Loe raamatut: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847», lehekülg 12

MILDRED: A TALE

CHAPTER VII

"To-morrow we quit Rome," said Mildred; "let us spend the day in quest of nothing new, but in a farewell visit to some of our first and oldest friends. How soon does that which we very much admire, come to be an old friend!"

Winston felt the same inclination as herself; but Mr. and Miss Bloomfield, since nothing new was to be seen, preferred to stay at home and rest themselves, in anticipation of the morrow's journey. Winston and Mildred therefore started together.

They entered a carriage and drove to St. Peter's; alighting, however, at the entrance of the magnificent colonnade which extends before it. The last visit we pay to any remarkable place bears a strong resemblance to the first; for the prospect of quitting it revives the freshness of the scene, and invests it for a second time with something like the charm of novelty. As it broke on us before from a past spent in ignorance of it, so now we seem to look out on it from the long anticipated absence of the future.

"Standing at the extremity of the colonnade," said Winston, "how diminutive seem the men who are ascending the broad flight of steps that lead to the church itself; and the carriages and horses drawn up at the bottom of those steps look like children's toys. Men have dwarfed themselves by their own creations."

"Who is it," said Mildred, "that in his oracular criticism pronounced this colonnade, beautiful as it is, to be disproportioned to the building, and out of place. Whoever it was, he must have excogitated the idea at a distance, and in some splenetic humour; it never could have entered through his eyesight standing here. Had there been a portico to the church, such as we are told Michael Angelo intended, resembling that of the Pantheon, then this colonnade might have been unnecessary—it would always have been a beautiful addition—but with so flat a façade, (the only part of the building, I think, which disappoints expectation,) I pronounce the colonnade to be absolutely essential. Without it the temple would never seem to invite, as it does and ought to do, the whole Christian world to enter it. Oh, if it were only to girdle in those two beautiful fountains, it were invaluable."

"Beautiful indeed! Such should fountains be," said Winston. "The water, in its graceful and noble play, should constitute the sole ornament. If you introduce statuary, the water should be an accessary to the statue, and no longer the principal ornament."

"How I abominate," said Mildred, "all those devices for spirting water out of the mouths of animals! It is a constant surprise to me that a taste so evidently revolting to all our natural associations, should be still persevered in. To leave unmentioned more odious devices, I can never pass without a sense of the disagreeable and the offensive, even those lions or leopards, whichever they may be, in the Piazza del Popolo, who are abundantly supplying the inhabitants with water through their mouths. And where the fountain is made to play over the statue, what a discoloured and lamentable appearance it necessarily gives to the marble! Let the river god, if you will, lean safe and tranquil over his reversed and symbolic pitcher: or at the feet of some statue, half surrounded by foliage, let the little fountain be seen playing from the ground; but keep the statue out of the water, and oh, keep the water out of the statue!"¹⁷

They ascended the broad flight of steps, and seemed now to feel themselves dwarfs as they mounted—and entered the portico. Here are several groups of allegorical figures, and to the right and left the equestrian statues of Charlemagne and Constantine.

"I am not surprised," said Mildred, "at the mistake of a countryman of ours, who took Charlemagne for St. Paul. One would more naturally look for the apostle here."

"What! than the great benefactor of the Papacy! I rather suspect," replied Winston, "that St. Paul would find himself less at home in this temple than Charlemagne. What think you of these colossal allegories? Here we have Truth, with her invariable mirror."

"Which mirror, it has always appeared to me," said Mildred, "has a very poor significance. It reflects faithfully the surface of all things. But this is not the sort of truth we care much about."

"But it reflects faithfully."

"That would rather illustrate the good moral lesson to speak the truth, than the exalted effort to attain it."

"Here the lady—and a very sweet face she has—is looking at herself in the mirror. This must represent, I suppose, metaphysic truth."

"If so, that must be the reason," rejoined Mildred, "that she is placed here outside the temple. I am afraid she will never enter it. But we will." And they proceeded into the church.

