I HAVE recorded the Traveled American girl’s experience in the Venice we mourned at leaving after eight days’ sojourn. In the parlor of the HÔtel Brun, in Bologna, we met the Average Briton, a spinster of linguistic and botanical tastes—artistic too, as presently appeared—who was “stopping overnight,” in the city.

“Where there’s nothing to be seen, me dear,” she asserted to a countrywoman of her own, in our hearing, “unless one has a fondness for sausage. You remarked that they made a course of Bologna sausage at the dinner-table. Ex’tror’nary—was it not? We thought it quite nasty. But Bologna is a filthy old town—not a show-place at all. Nobody stops here unless obliged to do so. We take the early train for Venice. Ah! there is a wealth of art there!”

“Will you walk?” asked Caput of me, so abruptly that the A. B. lifted her eye-glass at him.

The sidewalks are arcades, protected from sun and rain by roofs supported upon arches and pillars. The shops were still open; the pavements alive with strollers and purchasers. A cleanly, wide-awake city it looked to be, even by night, and nowhere that we saw, dull or “filthy.”

“I lose my patience at the contradiction of fools!” ejaculated my escort, unnecessarily, his demeanor having already spoken for him. “That of sinners is a bagatelle compared with it. I will take you to-morrow, first to the University of Bologna, one of the oldest institutions of learning extant. A University founded more than seven hundred and fifty years ago,—if not, as some declare, established by Theodosius in 425, and subsequently restored by Charlemagne. There were often, as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, eight, nine, ten thousand students in attendance at once in the various departments, especially in the law-schools taught by the ablest jurists of Europe. In anatomical research and discoveries, the medical department gained almost equal fame. Galvani was a professor here, and from the Bolognese University the knowledge of galvanism spread over the civilized world. You should be proud to know that there were women-professors in this faculty centuries before ‘advanced ideas,’ and the ‘co-education of the sexes,’ became fashionable jargon in America.”

“I have heard of Novella d’Andrea, the Hypatia of the fourteenth century—fabled to have been so beautiful that she was obliged to sit behind a screen when she lectured.”

“Upon Canon Law! The story is true. Inerius introduced here the study of Roman law, and Novella was its able and eloquent expounder. Laura Bassi received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University about 1700. She was Professor of Mathematics and Physical Science. Madame Manzolini, in the same century, taught Anatomy. Clotilda Tambroni, Professor of Greek, died in 1817. The character of the branches studied and taught by them is the most remarkable thing. Belles-lettres and modern languages would seem more natural.

“Bologna has produced nothing worthy of note except sausages! Yet the king of linguists, Mezzofanti, was, likewise, a professor in this University. Eight popes were born in Bologna, Benedict XIV. among them, and other men far more eminent in their day and in ours, such as Manfredi and Aldobrandini. In the Bolognese Accademia delle Belle Arti are the very best paintings of a school that owes its name to the city. Had that woman ever heard of Francesca Francia, Guido Reni, Domenichino, or the three Caracci? Or, of the museum of Etruscan curiosities in the University Buildings? Of the two Leaning Towers of Bologna? Or, the Campo Santo? Sausage, forsooth! I hate a fool!”

“So did Mr. F’s aunt!” said I, at this climax. We both laughed, and the Average Briton was dismissed for pleasanter topics.

I was almost afraid, after this philippic, to hint that the Leaning Towers, seen by the morrow’s light, were unfortunately like two overgrown factory chimneys, canting tipsily to one side. They are of grimy brick, devoid of ornament, and seven hundred and seventy years old. Ugly, unfinished and useless, they impart a rakish, dissipated air to an otherwise respectable quarter. The junior of the twain, and the shorter, by one hundred and thirty-four feet, exceeds the greater in obliquity. A century since, its inclination was eight feet southward, three feet eastward, and it is said to have persisted in its downward tendency during that hundred years. Its taller mate leans but three feet out of the perpendicular.

Dante honors the shorter and more ungainly tower, by likening to it AntÆus, who was but a son of the clod himself. Prima found the passage in the Inferno, and read it to us:

A less mellifluous rhyme arose to English-speaking lips in surveying the incomplete shaft:

When the unstable foundations became an admitted fact, why were not the Asinelli and Garisenda torn down and built upon firmer ground, or the materials otherwise appropriated?

