Venice, Bologna, Florence and Pisa.

December 8, 1902.

Though still cool, the weather was milder in Venice, so we remained a week or so, yielding ourselves to the pensive charm of that—

Of the palaces that we visited, the one in which the poet Browning lived, and in which his son now lives, is the best preserved, and illustrates better than any other the almost regal state in which the wealthy Venetians lived in the day of their commercial supremacy. One of these old palaces on the Grand Canal is now used as a bank. Some are used as warehouses, and others are put to still meaner uses. The Doge's Palace is, of course, the largest and finest, but it is more like a public building than a residence. Next to this stands the chief architectural glory of Venice, the gorgeous Cathedral of St. Mark, with its unequalled profusion of costly materials, and its ominously uneven stone floor, suggesting the painful possibility that it, too, may some day share the fate of the great Campanile, which till last summer lifted its head three hundred and seventy-five feet in the air from the pavement of the square in front. We found the ruins of this graceful structure, up the winding incline of which Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have ridden his horse to the belfry, lying in a heap on the square surrounded by a temporary unpainted board fence. Workmen within were making preparations for the erection of the new bell tower which is to take the place of the old one. On the first Sunday after our arrival we heard the Rev. Dr. Robertson, at the Presbyterian Church, make felicitous use of the fate of the old Campanile in a sermon on the text, "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Nowhere are foundations of more importance than in Venice. The whole city is built upon piles. The Rialto Bridge, a great marble arch of a single span, rests upon twelve thousand of these piles, which are driven deep into the mud.

The interior of the Church of the Jesuits made more impression upon us than any other Venetian church except St. Marks. It looks at first view like it was lined throughout with chintz, through which runs a green pattern; but on closer inspection you find that it is all white marble—the pulpit and its heavy curtains, the altar steps, the walls from floor to ceiling, are all of white marble, and the green pattern is nothing less than verd antique.

Some of our young people, who had already wearied of the miles of picture galleries in Europe, manifested but little interest in the rich collection of art at Venice, but I think that all brought away an indelible impression of Titian's splendid "Assumption of the Virgin." They felt a much keener interest in the marvellous skill of the Venetian glass-makers at Murano. But their special delight was the gondolas. They soon had their favorites among the gondoliers, and, with Marco and Pedro propelling them, threaded the innumerable canals in every direction, visited the outlying islands, drifted hither and thither on the broad lagoons, and enjoyed the distant views of this strangely beautiful city, sometimes looming through the mist, at other times standing out sharp and clear against the red sky of a flaming sunset.

Nothing in all the strange history of Venice interested us so much as the career of Fra Paolo Sarpi, "the greatest of the Venetians," as Dr. Alexander Robertson well calls him in his striking biography of that illustrious thinker and man of action. An ecclesiastic whom Gibbon calls "the incomparable historian of the Council of Trent"; a mathematician of whom Galileo said, "No man in Europe surpasses Master Paolo Sarpi in his knowledge of the science of mathematics"; an anatomist whom Acquapendente, the famous surgeon of Padua, calls "the oracle of this century"; a metaphysician who, as Lord Macaulay says, anticipated "Locke on the Human Understanding"; and a statesman who saved Venice from the domination of the papacy—it is no wonder that Dr. Bedell, chaplain of the English Ambassador to Venice, should have said that he was "holden for a miracle in all manner of knowledge, divine and human." "As a statesman, the great Republic of Venice committed all its interests to his guidance, and he made its history, while he lived, an unbroken series of triumphs; in an age when the papacy lifted high its head, and rode roughshod over the rights of kings and peoples, he forced Pope Paul V., one of the haughtiest of Rome's Pontiffs, to his knees, and so shattered in his hands the weapon of interdict and excommunication that never again has it served the interest of a wearer of the tiara. Constitutional government everywhere owes something to Fra Paolo; and modern Italian history is the outcome and embodiment of the principles he laid down in his voluminous State papers. He was stronger than the papacy, for, in spite of the hatred, persecution and protest of Pope and Curia, he lived and died within the pale of the church, enjoying the esteem and affection of its clergy, performing all his priestly duties, and receiving, as the Senate wrote in its circular announcing his death to the courts of Europe, 'Li santissimi sagramenti con ogni maggior pieta.' And he was stronger than the Republic, for immediately after his death it began to succumb to papal domination, and to totter to its fall."

We visited the Servite Monastery, where he lived, the bridge where he was set upon and stabbed by the Pope's hired assassins, and where his statue now stands, and the grave in the island cemetery of Venice where his body rests at last after all the strange adventures and removals made necessary by the ghoulish malice of his foes.

December 10, 1902.

The business activity of Bologna is in sharp contrast with the stagnation and decay of Venice. It is a brisk and handsome city, with well-paved streets, flanked by arcades like those along the Rue de Rivoli in Paris. Bologna has an unequalled number of these colonnades. They are so continuous, indeed, and afford such perfect protection from the sun in summer and the rain in winter, that it is more nearly possible to dispense with umbrellas here than in any other city in the world. The greatest of these covered ways is the portico which winds up the mountain just outside the city, by an easy gradation, to the costly church of the Madonna di S. Lucca, which, as its name indicates, possesses an image of the Virgin said to have been the work of Saint Luke. There are no fewer than six hundred and thirty-five arches in this colonnade, and they command lovely views on either side, as one ascends; but the view from the church, at the top of the mountain, caps the climax, combining, as it does, Alps, Appennines, Adriatic, plains and cities. It is from the arches of this long colonnade up the mountain that one gets the best impression of Bologna's towers. They are very numerous, and many of them are out of the perpendicular. In fact, there are more leaning towers here than in any other city in the world. But, unlike "Pisa's leaning miracle," these are not beautiful. They are imposing only in the grouping of a distant view, being nothing but quadrangular masses of ugly brown brick, with no ornaments, no windows, and indeed no known uses, the object for which they were erected being now an insoluble mystery.