"What an admirable effect has this high altar!" said Winston, in a subdued exclamation. "Standing as it does in the centre, just beneath the dome, and so justly proportioned, it at once occupies the whole building, and explains its purpose to the eye. I cannot agree with the criticism which has objected to the twisted column in a position like this. These four bronze and gilded pillars—how lofty they are!—sustain nothing of greater weight than the canopy above them, and are here as much in the character of ornament as support. The dove, in its golden atmosphere of glory, the representation of the Holy Spirit, which is indeed at the extremity of the church, seems brought within them, and to be floating between the columns. In every picture or engraving I have seen, the contrary effect is produced, and the high altar, losing its central position, seems transferred, with the dove in it, to the extremity of the church."

"And this semicircle of small burning lamps, arranged in their mystical trinities on the marble balustrade before it; and this double flight of stairs," continued Winston, as they approached the altar, and looked over the balustrade, "leading down to those brazen doors below, before which other burning lamps are suspended; and that marble figure of the Pope kneeling before them, kneeling and praying incessantly for the people—it is altogether admirable!"

"The light of lamps and tapers," said Mildred, "burning in midday, had upon me at first an incongruous effect; they seemed so superfluous and out of place. But after a little reflection, or a little habit, they ceased to make this impression. The lamp and the taper are not here to give light, but to be light. The light is a mystical and brilliant ornament—it is here for its own sake—and surely no jewellery and no burnished gold could surpass it in effect. These brazen lamps round the altar, each tipped with its steady, unwavering, little globe of light, are sufficiently justified by their beauty and their brightness. In the light of the taper, as in the water of the fountain, the ordinary purposes of utility are forgotten—enough that it is beautiful."

"How admirable the arrangement," said Winston, "of the tombs of the pontiffs! The sculpture on them seems as much a part of the church as of the monument. That kneeling figure of Clement XIII., kneeling upon its exalted tomb—I shall see it whenever I think of St. Peter's. It is here, and not in the Vatican, that Canova triumphs. That genius of Death, reclining underneath the pontiff, with his torch reversed—what could be more expressive, more tender, more melancholy! And Faith, or Religion, whichever she may be, standing upright on the opposite side, and leaning her outstretched hand with force upon the marble—is a noble figure too. But I could willingly have dispensed with those spikes around her head, signifying rays of light."

"It is a fortunate subject for the artist, that of the Pope," said Mildred. "Being a temporal prince, a high-priest, and it is to be supposed, a saint, he can be represented in all attitudes; in the humility of prayer, or the dignity of empire. Yonder he rises, blessing the people, and here he sits enthroned, giving out the law, and Religion is looking up to him! Have you observed this monument to our James II.?—who certainly deserved a tomb in St. Peter's, since he paid the price of a kingdom for it. It is one of the least conspicuous, but not one of the least beautiful of Canova's. Those two youthful figures leaning their brows each on his inverted torch—standing sentinels by that closed door—are they not inexpressibly graceful? And that closed door!—so firmly closed!—and the dead have gone in!"

"Mildred Willoughby," said Winston, "you are a poet."

It was the first time he had ever called his companion by her Christian name. It was done suddenly, in the moment of admiration, and her other name was also coupled with it; but he had no sooner uttered the word "Mildred" than he felt singularly embarrassed. She, however, by not perceiving, or not seeming to perceive his embarrassment, immediately dissipated it.

"If I were," said she, "to tell me of it would for ever check the inspiration. To banish all suspicion of poetry, let me make a carping criticism, the only one, I think, which the whole interior of this edifice would suggest to me. I do wish that its marble pillars could be swept clean of the multitudes of little boys that are clinging to them—cherubs I suppose they are to be called. By breaking the pillar into compartments, they destroy the effect of its height. Little, indeed, they are not; they are big enough. A colossal infant—what can be made of it? And an infant, too, that must not smile, or he might be taken for a representative of some other love than the celestial?"

"Ay, and do what the artist will," said Winston, "the two Loves often bear a very striking resemblance. In the church of St. Giovanni, amongst their wreaths of flowers, the cherubs have a very Anacreontic appearance."

