The Sun.
London, England, 1848-04-21 00:00:00

• _
ITALY TWENTY YEARS SINCE.

The last journey I took from Rome here was de-
layed till midnight by my kind friend proceed-
in g from Genoa to Naples as encoye. He wished me
to take dispatches (containing the Quarterly Review
and other printed matter); the consequence was that
we felt asleep on the Pees ne marsh at sunrise. My
companion hes had an intermittent ter several weeks,
which is slowly giving way to bark and change of
air; I was violently sick tor two hours and thought
myself poisoned, but was pretty well next day : the
surgeon attributed both to the pestilential air. In
this miserable country they die at 45, and are
brought hither for crimes ; I had been told of their
furious driving, and the road a straight line across
a flat. The brigand country is a little further on
towards Naples, and hardly beyond the cattiva aria
(malaria is not Italian) which is said to go as far as
Fondi. The mountains, trackless and inaccessible, of
cold grey limestone with scattered bushes, supply
them a retreat : these districts contain a picturesque
and ferocious people whose minds seem poisoned by
the bad air which gives a "desperate turn to the cha-
racter. Large Austrian picquets are barracked
every quarter mile front Terracina to Mole di Gaita ;
yet still they contrive to have travellers out, faccia a
terra, sack all and be off before an alarm—the
quickest people in the world against the slowest.
The robbers' names are known, and marked in the
public returns as faurusciti. A whole village was
burned, the women fed at public expense, and visited
by English ladies at Rome : another town, Itri ought
to be burned. I went to Rome with a Mr. A., re
turned with a Mr. 8., and live now with a Mr. C.,
bow interesting ! the carriage I would much rather
Carry
if I could, and when Milleret is fine, I some-
times offer him frankly to change places ; could I
say More ? I never once caught cold at Naples,,;
01l are mistaken about " Lapland and Norway ;
Z
I humbly think that you should merely avoid the
smallest tendency to aguish or rheumatic air. Naples
Is as bracing as Norway.
When the low Neapolitans found the reign of
Murat suddenly called, l'occupazione militaire, they
fancied it must be the wife of Murat. L'occupazione
rtilitaire ! La moglier di Murat? So costituzione
became costipazione. Murat's reign is sometimes
Failed the decennio. In this domain of music, stand•
ing on a balcony, and looking at the King's solemn
procession, to an air not national (they have none),
figured to myself the enthusiasm if they had a
national song; Datemi un se, e poi tutto farb. Three
general officers and hundre.ls of state prisoners are in
the castle of Sant' Elmo which scowls over the town.,
The temporary hopes from the new King are sub-
sided below zero ; a thunder storm happens, he falls
on his knees before his gods, imagining the storm to
be the wrath of heaven for not exterminating the Car-
-I)"arit and vows on the next occasion not to offend
10 again. His portraits have the signs of benevolence
end veneration enormously marked on his head, and
this is what every one says of his character.
The San Carlo was illuminated on sth March, 1825 ;
the new King, having in the morning gone in solemn
Procession to the cathedral, appeared in the state box.
The morning procession was very gothic : gilded and
glazed coaches, coachmen in wigs, eight horses. The
Carrozza di rispetto, an empty state coach, went first.
The royal children followed, a beautiful family, the
eldest daughter a beautiful girl (Christina). There
was not a little melancholy in the sight of these chil-
dren; I could have cried over them. Since the world
began, tragedies have been acted in Kings houses ;
" within the hollow circle of a crown Death holds his
court, and there the antic sits and grins." Surrounded
are these little fat fair things by dangers to which
15,000 Austrian mercenary bayonets, on double pay
and double officered, are barely a counterpoise. They
know not their fate, but, then their consciousness is
melancholy. How timely the death of the Princess
Charlotte !
Woe unto us, not her, for she sleeps well
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
of hollow counsel, the false oracle
Which from the birth of monarchy bath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung
Nations have arm'd in madness, the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late :
These might have been her destiny, but no,
Our hearts refute it; and so young so fair,
Good without effort, great without foe-
-How many ties did that stern moment tear!
]From thy sire's to his meanest subject's breast
It-link'd the electric chain M that despair
Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest
The laud which loved thee so that none could love the
. best.
In the evening, the shock-headed boy fell fast
asleep with cordons bleus standing behind him, and
the heir-apparent, in spite of his erect posture and
assumed Majesty, began to play very intently with
his play-bill. The Prince of Lucca was in the royal
side boxes. After the cantata, composed for the
occasion, before the Opera, he came to pay his re-
spects to the King, went back to his own box, sat
down in the back part of it and seemed to perspire
freely. Nearly half the seats in the pit are reserved
for the military ; these red-coats acted as claqueurs.
Here, as in the morning, no man cried God bless
him, and yet this man contrives to be thought a
Whig, and has always behaved well. The Queen
has a bad character as far as common fame goes.
