Chapter V: Part 5

At last, however, François I. came. By his time, the character of the French monarchy--the character of the French nation--had undergone a complete and lasting change. Louis Onze had done his cruel work both wisely and well. The feudal spirit was half broken; the task of Richelieu was more than half begun. Unification and absolutism were the order of the day all over Europe. Artillery had destroyed the power of the great nobles in their massive castles. The introduction of gunpowder, it has been well said, ruined feudalism. Fortresses which had been impregnable against the attacks of the Middle Ages, crumbled to pieces before one volley of the royal cannon. Throughout Europe, the crown became everywhere irresistible. As a natural result of this great social revolution, a Renaissance in architecture became inevitable in the west, the kings and rulers of France and England exchanged the gloomy darkness of the mediæval stronghold for the light and air and spaciousness of the Italian mansion. The merchant republics of Italy were already familiar with great princely palaces like the Pitti, and the Strozzi, or the magnificent mansions which line the long curve of the Grand Canal. Peace under the strong hand of the royal despot, were he Valois or Tudor, made the imitation of these great houses possible in the north and west. Threatening walls and serried battlements gave way as if by magic to the pomp and grace of the Italianate mansion. Knowle and Longleat, Burleigh and Hatfield, Hardwick and Audley End, are familiar instances in England of the newer style. The high roofed gables, the long lines of wide windows, the jutting oriels that look down on the terraced Italian gardens, the vases and fountains, the formal walks and parterres, all mark the arrival of a new epoch. The mediæval castle was in essence a fortress adapted mainly for defence; the Italian mansion is in essence a residence, adapted mainly for the display of magnificence and wealth.

In France, this great revolution goes directly back to the influence of the Medici. François Premier began the Louvre and began Fontainebleau. With Louis XIII., the son of a Medici mother, both were practically complete. The long succession of high Mansard roofs and connecting galleries marks the very spirit and ideal of the French Renaissance--its splendour, its grandeur, its vastness of aim, its want of picturesque feeling, its love of the magnificent, its contempt of the simple, the natural, the merely beautiful. Imposing Fontainebleau extorts one’s admiration, it never attracts one’s love.

The nucleus of the existing building thus dates back practically to the gay days of François Premier. It was he who rebuilt the chapel of Saint Saturnin, and erected that magnificent pile of the Porte Dorée, whose lavish display of glass in its broad-bayed windows looks like a modern protest against the loopholes and embrasures of the Middle Ages. It was he, too, who began the great Galerie des Fêtes, afterwards completed by Henri II., whose name it now bears, as well as the Galerie d’Ulysse, pulled down at a later date by Louis XV., to make room for the too numerous ladies of his Sybaritic court. It is to François equally that we owe the Cour Ovale, and the splendid Porte Dauphine or Baptistery, which serves as its gateway. The initial _F_, so familiar to all of us on the exquisite façade of the oldest portion of the Louvre, reappears in many places on the gallery of the Cour de la Fontaine. The only part of the gardens, recalling the Boboli or the villas of Florence, which can with certainty be ascribed to this earliest date, is that known as the Orangerie and the Parterre du Tibre. But the grotto of what is now the Jardin Anglais was built by François as a Salle de Bain for his favourite, the Duchesse d’Étampes. Nothing now remains of that voluptuous retreat except the satyrs of the doorway and some torsos of rough sandstone worn out of all semblance of human limbs and muscles, and relegated to a place in the existing stables.

As yet, however, the artistic impulse came entirely from Italy. Serlio, the architect, superintended the design; painters and sculptors from beyond the Alps contributed the decorations. French art in those days was still feeble and nascent. Florence sent Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto to the new palace at Fontainebleau; the rising school of Primaticcio and Niccolo dell’ Abbate, whose artistic existence almost sums itself up in the work they performed here. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the pupils of Giulio Romano produced the profoundest effects upon the French Renaissance, and influenced every work of art of the entire period from the gallery of François Premier to the Rubens’s in the Louvre.