"But away with criticism. One farewell look," cried Mildred, "at this magnificent dome. How well all its accessaries, all its decorations, are proportioned and harmonised—growing lighter as they rise higher. Here at the base of each of the four vast columns which support it, we have gigantic statuary—seen and felt to be gigantic, yet disturbing nothing by its great magnitude—just above the columns those exquisite bas-reliefs—next the circular mosaics—then the ribbed roof, so chastely gilded and divided into compartments, distinct yet never separated from the whole—it is perfection!"

They bade farewell to St. Peter's; and, in pursuance of their design, re-entered their carriage and drove to its great dilapidated rival—the Coliseum.

"No dome here but the wide heavens," said Winston, as they approached the vast circular ruin rising arch above arch into the air. "How it scales, and would embrace the sky! Verily these old Romans seemed to have no idea that any thing was to come after them; they lived and built upon the earth as if they were the last types of the human species."

"Mutability and progress are modern ideas; they had not attained to them," said Mildred.

They walked partly round the interior, looking through the deep arches, overhung with verdure, and regretting the patches here and there too perceptible of modern masonry, and still more the ridiculous attempt, by the introduction of some contemptible pictures, or altar pieces, in the arena, to christianise the old heathen structure. They then ascended to the summit to enjoy the prospect it commands, both of the distant country, the beautiful hills of Italy, and of the neighbouring ruins of ancient Rome.

"How plainly it is the change of religion," said Winston, "which gives its true antiquity to the past! All that we see of ancient Rome bears the impress of Paganism; every thing in the modern city, of Catholicism. It is this which puts the great gulf between the two, and makes the old Roman to have lived, as it seems to us, in a world so different from our own. Strange! that what in each age is looked upon as pre-eminently unchangeable and eternal, should by its transformations mark out the several eras of mankind. Ay, and this religion which now fills the city with its temples—which I do not honour with the name of Christianity—will one day, by its departure from the scene, have made St Peter's as complete an antiquity as the ruins we are now sitting on."

"I notice," said Mildred, "you are somewhat bitter against Catholicism."

"I was tolerant when at a distance from it, and when again at a distance I shall perhaps grow tolerant again. But a priesthood, not teaching but ruling, governing men in their civil relations, seizing all education into its own hand, training the thinking part of the community to hypocrisy, and the unthinking to gross credulity—it is a spectacle that exasperates. I used in England to be a staunch advocate for educating and endowing the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland. I shall never, I think, advocate that cause again. To educate this priesthood,—what is it but to perfect an instrument for the restraining and corrupting the education of all the rest of the people? To endow this priesthood,—what else would it be but to give them an additional influence and power, to be used always for their own aggrandisement, and the strengthening of their own usurpations? The donative of a Protestant government would not make them dependent upon that government; they have sources of wealth in their own superstitions; they draw their vitality, and strike their roots, in a far other soil than the crafty munificence of an opponent. They would use the gift as best it pleased them, and defy a government—anxious only for peace—to withdraw it. No! even if the tranquillity of the empire should require the two churches to be placed on an equal footing, I still would not endow the Roman Catholic.—But pardon me,—what have we to do with the politics of England here?"

"I cannot tell you," said Mildred, quite acquiescing in this dismissal of the subject. "I cannot tell you what a singular pleasure it gave me when I first saw the classic ruin—the few upright Corinthian pillars with their entablature across them, and the broken column lying at their feet—which the pictures of Claude make us so familiar with. It must be confessed, that the back-ground of my picture—such as the Campo Vaccino afforded me—was not exactly what a Claude would have selected. How different in character and significance are the two ruins—the classic and the romantic! The one square, well-defined, well-proportioned, speaks of an age of order,—when Time stood still a little, and looked with complacency on what he was about; the other, with its round towers of unequal height, its arches of all shapes and dimensions, full of grandeur, but never exhibiting either completeness or congruity, tells us clearly of a period of turmoil and disorder, and great designs withal,—when Time had struck his tent, and was hurrying on in confused march, with bag and baggage, knight, standard, and the sutler's wagon all jumbled together.—Let us, on our return, pass through that group of desolate Corinthians; and, looking in at the Capitol, bid farewell to the Dying Gladiator."

