THE DWELLING OF POUSSIN.

349

by whatever name it may be called, certainly makes part of it, is the Casa Dei, where some people say that Poussin lived for many years. But another informant assured me that Poussin died in a much smaller house, still on the Pincio, and one which looks greatly more likely to have been his dwelling. At no great distance from either are shown the houses of Salvator Rosa and of Claude Lorraine; but, of the three, this last is the only one whose works seem, like those of Titian, to be absolutely tinted by the atmosphere in which he lived. Look out from the Pincio Hill at sunset, and you will find whence it was that Claude borrowed his broad sunshine and his amber skies.

I marvel how it is that the French, who dislike being laughed at more than any nation, I believe, except the Americans, I greatly marvel how they can lay themselves open to the jokes and jestings likely to follow upon their classing and placing Poussin among their native artists. . . . This great master passed forty-two years of his life at Rome, and might quite as well be called Dutch as French, for any claim he has to be classed as belonging to the school of either. . . . And yet perhaps, in after years, England will probably be guilty of the same weakness, and her dictionaries and her catalogues will tell that Gibson was an English sculptor.... though, in truth, they will hardly have any better right to do so than France has to call Poussin French.

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SCHOOLS OF POUSSIN AND GIBSON.

...

The fact is, however, that the absurdity in the latter case arises from the very peculiarly unfrench style of this great historic artist; whereas the same incongruity, as I may almost call it, does not exist in the case of Gibson .... for though I am quite ready to allow that neither Gibson nor any other man could, or at any rate would, have produced such works as he has done, unless they had lived, and looked, and thought, and dreamed, as he has done, amidst the models which surround him here, it is still an inspiration that he might have caught wherever the works of ancient Greece could have been made to become the daily aliment of his eyes and his imagination. .. for Rome has nothing to do with these works, save that she acquired them by a strong hand, and preserves them with a careful one; but the case is different with regard to Poussin. Not all the pictures in the world, not even if an arch-thief as mighty as Napoleon could have been set to work for him, could have made him what he was, had he not lived and laboured among the living models, and the pellucid atmosphere, of Rome. Not, indeed, that Poussin, like Claude, has ever, as far as I remember, attempted to portray the glowing sunset or sunrise of Italy; but nevertheless there is a purity of light in his pictures, which, almost as plainly as the classic elegance of his forms, bespeaks both the school and the school-room in which he studied.

LETTER XXI.

Freedom of Speech among the lower Orders at Rome, and among nearly all Classes elsewhere.— Intellectual Revolution in Pro- Great Necessity for popular Education. Environs of Villa of Mr. Mills and the Villa of the Aqueduct. Statues by Torch-light, seen with Mr. Gibson. - The Laocoon. Canova. The Apollo. The Nile.

gress. Rome.

Head of Jupiter.

The Torso.

The

- Effect of the Lights on the Staircase. Farewell Visit to the Coliseum and its Neighbourhood. — Farewell Contemplation of ancient Rome.

Rome, December, 1841.

HOWEVER closely the subjects of the state of Rome may be watched, they certainly do not appear to live in any great fear respecting what they say, for every peasant, every conductor, every chance traveller you meet, seems ready enough to enter into conversation with very perfect freedom upon any subject, whenever it may be your wish to speak to him; nor is there the least difficulty, I think, in any part of Italy of finding also persons of education who appear perfectly willing to communicate their opinions, let them be of what nature they may. Excepting in the Roman States and at Naples, I heard no complaints any where concerning positive physical evils arising from existing institutions. . . . With a wonderful and most pro

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INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTION.

vidential elasticity, man accommodates himself to the condition in which he is placed; and race after race is born, which continues to drag on existence under circumstances which to others would appear intolerable. But yet I am very perfectly convinced that the war against thought is a very idle struggle; and that however peaceably external affairs may appear to go on, the intellectual revolution of Italy is already much too far advanced to be stopped. . . . and any very violent attempts to do so would only hasten the events that are so greatly dreaded. Fortunately for the peace of the world, however, there appears to be less inclination to do battle against power than against ignorance. In fact, the more any civilised people advance in knowledge, the more they feel the necessity of power, and the more readily they yield to it; but not so, of an enforced subjection to ignorance. . . It is painful to meditate on the state of mind in which the statesmen of southern Italy must, for years past, have been proceeding in their hopeless labours. It were a sin to doubt that many of them are, and have been, actuated by the honourable wish to perform the tasks assigned them well and honestly. . . . But how is this to be done? I heartily sympathise in the horror that pervades the minds of all honest and experienced statesmen at the idea of popular revolution. The experiment has been often made, and in no case have its evils been atoned for by the result; for where its mis

NECESSITY FOR POPULAR EDUCATION.

353

chiefs have been most speedily remedied, it has invariably been by the nearest possible return to the former order of things.... the tyranny of demagogues being UNIFORMLY found to be the most intolerable tyranny of all. Many a good man has felt himself called upon by duty to shut his eyes closely, rather than see how fearfully the rust of defective institutions was eating into the strength and the happiness of his country. . . . and thus it is, that, to avoid one overwhelming evil, a multitude of minor ones are submitted to . . . . yet it is plain to see that this system, if strictly adhered to, must lead at length not to order, but decay.

I have heard more than one patriotic Italian of the south express a wish that the weakness of their country might be turned to strength by the placing an Austrian archduke at the head of a constitutional monarchy. . . . and as I listined to them, I could not but remember the very similar feeling of Dante, when, in the midst of his Ghibiline detestation of Italian tyranny, he defended the power of empire in his well-known treatise "De Monarchia."

The philosophical spirits of Italy are much to be pitied, for they are before their age; and though they may, and must be, very certain that the age will follow them, it needs a very sublime abnegation of self to watch contentedly a process of which the result is probably beyond their day. . . . nevertheless, these men all know, and for the most

VOL. II.

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