Sept. 8. (On the road near Piacenza.) I started from Lodi at five A.M. on foot ; passed the Austrian frontier about eight. Soon after a turn in the road brought me in presence of a scene which I would find it difficult to convey by words. Immediately before me the broad full-shining Po, one of the four or five monarchs of European rivers, which the fancy is prepared to welcome with a thrill of emotion. On its southern bank, a little to the eastward of where I was standing, Piacenza, most picturesquely situated, with an unusual abundance of minaret, dome, and tower for a Lombard city ; the dark stone spire of the Cathedral, in particular, gave character to the pictorial effect of the town. Lastly, behind the town, and skirting the whole southern horizon from east to west, the beautiful outline of the Apennines, ridge over ridge, fold within fold, here a peak, there a dome, with soft but variegated lights on their various parts, as you see on many of the bonny hills of Scotland. This association, their intrinsic beauty, together with the surprise of coming upon mountains after the dreary plains of Lombardy, filled me with delight, I may say intoxicated me.
I lingered long and drank the spectacle ; the desolate beauty of Placentia, which seemed as if it had lost its way upon those forlorn banks ; the river itself, fringed with willows and sand, rolling on its dreary channel - a waste though fertilizing all around - smote my soul with one of those notes of melancholy which are profound but not unpleasing. I followed its "wild and willowy shore" for a considerable way beyond Placentia, until I reached the appropriately forlorn and rickety bridge of boats by which the highroad crosses it. Nothing, in truth, could be more in keeping or more significant of the departed grandeur of Placentia. With such emotions I entered the town, and found my way to the hotel.
* Sunday , Sept. 9. To-day I had the rampart with its promenade entirely to myself. I tried to retrace, realize, and re-people the history of Placentia. Visions of Roman greatness rose before my eyes, her haughty senators, dames, patricians ; her stern, stately soldiers ; her worship, in so far as I could make it out j and while I regretted that in former days I had learned those details so much by rote as to have now forgotten much which I would wish to have recalled, I was still able to make the picture complete enough to please myself. How singular the contrast between their civilisation on the one hand, and their religious darkness on the other ! while those two things to our minds must ever go together. It is like a dark cloud tinged by the moon shining behind, which is at once beautiful and the re verse. I cannot help thinking that, for character and mode of life, the transition between later Rome and Italy of the middle ages was not so great or so sudden as we sometimes imagine. Those lovers of luxury, those patrons of art, those monsters of tyranny and cruelty, might belong to one or other epoch ; the later, whom we have accurately sketched to the life, were the lineal inheritors of the names and nature of the former.
Thus then I passed to Placentia of the middle ages, and endeavoured to collect all I had gathered in history or romance of their glory, their splendour, and their shame. Finally, I passed on to more recent times ; the universal revolutions effected by Napoleon, the long peace that followed, and the poets who have visited and sung these lands from my own and other countries. I know not which of all these phases seemed endowed to my mind with the richest halo. All are equally blended with my youthful dreams in that season when the cold reason is allowed to slumber, and Imagination is lord of the ascendant.
*I entered the Cathedral towards dusk. There is frothing in it particularly to arrest the attention or elevate the thoughts; but mine were for the moment independent of outward aids, and sitting down with my book of Psalms in hand, I turned my soul towards Him, the events of whose marvellous life, from the cradle to the tomb, were portrayed around me. I cannot say that in general those pictures or frescoes, however good, awake devotion in my mind. This may be the defect of habit, or that the aesthetic predominates in regarding them ; or that, among so many, the soul has not time for an operation so absorbing and profound as that of devotion. Be this as it may, excepting by the Supper of a Leonardo, or the Crucifixion of a Guido for which, besides their being masterpieces, you give yourself time and scope for religious musings I have rarely felt myself sanctified in Italian churches. To night, however, all was dim excepting to the spiritual eye ; and the marvellous love and work of Him who Himself purged our sins, and wrought out a righteous ness for His people, shone out with peculiar lustre. No wonder that, when the tide of genius first flowed in its various channels since the conversion of the world to Christianity, this should be the all-absorbing topic of its efforts, whether on canvas or in verse. My Saviour, I am Thine, and I desire to appropriate the prayer, "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after ; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to in quire in His temple."* Under many aspects, there is much to be said in favour of these solemn cathedrals calm retreats for the thirsty soul amid the bustle of the world, and using them as Oratoires or places of meditation. I have often of late felt their power, and been greatly indebted to them. O that error could be kept apart from good, so that good might not have to be sacrificed to error !