In retracing their steps, they therefore passed through the old forum, and then ascending the Capitol, entered the museum there, and renewed their impression of that admirable statue. What pain!—but pain overmastered—on that brow, as he sinks in death! Nor was the charming little group of Cupid and Psyche forgotten. That kiss! it merits to be eternised. In his love, what delight! In hers, what devotion!

"But above all," said Mildred, "let us do reverence, before we part, to Aristides the Just. How self-contained! Austere—the lover more of virtue than of man. Full of his grand abstractions, he asks for nothing even of the gods. Let them do justice! Nay, let them submit to justice too! Great leveller! Is not virtue so uncompromising as this, very near to rebellion against the gods and destiny?"

CHAPTER VIII

The next morning the whole party were packed in their travelling carriage to start from Rome. Winston had no longer refused that fourth seat which had been destined for him at Genoa. To say nothing of some diminution of expense (a very worthy subject of consideration with all travellers,) it was a great relief to Mr. Bloomfield to have a second gentleman in their party. It decreased materially his own share of personal trouble. Besides which, the travelling experience of Winston, and his more familiar acquaintance with the Italian, rendered him very acceptable. Mildred had generally acted as interpreter; and so long as the speaker would answer in the same pure Tuscan in which she addressed him, she could perform the office admirably well. But unfortunately, the traveller in Italy has most need for his Italian exactly where any thing but pure Tuscan is spoken. She could always succeed in making herself understood; but was often sadly at a loss to understand that answer which, with all due dexterity, she had elicited.

On they now rattled through the streets of Rome. What rags upon those beggars! Patches of all colours, red, blue, brown; but worn with such an air of calm assurance, as if the garment of many colours had been bestowed on the most favoured son of humanity. They passed the peasant dame, or damsel, in her gaudy attire, with gold comb and ear-rings glittering in her jet black hair, and that square folded handkerchief on her head, which we always associate with the bandit's wife; and amidst the squalid populace there appeared now and then, quite distinct from the rest, a form or face of some youth, or maiden, or old man, that might have issued from the canvass of Raphael. The apostles of the old masters, at least, are walking still about Rome; and sometimes a Virgin Mary is seen sitting at the door, and still more often a young John the Baptist looks up to you from the pavement. Their own postilion reminded the whole party of the Suonatore di Violino of Raphael—whose fiddlestick, by the way, being that of a bass viol, might at first sight be mistaken for a folded riding-whip.

On they pass by the beautiful church of St. Giovanni, the statues on the roof and over the portico of which have at least one point of resemblance with their saintly prototypes—they are standing out there in the clear blue heavens, to which, and not to the earth, they seem to belong. At the Port Sebastian they are detained by a string of wine-carts, each drawn by one horse, with his plume of black feathers on his head, and each cart furnished with its goatskin umbrella, under the shade of which the driver lies fast asleep. Then follow a long cavalcade of peasants, mounted on mules or asses—mounted of a truth, for they sit on a high wooden saddle, their arms folded under their long brown cloaks, and a black pointed hat upon their heads. Strange figures!

"A flower in that hat!" exclaimed Mildred, as one passed her with a beautiful carnation stuck into a beaver, which, except that it retained its pyramidal form, and was there upon a human head, could not have been recognised as hat at all. "And he wears it seriously," she continued, "serenely—without the least feeling of incongruity. Oh, I like that!"

Getting clear of this train, they advanced through the gate into the open country. To their left the old aqueduct extended on the horizon its long line of ruined arches; to the right the plain was dotted with mere massive fragments of undistinguishable ruin, looking like what the geologists call boulders. The trace of man's labour was lost in them; the work of the artificer had come to resemble the rudest accident of Nature.

And so Rome was left behind.