Bologna has important manufactures of silk goods, velvet, crape, chemicals, paper, musical instruments, soap and sausages. We made full trial of the last two mentioned commodities, and found them excellent. But Bologna, while vital and modern, is not lacking in the matter of antiquity and literary and historical interest. It boasts the oldest university in the world, founded in 425 A. D. In the thirteenth century it had ten thousand students, and it still has over a thousand. In front of the University stands a statue of Galvani, holding a tablet on which he is exhibiting the famous frog legs. But it is said that "his wife was the real discoverer of galvanism, having laid some frogs, which she was preparing for soup, beside a charged electrical machine; and it was she who observed the convulsion in the frogs which she touched with the scalpel, and communicated the discovery to her husband, who repeated the experiment at the University."

December 15, 1902.

Florence! "City of fair flowers, and flower of fair cities!" Second only to Rome itself in variety and wealth of historical, artistic and literary interest, home of Dante and Boccacio, Machiavelli and the Medici, Galileo and Amerigo Vespucci, Savonarola and Fra Angelico, Cimabue, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini—what can one do in a letter like this but merely name them and pass on, hoping for a time of larger leisure to say at least a word concerning the most illustrious of them?

In the Uffizi Gallery, which is "a complete exemplification of the progress and development of art," there is an octagonal room, called the Tribune, which contains perhaps the richest aggregation of masterpieces in the world. Sculpture is represented by the Venus de Medici, the Young Apollo, The Wrestlers, The Grinder, and The Dancing Faun; and painting by no less remarkable pictures. In addition to these, the things that stand out in one's memory in connection with Florence are Cellini's "Perseus," Ghiberti's "Doors," Michael Angelo's "David" and his "Lorenzo de Medici," Brunelleschi's "Dome," and last, but not least, Giotto's "Tower," "the model and mirror of perfect architecture," of which John Ruskin says: "The characteristics of Power and Beauty occur more or less in different buildings—some in one and some in another. But all together, all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building in the world—the Campanile of Giotto at Florence." For the proper appreciation of almost any other great production of art some education in art is necessary, but any one can see the transcendant beauty of Giotto's "Tower." Untutored as we are in these matters, we never wearied of looking at it.

In the freshness of its undimmed splendor, there is nothing in Florence to compare with the Medici Chapel. It is still unfinished, but has cost up to the present time three million five hundred thousand dollars. It is probably the most magnificent mausoleum in the world. "The walls are covered with costly marbles, inlaid with precious stones—a gorgeous mosaic of the richest material."

But, after all, the thing that lays deepest hold of us in Florence is the story of Savonarola, Harbinger of the Reformation and Martyr for the Truth. That little cell in the Monastery of San Marco, where he once lived, and where his manuscript sermons, his annotated books and his wooden crucifix are still shown; those fearful dungeons in the Palazzo Vecchio, where the greatest man of his age endured his forty days' imprisonment, and lay during the intervals of torture, and spent his last hours on earth; and the bustling Piazza Della Signoria, which witnessed the triumphant tragedy of May 23, 1498—Florence has nothing else so impressive as these. We visit them with subdued hearts and reverent spirits. "On the 22nd of May, 1498, it was announced to Savonarola and his friends, Domenico and Maruffi, that they were to be executed by five the next morning; our heroic preacher was thoroughly resigned to his share of the doom, saying to Domenico, 'Knowest thou not it is not permitted to a man to choose the mode of his own death?' The three friends partook of the sacrament of the Holy Supper, administered by Savonarola. He said, 'We shall soon be there, where we can sing with David, "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"' They were then taken to the tribunal, where they were divested of all their priestly decorations, during which the bishop took Savonarola by the hand, saying, 'Thus I exclude thee from the church militant and triumphant.' 'From the church militant thou mayest,' exclaimed Savonarola, 'but from the church triumphant thou canst not; that does not belong to thee.'... The last that was beheld of him was his hand uplifted as if to bless the people; the last that was heard of him, 'My Saviour, though innocent, willingly died for my sins, and should I not willingly give up this poor body out of love to him?' The cinders of the bodies of the martyred friars were carted away, and thrown into the river Arno." But—

What the principles of Wycliffe have done for England, the principles of Savonarola may yet do for Italy. At any rate, his work for Italy is not done yet.

December 19, 1902.

The four chief objects of interest at Pisa are all in a group at the northern end of the town, and a wonderfully effective group it is: the cloistered cemetery, or Camp Santo, with its fifty-five shiploads of earth from the Holy Land; the Baptistery, with its remarkable echo; the Cathedral, with the pendent lamp in the nave which suggested to Galileo the idea of the pendulum; and that wonder of the world, the white marble Tower, which leans thirteen feet out of the perpendicular. We all tried in vain to stand with heels and back to the inside of the north wall on the ground floor—it cannot be done; one falls forward at once. From the top there is a magnificent view of the city and the surrounding plain, of the mountains on the east and the sea on the west, of the city of Leghorn and the island of Elba.

From the windows of our hotel at Pisa we saw for the first time the red gold of ripe oranges shining amid their dark green leaves in the gardens, and rejoiced to think that at last we had reached a somewhat milder climate, and were now leaving rigorous winter behind us.

The journey from Pisa to Rome is a long one, and the schedule was such that we did not arrive till late at night. From the car windows we had some impressive views of the Mediterranean by moonlight, and of the solemn campagna, and, thus prepared, we crossed the Tiber at midnight, and passed through the breach in the walls which has been made for the railway, feeling, perhaps even more deeply than is usual, the thrill with which all travellers except those who are utterly devoid of imagination first enter the Eternal City.