We were bound for the University, having but made a dÉtour in our drive thither, to see what the guide-books catalogued as the “most singular structures in Bologna”—the drunken towers.

The buildings occupied by the famous school of learning are comparatively modern, and were, until 1803, the palace of the Cellesi, a noble family of Bologna. The library of one hundred thousand volumes is arranged in an extensive suite of rooms, frescoed, as are some of the corridors, with the coats of arms of former students in the University.

“What if a student should not have a family escutcheon?” we suggested to our guide.

The objection was as intelligible, we saw, at once, as if we had asked, “Must every student have a head of his own in order to matriculate here?”

While we speculated in our own vernacular as to the number of genuine heraldic emblems four or five hundred American college-boys could collect at such a demand from their Alma Mater, and the guide stood by, puzzled and obsequious, we were accosted in excellent English by a gentleman who had entered from another room.

“Can I be of service to you? We are proud of our University and happy to show it to strangers.”

It was Sig. Giovanni Szedilo, of whose grammar of Egyptian hieroglyphics we afterward heard much, and for the next three hours, he acted as host and interpreter.

The Bolognese Street of Tombs has been uncovered within a decade. It was disclosed by that searcher of depths and bringer of hidden things to light—a railway cutting. The bared sepulchres gave up wonderful treasures, and the ancient University, as next of age in the region, became their keeper. In one room of the museum are large glass cases fastened to the floor, by brickwork, I think. In these lay the exhumed Etruscan skeletons amid their native dust. The removal of the graves with their tenants was so skillfully effected that we saw them exactly as they had lain in the ground. Sons of Anak all—and daughters as well. The women were six feet in length and grandly proportioned. Tarnished bracelets, from which the gems had dropped, encircled the fleshless wrists, and a tiara had slipped from the brow of one with the gentle mouldering back to ashes. “Can a maid forget her ornaments?” The Etruscans believed that she would not be content in the next world—wherever they located it—without them. In the hand of each person lay the small coin that was to pay the Etruscan Charon for the soul’s passage over the dark river. Always a river to Pagan and to Christian, and too deep for man’s fording! Beside the skeleton of a little girl was a tray set out with a doll’s tea-set, as we would call it, pretty little vessels of Etruscan ware, that were a dainty prize of themselves, in a “collector’s” eyes. We would not have touched them had they been exposed to manual examination—although the craze for antique pottery had possessed us for many years. The outstretching of the small arm, the pointing fingers in the direction of the plaything were a sufficient guard. Other toys were laid away with other children; now and then, a vase, or a cup of choicer ware, beside an adult.

“Supposed to be two thousand years old!” said our erudite guide. “We are assisted materially in our computation of dates by the articles buried with them.”

A running lecture upon Etruscan pottery ensued, illustrated by the large and perfectly-assorted collection in the museum. There were five different and well-defined periods in the history of the art, we learned, and how to discern the features of each. We marked its rise and decline from the earthenware pot, roughly engraved and rudely colored, and the dark, or black jug, with slightly raised and more graceful designs upon a smooth surface—to the elegant forms of chalice and vase, embellished with groups of allegorical figures, and painted tales of love and war. These declined in beauty and finish until, about fifty years before the Christian era, all traces of the renowned manufacture were lost.

“There has not been a bit of real Etruscan ware made since that time,” reiterated the connoisseur, accentuating the dictum by tapping gently upon the specimen in his hand, and smiling into our interested faces, “Who asserts the contrary, lies!” yet more suavely.

He blew invisible dust from the precious vase; replaced it tenderly upon its shelf, and passed on to Egyptian mummies with the easy sociability of a contemporary. There are papyrii by the score in the archives of the University, and four thousand ancient MSS. in the “new” buildings which are “all print” to him. He rendered the long-winded hieroglyphical inscriptions upon sarcophagus and tablet as fluently as we would the news summary of Herald, Tribune or Times. A pleasant, gracious gentleman he proved to be withal. His courtesy to the party of strangers whose sole recommendation to his hospitality was their strangerhood, is held by them in grateful remembrance.