"Is that smoke or a cloud," asked Miss Bloomfield, "that rests so constantly upon that mountain?"

"It is Vesuvius! Vesuvius!" exclaimed the rest of the party.

But they found themselves in a position, at that moment, the least of all favourable to enthusiastic emotions. Their carriage was delayed at the entrance into Naples, in the middle of a wide road, the hottest and the dustiest that can be imagined. There they were arrested to undergo the examination and the extortions of the custom-house gentry. Poor Mr. Bloomfield was in a fever. His passport had been asked for six several times between Rome and Naples, and each time solely, as it seemed, to extract a gratuity. Even the military guard stationed at the gates of the towns had begged. No one in Italy seemed to speak to him but to beg, or to lay the foundation, as a lawyer would say, for a begging question. And now these fellows were examining, or pretending to examine his baggage, and were evidently resolved to keep them there, in the sun and the dust, till they had paid a sufficient ransom. In this position it was that Winston and Mildred were, by stolen glances, taking their first survey of the burning mountain. By stolen glances, because they were compelled from a certain feeling of politeness to share in the anxieties and chagrin of Mr. Bloomfield. For themselves, they both agreed it was much better to submit quietly, and at once, to all these impositions; even if there were a fair chance, after much controversy, of a successful resistance. There is surely no money so well laid out as that which purchases equanimity.

They were extricated at length, and the carriage rattled on into Naples. Mr. Bloomfield had written to procure apartments in the quarter of the Chiaja, opposite the Villa Reale, (or royal gardens.) To these therefore they drove. Winston of course found his way to an hotel.

That evening he walked out to look at the burning mountain. It was now, and during the whole period of their stay, in a state of great activity, which some dignified with the name of an eruption. As Winston watched its burning summit across an angle of the bay, he thought he had never seen any thing which so completely fascinated the eye. The flame alternately rising and falling leads the spectator every moment to expect something more than he has hitherto seen, and that now it is about to burst forth. And even at this distance it is so evidently not a fire upon but within the mountain, from the manner in which the flame sinks down, and that red metallic glare which shoots along the rocky summits and cavities, here the fire is not visible. Yet fascinating as the object was, it did not entirely rivet the thoughts of Winston. To his own surprise and confusion, he found that he, a professed admirer of nature, was standing, for the first time, by the bay of Naples, under the beautiful star-light of Italy, watching one of the most magnificent of nature's wonders with a divided and distracted mind. All this scene, and all its novelty, could not keep Mildred from his thoughts. Evidently he was a lost man.

And who or what, after all, was Alfred Winston? The, question, it may be supposed, had often occurred to the Bloomfields. That he was an artist, was a conjecture long ago given up; he travelled with no portfolio, and was never known to use the pencil. That he was a literary man was also contradicted by his own straightforward unaffected denials; if he had cultivated his mind, it was solely for the pleasure or profit accruing to himself. The manner in which his time was at his own disposal, seemed to contradict the idea that he belonged to any of the learned professions. What could he be therefore but simply a gentleman? And such they had satisfied themselves, from many reasons, that he was. But there are gentlemen and gentlemen—rich, and poor. To which of these two classes did he belong? Question of questions. The moment it is asked how all vain enchantments are dispersed! how the bare earth shows itself directly beneath our feet! Where is now the bay of Naples, and star-light, and Vesuvius? Is he rich or poor?

One word on the father of Alfred Winston will best explain his own present position in the world. That father was one of a class of men altogether inexplicable, quite unintelligible to sober-minded and methodical persons; and yet the class is not so very rare. He was of good birth and fortune, of agreeable manners, and witty conversation, but utterly destitute of all prudential, all providential care, whether for himself or others. He was born to an ample estate; and, fond of pleasure as he was, he might have found it sufficient, with very little effort of prudence, to gratify all his tastes. But from the very commencement of his career, he entered upon the ruinous practice of "eating the land with the revenue," and continued, in this manner, consuming every year more of land and less of revenue. He early lost his wife. He had been an amiable husband, and manifested a decorous sorrow on the occasion; but could not disguise from his intimate friends the pleasure he felt at the recovery of his bachelor freedom. He hated the necessity of having to yield his own inclinations to another; though he hated still more the alternative of having to dispute with that other for liberty to follow his own inclinations.