The foreign courts bear an immense proportion to
their respective cities, instead of being as with us a
corner, and perhaps not the most brilliant corner,
- of society,—for what proportion did Blomfield,
Blomberg, &c. bear to London. But at Naples, an
immense city, the persons who bear the royal livery
Meet you at every step, and the inhabitants seems to
have nothing else to do but to pull off hats, and the
soldiers to beat drums and present arms as the out-
:rider approaches. Sir G. B. gave up walking the
streets of Genoa, from the oppressiveness of the royal
carriages (there, indeed, nothing but the court is to
be seen or heard of), and yet this was ungrateful,
for his little boy was the only person that the King
ever was seen to take notice of, and always took his
glass to look at him. At Naples, the royal family
take notice of those who touch their hats : not so at
Turin mad. Genoa. When the royal carriages come
in, womeie throw memorials into them.
I have ni etle an expedition to Paestum, forgive me
when I tell vou any thing twice : great part of the
road is beaufil'u.l, the ruins are the remains (the most
Perfect I believe existing) of three Doric temples,
the principles oir the architecture more simple than
that of the Athei Alan temples, which is attributed net
to antiquity but 11,1-obscurity. 'But for the beauty
of the road, it wie as•ld not in my opinion be worth a
person's while, unk se he were a big-wig in architec-
ture, to go so far, more than fifty miles, to see the
Place: models are made, of cork and also of the
atone itself, which giv c a charming idea of the ruins.
The place is flat and b itrcish, mountains not distant,
sea visible.
Italy
remains of this w nen-out pen shall prose about
'al% Italy is bounded to the north by the Alps, in
11.1ge.neral way : these ma y be divided for convenience
O the mind, into; 1. The High Alps of Savoy Alps,
latch include M. Blanc., M. Rosa, &c. 2. The
Cwlese Oberland (JunO•au, Finster-Aarhorn, &c.).
the een these is the broad valley of the Rhone, at
, top of which is the passage of the Simplon, so
.!,alled from a neighbouring peak. 3. The Mari-
, ''
rrte Alps, which come dawn towards France. Nice
(pizza) is in Piedmont close to the frontier. 4. More
. to the east are the Rhaetian Alps, which include the
canton of the Griec's, and I believe, the Tyrol.
Coming friam Milan to . Turin the Alps seemed
close to us on the right: Turin stands in the
corner, the mountains take a sharp turn to the left
and become .Apennines no one knows where. In
the Alpine vetileys of Piedmont the first Protest-
ants, of whoett the world was not worthy, were
• hunted like wild beasts. Milan and Turin may be
said -to be betuven Alps and Apennines; Parma,
Rask•hna, Modem*, Ancona, East of Apennines ;
Florence' Rome, Maples, West. The barbarized dis-
tricts of Calabria art! all Apennine. These mom'-
, tains or their projecting ridges are always close to
7011 .every view eneidri by them so that the horizon
lsal way diversified. To the same almost solely I
attribute the bad air. There is scarcely any wind
except, in some distriots, mountain-squalls and (for
instance Naples) sea-br eases. The mal-aria, as we
acall it, increased on the • Romans with their corrup-
tions, as appears from 'their authors, and many
towns „yeti:de
and
civilised
feel ulated the moderns mo ener-
vated
This- last more acately the samre
e cause.
my own -theory, and the two causes to-
gether satisfy meThe ancient Ci salpine Gaul came
down as far as Ancona
and 'the llubicon, this was
divided into Subalpina (Piedmont,
Claim-Jana, and TraGunsi !lead acni as (div Genoa, &c.), and
ided by the Padus
or Po). $o far
was Etruria, Latium, Umableina. The remainder
r
Rome the Queen. Gallia cisloal;Pm .Calabria, &c. and
Togata, I suppose because they
was also called
freedom of the city, at all eventsylad mo stly the
customs, &c. Etruria was powerful long before Rooman colonies,
which rose on its ruins. It cameme,
Cestelilana. Italian means Tscan u as far as Civita
as to lan
Dante,' Galileo, Petrarch, Tasso, Macc guage
h.
Boccaccio were Tuscans. I mentioned tiltelevel; and
i
moun-
tains as being a constant yet amusing comparison a traveller. As to the mal-aria, the north sieleof
mountain is sheltered from the north wind nearly as
much as tl to south, there being no thorough dranght
of air : th us sheep are observed to find shelter- to
Windwardof walls among the eddies of air. A 4
~'"?roe and.. Turin, as also in the valley of the Rhone,
l the wind " blows over." Dining with the Eng-
lish Minister at Turin, down tell two chimney
boards ." The Tramontana' said he, and going
norne.
at might the clatter of window shutters, none
being fa Aened, was universal. Rome stood in an
I,7anhithe nitre of seven hills, six still discernable,
er._. Jed, in a semicircle whose chord is the Ty ber:
c„,`Pitot liear the centre : other hills, Vatican, Jani-
b"uulk beyond the Tyber. Population :—Naples