S. Petronio, the largest church in Bologna, is, like the Leaning Towers, unfinished, although begun in the fourteenth century. The Emperor Charles V. was crowned here. A vast, hideous barn without, it yet holds some valuables that well repay the trouble of inspection. The marble screens of the chapels; the inlaid and carved stalls, of a clear, dark brown with age; old stained glass that shames the gaudiness of later art; one or two fine groups of sculpture, and a very few good paintings enrich the interior. The astronomer Cassini drew, in 1653, the meridian-line upon the pavement of one of the aisles. Much of the stained glass is from the hand of the celebrated Jacob of Ulm. About the church is a bare, paved space, devoid of ornament or enclosure, that adds to the dreariness of the structure.

Guido Reni is buried in S. Domenico, a smaller edifice, enshrining the remains of its patron saint. The kneeling angel on one side of his tomb, and the figure of St. Petronious (a new worthy to us) upon the other, are by Michael Angelo. Guido Reni painted St. Dominic’s transfiguration within the dome, and, with one of the Caracci, frescoed the Chapel of the Rosary on the left. In the choir is the monument of King Enzio.

We had already seen the house in which he was confined for twenty-two years after the disastrous fight of Fassalta. He was the son of the Emperor Frederic II., and great-grandson of Barbarossa. Like his auburn-haired ancestor, Frederic II. waged war for twenty years with the Papal See, the Bolognese espousing the cause of the latter, and that of the Guelphs. Euzio’s gift from his father of the Kingdom of Sardinia was the pretext of the Pope’s second bull of excommunication against the Emperor, and the cause of the war which resulted for the brave young Prince in life-long captivity. His incarceration was rather the honorable detention of a prisoner-of-state than penal confinement. The Palazzo del PodestÀ was a luxurious home. Its Great Hall still bears his name. It was not in this audience-chamber that he received the visits of the most beautiful woman in Bologna, Lucia Vendagoli, whom he secretly married. Euzio was, at the time of his capture, but twenty-five years of age. At seventeen, he had fought his first battle under his father’s eye; at nineteen, was King of Sardinia; at twenty, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial forces. To the bravery and knightly accomplishments of his illustrious great-grandfather, he united personal beauty and grace that made him irresistible to the fair patrician. Her passion for him and her wifely devotion are the theme of numberless ballads and romances, and were the solace of an existence that must else have been insupportable to the caged eagle.

From this union sprang the powerful family of the Bentivogli who carried on the hereditary feud with the Pope until the latter sued for peace and alliance. The Bentivogli were a stirring race and kept Bologna in hot water for as many decades as their founder passed years in the palatial prison. The staircase up which Lucia stole to meet her royal lover; the apartments in which their interviews were held, are still pointed out, although the palace is now a city hall where records are made and preserved.

We drove out to the Campo Santo upon the loveliest of June afternoons, passing, within the town-walls, the house of Rossini, built under his own eye, and the more modest abodes of Guercino and Guido Reni. The frescoes of this last are from the master’s brush, but we had not time to go in to look at them. “Something must be crowded out”—even in Bologna. For example, we visited neither soap nor sausage-factory.

The drives in the environs of the city are extremely beautiful, the roads good. The Campo Santo was, until the beginning of this century, a Carthusian Monastery. The grounds are entered through a gate in walls enclosing church, cloisters and arcades, with a level space literally floored with grave-stones. In this, the common burying-ground, were re-interred the greater part of the bones unearthed by the railway excavations through the Street of Tombs. Etruscans, Guelphs, Ghibellines and modern Bolognese sleep amicably and compactly together. Grass and purple clover spring up between the horizontal stones, and the roses in the path-borders load the air with sweetness. The distinguished dead have monuments in the arcades,—long corridors, filled with single statues and groups, usually admirable in design and workmanship. The vaults of the nobility are here, wealth combining with affection to set fitting tributes above the beloved and departed. There may be, also, a vying of wealth with wealth in the elaborate sculpture and multiplication of figures. I did not think of this in pausing at a father’s tomb on which stood upright a handsome lad of thirteen or thereabouts, the mother’s only surviving child. She had bowed upon his shoulder and buried her face in his neck in an agony of desolation, clinging to him as to earth’s last hope. The boy’s head was erect, and his arm encircled the drooping form. He would play the man-protector, but his eyes were full, and the pouting underlip was held firm by the tightened line of the upper. The careful finish of the details of hair and dress did not detract from the pathos of the group.

