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combs of all the fishes of the Adriatic, rather than in a town inhabited by men, but for the few heads that we saw here and there popping out of dark holes to look at us. Emerging at last from the maze of narrow canals, we found ourselves in the great one, which traverses the town in an easy curve, the very line of beauty. It is wider than the great canal of Amsterdam (nearly 300 feet), but is rendered peculiarly striking, from the circumstance of most of the buildings on either side being marble palaces ;-no quays, no terraces, no landingplace before them; they plunge at once into the briny deep, which, however, is here very shallow: splendid marble stairs with marble balustrades lead up at once from the water to the hall-door. There it was that crowds of gondolas, manned with smart gondolieri, carrying lighted torches at night, used formerly to draw up, as elsewhere carriages and horses. We landed thus in style, and were ushered into one of these magnificent edifices,-sadly fallen, indeed, from its former greatness, being now an inn, the Albergo della Gran Bretagna. Through a lower hall of immense size, and paved with marble, we reached the double flight of the ground stair-case, the walls of which were adorned with good historical fresco paintings, and the marble balustrade beautifully carved. The landing-place up stairs was another immense hall or gallery, divided into two by the stair-case. These princely antichambers, each sixty-nine feet long by thirty-two, with ceilings proportionably high, gilt and painted, and adorned with crystal lustres, gave entrance to the various apartments by a number of doors. This edifice had belonged to a noble family now extinct, the

Farsetti.'

The place of St. Mark, with its barbaresque magnificence, its architectural vagaries, and its deeply interesting reminiscences, is distinctly described. The church, with its unaccountable mixture of Greek, Gothic, Morisco, and something else which is neither the one nor the other of these; the Ducal palace, suggesting the idea of a 'huge chest of drawers of oldfashioned inlaid work, with small feet under it'; the granite columns bearing the Lion of St. Mark, looking-such is the profane illustration of our Author-' not very unlike a colossal chimney-sweeper, crawling out of a chimney-top'; all these, with the other curiosities of Venice, pass successively under review, and, so far as description is concerned, with much ability but when M. Simond ventures beyond this, to criticism on the arts, he generally fails. It is, however, but fair to say, that there is no affectation in his remarks on such subjects; he gives himself no dilettanti airs; and when he ventures an opinion, he starts it on its own merits, and at his proper risk. Still, he is evidently no artist, and, like all men practically ignorant of art, is not aware of the danger of getting out of his depth. Few have acquitted themselves with credit in this trial of skill, and most have made themselves rather ridiculous by their exhibitions

in this way. Forsyth himself, clever and tranchant as he was, is by no means an unerring guide, and his bold strokes frequently make us exceedingly nervous.

The road to Bologna was wretched; and the whole valley of the Po, towards its embouchure, exhibited a miserable scene, with ruined mansions, dirty cottages, and unceasing mendicancy. Bologna itself appeared surcharged with beggars, though, on the whole, the general aspect of things, both moral and material, was altered for the better. In this part of Italy, as well as in most of the southern divisions of Europe, the metayer system of farming prevails; and the utmost fairness of division, and entire confidence between landlord and tenant, apparently exist. Apropos of this favourable representation of the state of society, M. Simond introduces an interesting illustration of the simple and patriarchal manners still prevalent in some of the districts of Italy.

There is at the foot of Monte Rosa, in the district of Varello, a small borough, of 12,000 inhabitants, called Alagna, where there has not been a criminal trial, not even a civil suit, for the last 400 years. In case of any wrong committed, or any very blameable conduct, the guilty person, marked by public reprobation, is soon compelled to leave the country. The authority of fathers, like that of the patriarchs, continues absolute all their lives; and, at their death, they dispose of their property as they please, by verbally imparting their last will to one or two friends, whose report of it is reckoned sufficient: no objection was ever made to such a testiment, and a notorial act is a thing unknown at Alagna. Not long since, a man died worth 4000l. sterling, a very great fortune there; he bequeathed a trifle only to his natural heir. The latter soon after met accidentally, at the neighbouring town of Varello, a lawyer of his acquaintance, and learned from him that he was legally entitled to the whole property thus unkindly denied to him, and of which, with his assistance, he might obtain possession very shortly. The disinherited man at first declined the offer, but, upon being strongly urged, said he would reflect upon it. For three days after this conversation, he appeared very thoughtful, and owned to his friends he was about to take an important determination. At last it was taken, and, calling on his legal adviser, he told him, "the thing proposed had never been done at Alagna, and he would not be the first to do it!"›

