14

LAMENTABLE INFLUENCE OF ROME.

every excursive wandering of the imagination, from the littlenesses of daily life to the immensities of moral speculations . . . . when seized upon, held back, and

every thought is

crushed, ere it

and the judg

can meet the light of truth, ment of man to test its value, what can Italian thinkers do, but sit down in moody, melancholy meditation, and be silent? Those are no enemies to the continuance of the venerable forms of the Roman religion among such as are born and nurtured in it, who lament the jealous fears by which its hierarchy are enslaved themselves, and vainly, oh how vainly! seek to enslave others!

This timidity, which encloses them as in a web, and which, when the web is woven lives along every line of it, trembling at every breath that passes by, seems to have little affinity with the firm-set confidence which said, That the gates of hell should not prevail against it!.... The relaxed religious faith, which is the natural and inevitable consequence of the system engendered by this craven fear, is far from being the least evil that attends it; and perhaps the most lamentable, as well as the most remarkable, feature of Italy at the present day, is the contrast between the severity of its religious watchfulness, and the laxity of its religious belief. The legislation which produces, as its surest effect, a close proportion between instruction, and infidelity, cannot be honestly considered by any sane human being as favourable

CONCERT AT THE PALAZZO VECCHIO.

15

to the highest interests of his species. . . . And where is the looker-on, who can deny that such is the case within the states of the church?

It is, perhaps, the enforced silence of Italy on all, or nearly all, the most important themes that exercise the thoughts of man, which renders the present meeting at Florence so deeply interesting. We feel ourselves in the presence of all the hoarded, closely-closeted, intellect of the land; .... it is like being amidst the unread volumes of a living library, the pages of which, if opened, would show goodly store of very precious thought;.... and it is by no blind-tooling, I promise you, that the contents of these volumes may be guessed at.... not not upon the backs indeed, but on the brows, which tell, in characters often bright enough to be read even by those who run, that it is no ordinary crowd with which you mix yourself when waiting upon the Marchese Ridolfi in the Palazzo Ricordi.

The citizens of Florence have contributed their share to the entertainment of their illustrious guests, by giving them a concert in the great room of the Palazzo Vecchio. The Creation of Haydn was extremely well performed upon this occasion, and it is said entirely by amateurs. . . . If this be so, Italy may resume her old place in our musical esteem, as nationally pre-eminent in musical power ... though the too strong absorption of London and Paris has left her operatic corps sadly out of

16

CONCERT AT THE PALAZZO VECCHIO.

proportion to the unprofessional performers to whom we have listened here. The five hundred amateurs who went through the performance I have mentioned certainly left very little to be wished for. The parts of Gabbriello and Eva, were sung by a Signora Balbina Steffanone, who intends, it is said, to become a cantatrice by profession. If this be so, her success can hardly be doubted; as her charming voice made itself heard, and felt, too, without any great apparent effort, in a room a hundred and sixty feet long, sixty wide, and high, though with a flat roof, considerably beyond proportion. . . . The choruses were much less full, and greatly inferior in effect, to those of Exeter Hall. .... But where shall we find any that are not so?

Though I certainly long to be at Venice, I see with regret the last days of our stay in this noble city wearing fast away; but we fail not to put every moment to profit. We have seen several private collections of pictures omitted at our last visit, and some of them with great pleasure, though I do heartily wish there were not so many acres of painted canvass in Florence!.... It is very nearly, nay, I believe it is quite, impossible to enter a room where pictures are not; and the admiration, the almost reverence, which the supreme excellence of some of the chef-d'œuvres which we have seen here inspires, puts one in no good humour to tolerate what is bad, or only moderately good; and it is impossible to move about much from house to house

THE MEDICEAN AND PITTI PALACES.

17

in Florence without encountering thousands of such.

I have at last, by the aid of some kind friends possessing the " open sesame" secret, got admission to the private passage leading from the Medicean gallery to the Palazzo Pitti. As an architectural performance I should suppose this contrivance had little to boast of except its difficulty, which must certainly have been very considerable; for considering the great distance, there is wonderfully little going up or down stairs, no darkness, no closeness, nor any want of space in any way....We entered the passage from the Medicean gallery, by a door on the west side, near the little cabinet of the conservadore, and proceeded exactly by the line we had traced from without, across the bridge, through the church, and by sundry streets, till we reached the foot of a narrow staircase, on mounting which our conductor pushed open a door that fastened by a spring, and we found ourselves close upon a statue that obligingly moved out of the way to let us pass; and then we perceived that we were in a handsome room surrounded by statues like unto that which had befriended us, and which formed the last of a new suite of rooms, looking towards the gardens, which have been but recently completed.... and from thence we soon reached the last of the large rooms containing the pictures. Here we paused to look about us once more, with the very dis

VOL. II.

с

18

CONCLUSION OF THE CONGRESS.

agreeable consciousness that it was for the last time!.... What very hateful words these are!

We have also been, I suppose for the last time, to the Pergola;.... but here the words are less disagreeable. By the way, when an opera is bad, or badly performed, what a pretty consolation the ballet is! The want of this at Florence is severely felt sometimes.

However, I staid longer on this occasion than the last time I visited it.... which was on the fête of San Giovanni, when it was most splendidly illuminated from floor to roof; and the theatre itself, with the brilliant scenery and dresses, was altogether as grand a spectacle as the eye could desire to look upon; but the prima donna is a Frenchwoman, neither very young nor very pretty, and with a criarde voice that I seem to feel in my ears still.... and the illumination being almost as oppressive as her voice, I made a very early escape from the splendour.

*

The Grand Duke has ended the congress by inviting the members of it to a most magnificent banquet at the Poggio Imperiale. All speak loudly of the splendour of the entertainment in every way. I am afraid to tell you how many carriages stood ready at the proper time to convey the guests to the villa, the number named to me seemed so enormous. At the final meeting, which I did not attempt to attend from a just fear of the enormous crowd which was