“That is not Art!” objected Prima, made critical by Roman art lectures and illustrative galleries.

“No!” I assented. “It is Nature!”

The monument of LÆtitia Murat Pepoli, Napoleon’s niece, is here, and a matchless statue of King Murat in full uniform, sword in hand, one advanced foot upon a piece of ordnance. Torn banners, a crown and other trophies of victorious generalship, bestrew the ground. The pose of head, the military carriage, the contained strength of the countenance betoken the master of men and of himself.

A monument representing Christ, attended by angels floating in the air, is a surprisingly lovely bit of “artistic trickery.”

Clotilda Tambroni is buried here, and in the cloisters are the busts of men distinguished in science and in letters, Mezzofanti and Galvani among them. When our erudite Sig. Giovanni seeks Etrurians and Egyptians in the world of shades, the Bolognese will set up his marble presentment beside his peers.

Among the “crowded outs” of Bologna was not the Accademia delle Belle Arti. We almost pitied—under the mollifying and refining influences of our stay within its courts,—the Average British Spinster who had taken the early train for Venice and the “wealth of art there.” Baedeker and his followers designate as the “gem of the collection” Raphael’s picture of S. CÆcilia’s trance while angels discourse heavenly music above her head. One demurs at the decision in beholding, in the same gallery, Guido Reni’s “Crucifixion,” his “Victorious Samson” and “Slaughter of the Innocents;” Domenichino’s “Martyrs,” with supplicating saints and angels in the upper part; the best works of the Caracci and Francesca Francia; Peruginos—for those who like them; more pleasing pictures from Guercino, the Sirani, and a host of artists of less note.

We were to leave the uninteresting city at half-past twelve, the third day after our arrival. The carriages stood at the door of the hotel, piled with luggage, and the party, with one exception, were in their places half an hour before the moment of the train’s departure for Milan. Landlord, waiters, and facchini were paid, vehicles engaged and trunks brought down before Caput’s disappearance. Fifteen minutes of tolerably patient waiting ended in inquiries among ourselves as to who had seen him last and where. He had stepped around into the next street, at eleven o’clock, we were assured by the proprietor. He would be back very soon. Five restless minutes more, and the urbane host ventured to ask if Monsieur had the “habitude” of losing trains. It was the custom of some travelers. And what matter? It was an easy affair to unload and dismiss the carriages and return to our apartments. There were still unvisited attractions in Bologna. His smiles grew broader, our anxiety more active as two, three, four minutes slipped by. The fifth was upon us when a hot and hurrying figure dashed up the street; sprang into the foremost carriage, and we drove off at a gallop to the station. There, we had a breathless rush, as might have been expected,—a scramble for tickets and seats. It was impossible to secure a compartment for our party. The lunch-basket was in one carriage; the fruit-basket in another. Nobody had her own satchel or books. The Invaluable and Boy were separated by four compartments from always-foreboding Mamma. We were fifty miles from the hills of Bologna, and our eyes already sated with the watery flats, rice-fields and broom-stick poplars of Lombardy before we found one another, our respective belongings,—and our tempers.

The cause of the delay and consequent turmoil maintained his equanimity, as was meet. For, had he not had another hour in the University? Did he not offer me, as a peace-gift, photographs of the portraits of the quintette of Lady-professors of Bologna, including the perilously-fair Novella? Was he not brimming and bubbling over with priceless information imparted by the benevolent librarian, and burning benevolently to make us partakers of his knowledge? And, securely buttoned in the breast-pocket of his traveling-coat, did he not possess the Grammar of Egyptian Hieroglyphics, written in flowing Italian by Sig. Giovanni Szedilo?