The people of this community are described as a fine race, retaining many of their antique usages, and exhibiting marks of a northern origin in language and manners. Their property consists chiefly of cattle; and, like the Tyrolese and Savoyards, they visit richer countries as pedlars and image-merchants. The Revolution ruined them, mainly through the effects of the conscription. They had come to a resolution not to serve personally, and their whole common-purse was exhausted by the bounty to substitutes.

Florence is not made to furnish anything of peculiar interest. On the subject of paintings, we have determined not to touch, seeing that we have the fortune, good or bad, of differing altogether from M. Simond in his few and feeble essays in connoisseurship. He speaks of the Tuscans as a people proverbially mild', and mentions as an instance of their kindness and tenderness of disposition, their horror of capital punishments. Under the government of the excellent Leopold, it was once found necessary to deliver over a criminal of the most atrocious character to the extreme vengeance of the law. On the day of his execution, Florence appeared empty. All who could with convenience leave the town, took flight, and the remainder crowded to the churches to pray for the sufferer. The genius of ancient abuses has been again at work in Tuscany; the Code Napoleon is abolished in favour of the old Leopoldine system; the monastic institutions have been re-invested in their privileges and properties, while the idle and superstitious are repeopling their cells. Discontent is everywhere expressed; but in Italy, as M. Simond observes, these feelings seldom break out into open violence; and when they do, insurrection always fails of success from want of union and concert among the people. When Murat marched upon the Austrians, all was quiet; and his own highly disciplined Neapolitans took flight at the first symptoms of fighting. The Milanese were passive; and it appears exceedingly improbable that the petty jealousies and provincial partialities which divide Italy, should, in our time at least, be so far subdued, as to allow of a determined and durable combination of Italian patriots. M. Simond is hardly extensive enough in his details concerning land and agriculture; and he occasionally refers for ampler information on this subject to the valuable work of Lullin de Chateauvieux, reviewed by us in our Number for December 1819, and which we again recommend to onr readers as affording, in conjunction with the Agriculture Toscane' of Sismondi, the best account to be obtained of Italian husbandry and rural economy. Of the celebrated Val d'Arno, the theme of poetry, and the attraction of travellers, M. Simond is by no means warm in his admiration. It is populous and prosperous, but the good circumstances of its inhabitants are referrible, not to the minute subdivision of the land, but to the straw-hat and linen manufactures, which supply the absence of the active and constant demand that, in the better days of Florence, when her fleets and those of Pisa brought riches from every point of the compass, made the valley of the Arno, lying between these two flourishing cities, an uninterrupted garden. It seems now to be exceedingly unpicturesque; the road bor dered by stone-walls, and the cultivation deficient in verdure

and branching foliage. Yet, in other respects, it is a gratifying scene, though with the usual drawbacks on Italian prosperity.

It was Sunday, and the whole population of Val d'Arno was abroad, dressed in all their best. The women, with clear brown and almost fair complexions, and hands that looked strangers to the labours of the field, wore linen as white as snow; short silk stays, and large straw hats, on which either a knot of riband or a bunch of such flowers as the season still afforded, was tastefully attached. Many were driving, to church I presume, in one-horse carts. Not ten miles without a town, nor two without a village, and rarely more than two or three hundred yards without a cottage, which even to an English eye might have appeared tolerably neat and pretty-yet, amidst all these signs of prosperity, beggars, that plague of Italy, more numerous than ever, from the circumstance of their not being suffered at Florence under the eye of their sovereign, pursued us with incredible obstinacy. They were mostly big boys with scarcely a rag on, calling out in the lamentable sing-song of the trade, «Fame! tanta fame!" while their broad faces and capability of work belied their tale of woe. They thus, though not always, earn a bajocco with labour, which might have secured them a comfortable subsistence if applied in any other way. The level of the Val d'Arno is generally high enough to be salubrious, and mountains of a good shape screen it on the right towards Lucca ; yet, in a picturesque point of view, this celebrated vale deserves but little praise. For miles you travel between two stone walls, and the foreground is at best composed of small patches of ground in high cultivation, that is, without a blade of grass or a tree that is unclipped.'

