CLASSIC ITALY by JAMES BROOKS
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A YANKEE JOURNALIST'S EUROPEAN TOUR, 1835-36 VOLUME THREE — CLASSIC ITALY by JAMES BROOKS Letters originally published in the Portland Advertiser (Maine) Compiled and edited by Duncan S. Campbell <[email protected]> Copyright © 2017 In the same series: Volume One — British Isles Volume Two — Rhine to Rhone Volume Four — Homeward Bound Table of Contents 52. Arrival in Italy ................................................................................................................ 4 53. Journey to Milan ......................................................................................................... 13 54. New Sensations ........................................................................................................... 19 55. Things in Milan ........................................................................................................... 26 56. Arts, not Politics ......................................................................................................... 34 57. Road to Venice ............................................................................................................ 44 58. Things in Venice ......................................................................................................... 50 59. Things and Thoughts in Venice .............................................................................. 56 60. In Venice ....................................................................................................................... 71 61. Venice to Padua .......................................................................................................... 80 62. Things in Padua .......................................................................................................... 87 63. A little of everything .................................................................................................. 94 64. Ferrara to Bologna ................................................................................................... 105 65. Bologna ....................................................................................................................... 113 66. Bologna to San Marino ............................................................................................ 121 67. To Ancona .................................................................................................................. 128 68. Ancona to Rome ........................................................................................................ 134 69. Things in Rome ......................................................................................................... 143 70. The Vatican ................................................................................................................ 153 71. The Vatican (continued) ........................................................................................ 160 72. Capitoline Museum .................................................................................................. 165 73. St. Peter's .................................................................................................................... 178 74. Churches of Rome .................................................................................................... 183 75. Palaces of Rome ........................................................................................................ 188 76. Rome beyond the walls .......................................................................................... 195 77. Americans in Europe ............................................................................................... 202 78. A plague of Consuls .................................................................................................. 208 79. The road to Naples ................................................................................................... 213 80. Arrival at Naples ....................................................................................................... 219 81. Vesuvius and Pompeii............................................................................................. 225 82. Royal Museum of Naples ........................................................................................ 236 83. Local color .................................................................................................................. 243 84. Naples, past and present ........................................................................................ 247 85. More from Naples..................................................................................................... 253 86. Destination Florence ............................................................................................... 258 87. Onward to Florence ................................................................................................. 260 88. Arrival at Florence ................................................................................................... 263 89. Florence ...................................................................................................................... 266 90. Arts in Florence ........................................................................................................ 271 91. Florence ...................................................................................................................... 276 92. Florence ...................................................................................................................... 280 93. Tuscany ....................................................................................................................... 284 94. Tuscany ....................................................................................................................... 288 95. Tuscany ....................................................................................................................... 295 96. Turin ............................................................................................................................ 302 SUMMARY OF VOLUME THREE — CLASSIC ITALY .................................................. 307 52. Arrival in Italy Baveno, (Lago Maggiore), September 16, 1835. What a change but a single day’s journey has wrought in everything! What a new world I am in already! New scenes are around me, and a new people, and a new tongue. The Alps are gone, and I am on the plains of Italy. The republican Swiss is away, and the fettered Italian has taken his place. The harsh sounding German no longer grates upon the ear, but the sweet and liquid Italian, murdered as it is by the peasantry here, is yet so soft and so musical, that the people seem to sing rather than talk. Ja, Meinherr, a barbarous ejaculation, fit only for an Indian tongue, is now the Si Signore, with the Signore so trilled out that there is as much of music in the sound as there is of barbarism in the horrid German Ja, pronounced as it is, Yah. There is a pleasure in the changing of the languages of the people about you, for you feel that you are seeing and hearing something new, but how much that pleasure would be increased if the people only wore different dresses, if some robe took the place of the coat, and some strange covering the place of the hat. This finding of people in the same robes all over the world, is not the thing I like. You feel that all men are alike, when it seems as if they ought to be unlike, particularly when they speak different languages, and cannot even understand each other. The Turk is known by his habit, but who can tell French from American, or Italian, or German, by any outward dress? What an empire in the two worlds that Monarch Fashion has, putting upon us all his servile livery, even shaping our hats and our coats alike, and decorating us with his meanest badges. The autocrat of all Russia has not a dominion of tenth the extent, and even the Turks cannot cut off the beard of the Muslim; but fashion puts every "Christian" in similar habiliments, and he is no "Christian," so thinks the world, who shakes off her yoke—a Turk only, an Indian perhaps, or an infidel at best. It is a fact that a man cannot be "Christian," unless he wears pantaloons, or a woman without a gown; and this is the way Christians are known all over the world! What a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. I met some strange Englishmen in the hotel where I stopped at the village of Simplon, whence I wrote you last. A huge carriage-load of English people was emptied upon us as we were at dinner. The gentlemen were gentlemen enough, but the ladies would swear like drunken sailors, which perhaps was their only fault. "My God," "Oh God," and "Good God," would slip out of their mouths in such thick confusion, that even a short speech would be made a long one by means of the oaths, "My God, you have not been on the Rigi," (a famous mountain in Switzerland,) said one. "Oh God, you are going to Milan," exclaimed the other. "God of heaven! will you venture to Rome?" the first again cried out. "God preserve you," she added, "I was going myself, but God knows, I won’t venture into the jaws of the cholera. Oh God, how can you go! Are you mad! Have you no friends to keep you back! They are dying in Italy like sheep. Oh God, what a madman!" The poor women were in hysterics about the cholera, from which they were flying. They had been to Milan on their way to Rome, but, frightened out of their senses, they were thus flying