the first sight, is bewildering. Gothic art,
transported entire into Italy at the close of the Middle Ages,[3]
attains at once its triumph and its extravagance. Never had it been seen
so pointed, so highly embroidered, so complex, so overcharged, so
strongly resembling a piece of jewelry; and as, instead of coarse and
lifeless stone, it here takes for its material the beautiful lustrous
Italian marble, it becomes a pure chased gem as precious through its
substance as through the labor bestowed on it. The whole church seems to
be a colossal and magnificent crystallization, so splendidly do its
forests of spires, its intersections of moldings, its population of
statues, its fringes of fretted, hollowed, embroidered and open
marblework, ascend in multiple and interminable bright forms against the
pure blue sky.
Truly is it the mystic candelabra of visions and legends, with a hundred
thousand branches bristling and overflowing with sorrowing thorns and
ecstatic roses, with angels, virgins, and martyrs upon every flower and
on every thorn, with infinite myriads of the triumphant Church springing
from the ground pyramidically even into the azure, with its millions of
blended and vibrating voices mounting upward in a single shout,
hosannah!...
We enter, and the impression deepens. What a difference between the
religious power of such a church and that of St. Peter's at Rome! One
exclaims to himself, this is the true Christian temple! Four rows of
enormous eight-sided pillars, close together, seem like a serried hedge
of gigantic oaks. Their strange capitals, bristling with a fantastic
vegetation of pinnacles, canopies, foliated niches and statues, are like
venerable trunks crowned with delicate and pendent mosses. They spread
out in great branches meeting in the vault overhead, the intervals of
the arches being filled with an inextricable network of foliage, thorny
sprigs and light branches, twining and intertwining, and figuring the
aerial dome of a mighty forest. As in a great wood, the lateral aisles
are almost equal in height to that of the center, and, on all sides, at
equal distances apart, one sees ascending around him the secular
colonnades.
Here truly is the ancient Germanic forest, as if a reminiscence of the
religious groves of Irmensul. Light pours in transformed by green,
yellow and purple panes, as if through the red and orange tints of
autumnal leaves. This, certainly, is a complete architecture like that
of Greece, having, like that of Greece, its root in vegetable forms. The
Greek takes the trunk of the tree, drest, for his type; the German the
entire tree with all its leaves and branches. True architecture,
perhaps, always springs out of vegetal nature, and each zone may have
its own edifices as well as plants; in this way oriental architectures
might be comprehended--the vague idea of the slender palm and of its
bouquet of leaves with the Arabs, and the vague idea of the colossal,
prolific, dilated and bristling vegetation of India.
In any event I have never seen a church in which the aspect of northern
forests was more striking, or where one more involuntarily imagines long
alleys of trunks terminating in glimpses of daylight, curved branches
meeting in acute angles, domes of irregular and commingling foliage,
universal shade scattered with lights through colored and diaphanous
leaves. Sometimes a section of yellow panes, through which the sun
darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of
the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a
window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the
tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in
which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting
radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall,
exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings similar to the delicate
meshes of some marvelous twining and climbing plant. A day might be
passed here as in a forest, in the presence of grandeurs as solemn as
those of nature, before caprices as fascinating, amid the same
intermingling of sublime monotony and inexhaustible fecundity, before
contrasts and metamorphoses of light as rich and as unexpected. A mystic
reverie, combined with a fresh sentiment of northern nature, such is the
source of Gothic architecture.
PISA'S FOUR GLORIES[4]
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
There are two Pisas--one in which people have lapsed into ennui, and
live from hand to mouth since the decadence, which is in fact the entire
city, except a remote corner; the other is this corner, a marble
sepulcher where the Duomo, Baptistery, Leaning Tower and Campo-Santo
silently repose like beautiful dead beings. This is the genuine Pisa,
and in these relics of a departed life, one beholds a world.
