CHAPTER XXII.

RETURN TO ENGLAND.

Traveling by vettura.-The driver.-The Apennines.-Le Maschere. -Covigliaio.-Pietra Mala.-Poggioli.-Story of the Ants.-Skepticism generated in postillions by traveling.-Bologna.-Modena.— Contrasted character of their inhabitants.--Parma.-Piacenza. -Asti and Alfieri.-The Po and the Alps.-Poirino.-Prudent friars. Turin.-French and Italian dancers.-Sant-Ambrogio.Ancient and Modern Italy.-Passage of the Alps.-Savoy.-Lanslebourg.-Chambéry and Rousseau.-Lyons and Auxerre.-Statue of Louis the Fourteenth.-Mont Blanc.-Paris.-Place of the guillotine.-Book-stalls.-French people.-French, Italian, and English women.-Arrival in England.

ON our return from Italy to England, we traveled not by post, but by vettura; that is to say, by easy stages of thirty or forty miles a day, in a traveling carriage; the box of which is turned into a chaise, with a calash over it. It is drawn by three horses, occasionally assisted by mules. We paid about eighty-two guineas English, for which some ten of us (counting as six, because of the children) were to be taken to Calais; to have a breakfast and dinner every day on the road; to be provided with five beds at night, each containing two persons; and to rest four days during the journey, without farther expense, in whatever places and portions of time we thought fit. Our breakfast was to consist of coffee, bread, fruit, milk, and eggs (plenty of each), and our dinner of the four indispensable Italian dishes, something roast, something boiled, something fried, and what they call umido, which is a hash, or something of that sort; together with vegetables, wine, and fruit. Care, however, must be taken in these bargains, that the vetturino does not crib from the allowance by degrees, otherwise the dishes grow fewer and smaller; meat disappears on a religious principle, it being magro day, on which

nothing is to be had;" and the vegetables adhering to their friend the meat in his adversity, disappear likewise. The reason of this is, that the vetturino has two conflicting interests within him. It is his interest to please you in hope of other custom; and it is his interest to make the most of the sum of money which his master allows him for expenses. Withstand, however, any change at first, and good behavior may be reckoned upon. We had as pleasant a little Tuscan to drive us as I ever met with. He began very handsomely: but finding us willing to make the best of any little deficiency, he could not resist the temptation of giving up the remoter interest for the nearer one. We found our profusion diminish accordingly; and at Turin, after cunningly asking us, whether we cared to have an inn not of the very highest description, he brought us to one of which it could only be said that it was not of the very lowest. The landlord showed us into sordid rooms on a second story. I found it necessary to be base and make a noise; upon which little Gigi looked frightened, and the landlord became slavish, and bowed us into his best apartments. We had no more of the same treatment.

Our rogue of a driver had an excellent temper, and was as honest a rogue, I will undertake to say, as ever puzzled a formalist. He made us laugh with his resemblance to Lamb, whose countenance, a little jovialized, he engrafted upon an active little body and pair of legs, walking about in his jack-boots as if they were pumps. But a man must have some great object in life, to carry him so many times over the Alps and this, of necessity, is money. We could have dispensed easily enough with some of the fried and roasted; but to do this would have been to subject ourselves to other diminutions. Our bargain was reckoned a good Gigi's master said (believe him who will) that he could not have afforded it, had he not been sure, at that time of the year, that somebody would take his coach back again; such is the multitude of persons that come to winter in Italy.

one.

We were told to look for a barren road from Florence to Bologna, but were agreeably disappointed. The vines,

K*

indeed, and the olives disappeared; but this was a relief to us. Instead of these, and the comparatively petty ascents about Florence, we had proper swelling Apennines, valley and mountain, with fine sloping meadows of green interspersed with wood.

We stopped to refresh ourselves at noon at an inn called Le Maschere, where there was an elegant prospect, a mixture of nature with garden ground; and we slept at Covigliaio, where three tall, buxom damsels waited upon us, who romped during supper with the men-servants. One of them had a better tone in speaking than the others, upon the strength of which she stepped about with a jaunty air in a hat and feathers, and "did the amiable." A Greek came in with a long beard, which he poked into all the rooms by way of investigation; as he could speak no language but his I asked one of the girls why she looked so frightened; which she shrugged her shoulders and said, "Oh Dio!" as if Bluebeard had come to put her in his seraglio.

own.

upon

Our vile inn knocked us up; and we were half-starved. Little Gigi, on being remonstrated with, said that he was not aware till that moment of its being part of his duty, by the agreement, to pay expenses during our days of stopping. He had not looked into the agreement till then! The rogue! So we lectured him, and forgave him for his good temper; and he was to be very honest and expensive for the rest of the journey.