I lingered long and drank the spectacle ; the desolate beauty of Placentia, which seemed as if it had lost its way upon those forlorn banks ; the river itself, fringed with willows and sand, rolling on its dreary channel - a waste though fertilizing all around - smote my soul with one of those notes of melancholy which are profound but not unpleasing. I followed its "wild and willowy shore" for a considerable way beyond Placentia, until I reached the appropriately forlorn and rickety bridge of boats by which the highroad crosses it. Nothing, in truth, could be more in keeping or more significant of the departed grandeur of Placentia. With such emotions I entered the town, and found my way to the hotel.
* Sunday , Sept. 9. To-day I had the rampart with its promenade entirely to myself. I tried to retrace, realize, and re-people the history of Placentia. Visions of Roman greatness rose before my eyes, her haughty senators, dames, patricians ; her stern, stately soldiers ; her worship, in so far as I could make it out j and while I regretted that in former days I had learned those details so much by rote as to have now forgotten much which I would wish to have recalled, I was still able to make the picture complete enough to please myself. How singular the contrast between their civilisation on the one hand, and their religious darkness on the other ! while those two things to our minds must ever go together. It is like a dark cloud tinged by the moon shining behind, which is at once beautiful and the re verse. I cannot help thinking that, for character and mode of life, the transition between later Rome and Italy of the middle ages was not so great or so sudden as we sometimes imagine. Those lovers of luxury, those patrons of art, those monsters of tyranny and cruelty, might belong to one or other epoch ; the later, whom we have accurately sketched to the life, were the lineal inheritors of the names and nature of the former.
Thus then I passed to Placentia of the middle ages, and endeavoured to collect all I had gathered in history or romance of their glory, their splendour, and their shame. Finally, I passed on to more recent times ; the universal revolutions effected by Napoleon, the long peace that followed, and the poets who have visited and sung these lands from my own and other countries. I know not which of all these phases seemed endowed to my mind with the richest halo. All are equally blended with my youthful dreams in that season when the cold reason is allowed to slumber, and Imagination is lord of the ascendant.
*I entered the Cathedral towards dusk. There is frothing in it particularly to arrest the attention or elevate the thoughts; but mine were for the moment independent of outward aids, and sitting down with my book of Psalms in hand, I turned my soul towards Him, the events of whose marvellous life, from the cradle to the tomb, were portrayed around me. I cannot say that in general those pictures or frescoes, however good, awake devotion in my mind. This may be the defect of habit, or that the aesthetic predominates in regarding them ; or that, among so many, the soul has not time for an operation so absorbing and profound as that of devotion. Be this as it may, excepting by the Supper of a Leonardo, or the Crucifixion of a Guido for which, besides their being masterpieces, you give yourself time and scope for religious musings I have rarely felt myself sanctified in Italian churches. To night, however, all was dim excepting to the spiritual eye ; and the marvellous love and work of Him who Himself purged our sins, and wrought out a righteous ness for His people, shone out with peculiar lustre. No wonder that, when the tide of genius first flowed in its various channels since the conversion of the world to Christianity, this should be the all-absorbing topic of its efforts, whether on canvas or in verse. My Saviour, I am Thine, and I desire to appropriate the prayer, "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after ; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to in quire in His temple."* Under many aspects, there is much to be said in favour of these solemn cathedrals calm retreats for the thirsty soul amid the bustle of the world, and using them as Oratoires or places of meditation. I have often of late felt their power, and been greatly indebted to them. O that error could be kept apart from good, so that good might not have to be sacrificed to error !
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* Psalm 27:4
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