In 1083 in order to honor the Virgin, who had given them a victory over
the Saracens of Sardignia, they [the Pisans] laid the foundations of
their Duomo. This edifice is almost a Roman basilica, that is to say a
temple surmounted by another temple, or, if you prefer it, a house
having a gable for its facade which gable is cut off at the peak to
support another house of smaller dimensions. Five stories of columns
entirely cover the facade with their superposed porticos. Two by two
they stand coupled together to support small arcades; all these pretty
shapes of white marble under their dark arcades form an aerial
population of the utmost grace and novelty. Nowhere here are we
conscious of the dolorous reverie of the medieval north; it is the fete
of a young nation which is awakening, and, in the gladness of its recent
prosperity, honoring its gods. It has collected capitals, ornaments,
entire columns obtained on the distant shores to which its wars and its
commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments enter into its work
without incongruity; for it is instinctively cast in the ancient mold,
and only developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of finesse and the
pleasing. Every antique form reappears, but reshaped in the same sense
by a fresh and original impulse.
The outer columns of the Greek temple are reduced, multiplied and
uplifted in the air, and from a support have become an ornament. The
Roman or Byzantine dome is elongated and its natural heaviness
diminished under a crown of slender columns with a miter ornament, which
girds it midway with its delicate promenade. On the two sides of the
great door two Corinthian columns are enveloped with luxurious foliage,
calyxes and twining or blooming acanthus; and from the threshold we see
the church with its files of intersecting columns, its alternate courses
of black and white marble and its multitude of slender and brilliant
forms, rising upward like an altar of candelabra. A new spirit appears
here, a more delicate sensibility; it is not excessive and disordered as
in the north, and yet it is not satisfied with the grave simplicity, the
robust nudity of antique architecture. It is the daughter of the pagan
mother, healthy and gay, but more womanly than its mother.
She is not yet an adult, sure in all her steps--she is somewhat awkward.
The lateral facades on the exterior are monotonous; the cupola within
is a reversed funnel of a peculiar and disagreeable form. The junction
of the two arms of the cross is unsatisfactory and so many modernized
chapels dispel the charm due to purity, as at Sienna. At the second
glance however all this is forgotten, and we again regard it as a
complete whole. Four rows of Corinthian columns, surmounted with
arcades, divide the church into five naves, and form a forest. A second
passage, as richly crowded, traverses the former crosswise, and, above
the beautiful grove, files of still smaller columns prolong and
intersect each other in order to uphold in the air the prolongation and
intersection of the quadruple gallery. The ceiling is flat; the windows
are small, and for the most part, without sashes; they allow the walls
to retain the grandeur of their mass and the solidity of their position;
and among these long, straight and simple lines, in this natural light,
the innumerable shafts glow with the serenity of an antique temple....
Nothing more can be added in relation to the Baptistery or the Leaning
Tower; the same ideas prevail in these, the same taste, the same style.
The former is a simple, isolated dome, the latter a cylinder, and each
has an outward dress of small columns. And yet each has its own distinct
and expressive physiognomy; but description and writing consume too much
time, and too many technical terms are requisite to define their
differences. I note, simply, the inclination of the Tower. Some suppose
that, when half constructed, the tower sank in the earth on one side,
and that the architects continued on; seeing that they did continue
this deflection was only a partial obstacle to them. In any event, there
are other leaning towers in Italy, at Bologna, for example; voluntarily
or involuntarily this feeling for oddness, this love of paradox, this
yielding to fancy is one of the characteristics of the Middle Ages.
In the center of the Baptistery stands a superb font with eight panels;
each panel is incrusted with a rich complicated flower in full bloom,
and each flower is different. Around it a circle of large Corinthian
columns supports round-arch arcades; most of them are antique and are
ornamented with antique bas-reliefs; Meleager with his barking dogs, and
the nude torsos of his companions in attendance on Christian mysteries.