After the decease of his wife, the elder Winston lived, for the most part, a roaming life upon the Continent. A little intrigue, a little gaming, the dinner, and the opera, sufficiently filled up the time of one who, while he courted pleasure, was not difficult in his amusements. And for this he could continue, with the utmost calmness and freedom from anxiety, a scale of expenditure which was rapidly dissipating his hereditary estates. His son he treated with indulgence and liberality, and when he saw him, which was seldom, with great kindness of manner. He encouraged him in all the idle and expensive habits of a gentleman of fortune, while he was utterly destroying the property which could alone support them.

He died suddenly; a fever carried him off at the age of fifty. Had he lived three years longer, he would have spent every shilling he possessed. What had he intended to do then? It is impossible to say. To all appearance he had never entertained the question. When young Winston had paid off his father's debts and his own, he who had expected to enter into an ample revenue found himself in the possession only of a few thousand pounds. This was all his patrimony. What to do he had not yet resolved; but this reverse had not prevented him from accomplishing a long cherished wish of visiting Italy. Some idea also was floating in his mind that perhaps he should select some place upon the Continent where to reside permanently upon the small pittance that was left to him.

It will be now seen at a glance, why it was that Winston fled from the attractions of Mildred at Genoa: he knew himself to be poor, and had become acquainted with the peculiar, and perhaps dependent, position in which Miss Willoughby stood. No one will blame him for running away from Genoa; but ought he to have lingered at Rome? We fear our friend was not remarkable for resolution of character. He had ardent feelings, and to counteract them he had just perceptions of what life demands from us; but he lacked, evidently, in steadiness of purpose.

And what now could he do? Flight, as at Genoa, was out of the question. He could not, by any rude or abrupt behaviour, forfeit that share of Mildred's esteem which he possessed. On his way back to his hotel he resolved—it was the utmost that his prudence suggested—that he would take occasion quietly and unostentatiously to intimate that, like Bassanio,

 
"All the wealth he had
Ran in his veins, he was a gentleman."
 

It would then be seen by Miss Willoughby, as clearly as by himself, that his attentions, to use the appropriate phrase, meant nothing. What might follow would be a torture merely to himself—the torture of a hopeless passion. She would know how to regulate her own feelings towards him. He alone should be the sufferer.

Very fallacious reasoning! If he with his eyes open loved and suffered, how could he tell but that Mildred might do the same? and this quiet intimation of certain barriers and impediments to his passion was likely to prove—as indeed it did prove—little better than a declaration of love, and not the less ardent because coupled with avowals of despondency.

Meanwhile, having made this concession to the cause of prudence and his honour, he resigned himself to the charms of Mildred's society. Every day brought some new excursion to scenes of surpassing beauty, in companionship with one of the most lovely and gifted of women. Winston's theory, that what is most beautiful in nature ought to be enjoyed in solitude, was entirely overthrown. He cared to visit nothing unless in her society; nor was there any scene whatever in which her presence was not felt to be the higher gratification.

Mr. Bloomfield and his sister, after their first visit to some of the environs of Naples, felt little disposed to make any unusual exertion. They had both discovered that the bay was much the same whether viewed from the right side or the left, and that in this warm weather—it was now the month of May—the shady walks in the Villa Reale, or a promenade in the town, was to be preferred to a ride in an open carriage. To Mildred, on the contrary, almost every excursion, whatever its professed object, derived its chief attraction from the different points of view it presented her of that bay, which every hour seemed to make more lovely. It followed, therefore, that Winston and Mildred were sometimes left to proceed on their expedition alone. How the heart of Winston beat as he, handed her into the carriage, and took his seat beside her! It was something very like a curse which fell at that moment upon the memory of his selfish parent. Had he been fairly dealt with, it might have been his lot to hand her into a carriage of his own—and hers.