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We felt much disappointed at the very meagre description of the Campo Santo at Pisa. All that we are told of that singular spot, is comprised in a short paragraph, which contains nothing specific but the common-place information, that it was constructed in the thirteenth century, for the purpose of securing an enormous heap of earth, brought from the Holy Land by the Pisans, on their return from the third crusade.' It is vexatious to be told nothing more of one of the most striking remains of by-gone times, than that it is a rectangular court of vast size', that it is surrounded by a sort of Gothic arcade and that the walls are painted in fresco, barbarously, yet with ⚫ great indications of genius.' Such slight and vague intimations only serve to awake the suspicion that a want of interest in the matter led to careless and cursory inspection. Concerning the building itself, with the strange mixture of styles in its cloister, the Roman arch and pilasters, with the Gothic mullions and intersections, there is room for much inquiry; but the paintings contain within themselves a large and important section of the history of art. We shall extract from Forsyth's brief but spirited description, sufficient to inform our readers of the general character of this hallowed precinct. It may be ex

VOL. II.-N.S.

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pedient to state previously, that the Campo Santo was, until of late years, the burial-ground of Pisa; that it is an oblong square, surrounded with a large and lofty cloister of sixty-two arcades. The inclosed space is filled, to the depth of nine or ten feet, with the sacred earth of Palestine; and we are informed by M. Simond, that bodies buried in it are said to be safe from decay', while Eustace reports, that it is supposed to have the peculiar ' quality of corroding the bodies deposited in it, and destroying ⚫ them in twice twenty-four hours.' So much for dependence on travellers. 'Such cloistered cemeteries as this', says Forsyth, were the field where painting first appeared in the 'dark ages, on emerging from the subterranean cemeteries of Rome. In tracing the rise and genealogy of modern painting, we might begin in the catacombs of the fourth century, and follow the succession of pictures down to those of St. Pontian ' and Pope Julius; then, passing to the Greek image-makers of 'the tenth and eleventh centuries, we should soon arrive at this Campo Santo, which exhibits the art growing, through several ages, from the simplicity of indigence to the simplicity of 'strength. Here, the immensity of surface to be covered, forbade 'all study of perfection, and only required facility and expedition. The first pictures shew us what the artist was, when separated 'from the workman. They betray a thin, timid, ill-fed pencil; 'they present corpses rather than men, sticks rather than trees, 'inflexible forms, flat surfaces, long extremities, raw tints, anything but nature. As you follow the chronology of the wall, you catch perspective entering into the pictures, deepening the back-ground, and then adjusting the groupes to the plans. You see the human figure first straight, or rather stretched; then fore-shortened, then enlarged: rounded, salient, free, various, 'expressive. Throughout this sacred ground, painting pre'serves the austerity of the Tuscan school: she rises sometimes 'to its energy and movement, she is nowhere sparing of figures, ' and has produced much of the singular, the terrible, the im'pressive;-but nothing that is truly excellent. All the subjects are taken from Scripture, the Legends, or Dante; but in depicting the life of a patriarch or a saint, the artists have given us the dress, the furniture, and the humours of their own day. Some of these frescos have been exposed to 'the open air for 500 years, and the earliest works are moulder'ing away from moisture. What pity that a country full of an❤ tiquaries and engravers should let such monuments perish without a remembrance!' The Leaning Tower is well described by M. Simond; and he ascribes, in common, as it should seem, with all judicious observers, its obliquity to the failure of its foundations. The ground is spongy; the land-springs lie but six feet below the surface; and several neighbouring buildings

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