On the left stands a pulpit similar to that of Sienna, the first work of
Nicholas of Pisa (1260), a simple marble coffer supported by marble
columns and covered with sculptures. The sentiment of force and of
antique nudity comes out here in striking features. The sculptor
comprehended the postures and torsions of bodies. His figures, somewhat
massive, are grand and simple; he frequently reproduces the tunics and
folds of the Roman costume; one of his nude personages, a sort of
Hercules bearing a young lion on his shoulders, has the broad breast and
muscular tension which the sculptors of the sixteenth century admired.
The last of these edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a cemetery, the soil of
which, brought from Palestine, is holy ground. Four high walls of
polished marble surround it with their white and crowded panels.
Inside, a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the court
through arcades trellised with ogive windows. It is filled with funereal
monuments, busts, inscriptions and statues of every form and of every
age. Nothing could be simpler and nobler. A framework of dark wood
supports the arch overhead, and the crest of the roof cuts sharp against
the crystal sky. At the angles are four rustling cypress trees,
tranquilly swayed by the breeze. Grass is growing in the court with a
wild freshness and luxuriance. Here and there a climbing flower twined
around a column, a small rosebush, or a shrub glows beneath a gleam of
sunshine. There is no noise; this quarter is deserted; only now and then
is heard the voice of some promenader which reverberates as under the
vault of a church. It is the veritable cemetery of a free and Christian
city; here, before the tombs of the great, people might well reflect
over death and public affairs.
THE WALLS AND "SKYSCRAPERS" OF PISA[5]
BY JANET ROSS AND NELLY ERICHSON
Few cities have preserved their medieval walls with such loving care as
Pisa. The circuit is complete save where the traveler enters the city;
and there, alas, a wide breach has been made by the restless spirit of
modernity. But once past the paltry barrier and the banal square, with
its inevitable statue of Victor Emanuel, that take the place of the old
Porta Romana, one quickly perceives that the city is a walled one.
Glimpses of battlements close the vistas of the streets, and green
fields peep through the open gates, marking that abrupt transition
between town and country peculiar to a fortified city.
The walls are best seen from without. An admirable impression of them
can be had on leaving the city by the Porta Lucchese. Turning to the
left, after passing a crucifix overshadowed by cypresses, we come to the
edge of a stretch of level marshy meadows, gaily pied in spring with
orchids and grape hyacinths. Above our heads the high air vibrates with
the song of larks. Before us is the long line of the city walls. Strong,
grim and gray, they look with nothing to break the outline of square
battlements against the sky, but that majestic groups of domes and
towers for whose defense they were built. At the angle of the wall to
the right is a square watch-tower, backed by groups of cypresses that
rise into the air like dark flames. Its little windows command the flat
plain as far as the horizon. How easy to imagine the warning blast of
the warder's trumpet as he caught sight of a distant enemy, and the wall
springing into life at the sound. Armed men buckling on their harness
would swarm up ladders to the battlements, the catapult groan and squeak
as its lever was forced backward, and at the sharp word of command the
first flight of arrows would be loosed.
But the dream fades, and we pass on to the angle of the wall where the
cypresses stand. From the picturesque Jews' cemetery, to which access is
easy, the structure of the walls can be studied in detail because the
hand of the restorer has been perforce withheld within its gates. The
wall is some forty feet high, built of stone from the Pisan hills,
weathered for the most part to a grayish hue. The masonry of the lower
half is good. The blocks of stone are large and well laid. Those of the
upper half are smaller and the masonry is in places careless and
irregular. The red brick battlements are square. At short intervals
there are walled-up gateways, round-headed or ogival in form, and the
whole surface is rent and patched. Centuries of war and earthquakes,
rain and fire, have given it a pleasant irregularity, the record of
violent and troublous times.
The city can be reentered by the Porta Nuova, only a few yards to the
left of the cemetery. So venerable do these battered walls look that we
need the full evidence of history to realize that they had more than one
predecessor. The memory even of the first walls of Pisa, an ancient city
when Rome was young, has been lost. The earliest record of which we know
anything appears on a map of the ninth century drawn by one Bonanno; a
map, we should rather say professing to be of the ninth century, for
churches of the thirteenth century are marked upon it, so it must either
have been made, or the churches inserted, then....