Next morning we set off at five o'clock, and passed a volcanic part of the Apennines, where a flame issues from the ground. We thought we saw it. The place is called Pietra Mala (Evil Rock). Here we enter upon the Pope's territories; as if his Holiness was to be approached by an infernal door.

We refreshed at Poggioli, in sight of a church upon a hill, called the Monte dei Formicoli (Ant-Hill). Sitting outside the inn-door on a stone, while the postillion sat on another, he told us of an opinion which prevailed among travelers respecting this place. They reported, that on a certain day in the year, all the ants in the neighborhood come to church in the middle of the service, and die during

SKEPTICISM OF POSTILLIONS.

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the celebration of the mass. After giving me this information, I observed him glancing at me for some time with a very serious face, after which he said abruptly, "Do you believe this report, signore ?" I told him, that I was loth to differ with what he or any one else might think it proper to believe but if he put the question to me as one to be sincerely answered,

Well, then, I do not believe it.”

"No more," said little Gigi, "do I."

I subsequently found my postillion very skeptical on some highly Catholic points, and he accounted for it like a philosopher. Seeing that he made no sign of reverence in passing the images of the Virgin and Child, I asked him the

reason.

Sir," said he, "I have traveled."

Those were literally his words. (Ho viaggiato, signore.) He manifested, however, no disrespect for opinions on which most believers are agreed; though whenever his horses vexed him, he poured forth a series of the most blasphemous execrations which I ever heard. Indeed, I had never heard any at all resembling them; though I was told they were not uncommon with persons unquestionably devout. He abused the divine presence in the sacrament. He execrated the body and but I must not repeat what he said, for fear of shocking the reader and myself. Nevertheless, I believe he did it all in positive innocence and want of thought, repeating the words as mere words which he heard from others all his life, and to which he attached none of the ideas which they expressed. When a person d—ns another in English, he has no real notion of what he condemns him to; and I believe our postillion had as little when he devoted the objects of his worship to malediction. He was very kind to the children, and took leave of us at the end of our journey in tears.

The same evening we got to Bologna, where we finished for the present with mountains. The best streets in Bologna are furnished with arcades, very sensible things, which we are surprised to miss in any city in a hot country.

They

are to be found, more or less, as you travel northward. The houses were all kept in good looking order, owing, I believe, to a passion which the Bolognese have for a gorgeous anniversary, against which every thing, animate and inanimate, puts on its best. I could not learn what it was. Besides tapestry and flowers, they bring out their pictures to hang in front of the houses. point the eye of the traveler. side the houses gets worn, and, dows, gives them a squalid and the name is always something. of a city, it would still be a fine sound and a sentiment; a thing recorded in art, in poetry, in stories of all sorts.

Many cities in Italy disapThe stucco and plaster outtogether with the open windeserted appearance. But If Bologna were nothing

We passed next day over a flat country, and dined at Modena, which is neither so good-looking a city, nor so well sounding a recollection as Bologna; but it is still Modena, the native place of Tassoni. I went to the cathedral to get sight of the Bucket (La Secchia) which is hung up there, but found the doors shut, and a very ugly pile of building. The lions before the doors looked as if some giant's children had made them in sport; wretchedly sculptured, and gaping as if in agony at their bad legs. It was a disappointment to me not to see the Bucket. The poem called the Rape of the Bucket (La Secchia Rapita), next to Metastasio's address to Venus, is my oldest Italian acquaintance; and I reckoned upon saying to the subject of it, "Ah, ha! There you are!" Pope imitated the title of this poem in his Rape of the Lock; and Dryden confessed to a young critic, that he himself knew the poem, and had made use of it. The bucket was a trophy taken from the Modenese by their rivals of Bologna, during one of the petty Italian wars.

There is something provoking, and yet something fine too, in flitting in this manner from city to city. You are vexed at not being able to stop and see pictures, &c.; but you have a sort of royal taste of great pleasures in passing. The best thing one can do to get at the interior of any thing in this hurry, is to watch the countenances of the people, I thought that the aspects of the Bolognese and Modenese people singularly answered to their character in books.