The F. and the Salamander of the founder of the palace are to be found abundantly on many portions of his magnificent erection. But the finest hall of all, the Salle des Fêtes, bears now the name of Galerie de Henri II., though built by François, because Henri decorated it in the garish taste of the time to meet the wishes of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. This hall still remains the glory of Fontainebleau. Ninety feet long by thirty broad, and profusely decorated, it speaks in every part the taste of that gay and fantastic epoch. Ten colossal round arches form the bays of the windows; five give upon the parterre, and five on the Cour Ovale. The ornate ceiling is divided into octagonal panels, richly wrought in architrave, frieze, and cornice, and bearing in relief the intertwined initials of Henri himself and of the frail Diane. Primaticcio and Niccolo supplied the frescoes; nameless Italian artists moulded the stucco fretwork. The parquetry of the floor vies with the roof in magnificence. This gorgeous apartment may well recall the rooms of the gods in the Pitti Palace, and is only surpassed in elaborate over-ornamentation and profuseness of handicraft by the gaudy Galerie d’Apollon in the Louvre.

When Henri II. died, mortally wounded in a tournament in the Palace Courts, many things fell with him--tournaments themselves amongst others, and mediævalism in France, and Diane de Poitiers. Catherine de’ Medici sent the favourite packing to her Château d’Anet, and bore rule herself in her stead in the half completed palace. The new king, François II., was a true son of Fontainebleau. Here he was born in 1543, and here, a boy of seventeen, he married Mary Stuart, whom he left a girl-widow so shortly after, to exchange the luxurious joys of Fontainebleau for the cramped closets of Holyrood and the austerities of John Knox and his brother Calvinists. Under Charles IX., the work still went forward as before, and Primaticcio in his old age painted the frescoes of the Galerie d’Ulysse, afterwards ruthlessly destroyed under Louis XV.

Beyond being born in the palace, Henri III. contributed as little to the history of Fontainebleau as to that of his dominions generally. But Henri IV. left no small mark of his masterful hand on the great growing pile whose overgrown area he well-nigh doubled. The Cour des Offices, the Cour des Princes, the Galerie de Diane, the balustrades in the Fountain Court, the decorations in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, the park with its grand canal and its ornamental waters, all date from the days of the greatest of the Bourbons. But the French Renaissance was not at its zenith. Married though he was to an Italian princess, Henri entrusted his work for the most part to native workmen. Paul Bril and Ambroise Dubois painted and decorated the greater part of the new halls; the heads of Mercury, in the courtyard which still bears the name of Henri Quatre are from the chisel of a later French sculptor, Gilles Guérin; while the simple but noble doorway which opens upon the Place d’Armes is the work of a local architect, François Jamin of Avon.

It was at Fontainebleau that Marie de’ Medici gave birth to Louis XIII., who was baptized with his sisters under the quaint and ornate cupola of the Porte Dauphine, known ever since from that cause by the name of the Baptistery. To this one of its sons the palace owes its latest main additions. He it was who built the handsome horseshoe staircase in the Cour des Adieux, the masterpiece of Lemercier. With that addition, the history of Fontainebleau practically ends. Events of importance in the annals of France took place there later; but they are not events in the annals of Fontainebleau. The great pile as we know it was then really complete; it remains to us a vast museum of Renaissance art and Renaissance feeling. Subsequent ages have destroyed, or restored, or renovated, or tampered with it, but they have not added to it, and the reason is clear. Louis Quatorze created Versailles; and the rise of Versailles was the downfall of Fontainebleau.

Some few landmarks of its subsequent vicissitudes, however, are well known to most of us. Louis Quatorze gilded it up, of course--what did not Louis gild? Le Notre laid out the gardens--where did not Le Notre spread his devastating gravel? Henrietta Maria of England took refuge here among her own people when Charles had lost his head; Christina of Sweden had made use of its hospitality as a capital opportunity to murder Monaldeschi. Few buildings, indeed, have seen so many historic events; for here Louis Quatorze signed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes which deprived France at one blow of a million of citizens; here Condé died; here James II. consoled himself with the consolations of a heavenly crown for the loss of an earthly one; and here Peter of Muscovy got royally drunk after his wont with all his suite, and indulged in Russian horse-play in the ponds and gardens. Under Louis Quinze, of funest memory, the decadence began; but still, as of old, princes feasted and drank, married and were given in marriage, under the high roofs of the palace. The king himself was united here to Maria Leczinska. But the earthquake was at hand, for Voltaire came to stay, and Jean Jacques Rousseau heard the court applaud his _Devin du Village_. Louis Seize, good honest man, came often to hunt, but the Revolution came too and gutted the Palace. During Napoleon’s wars, it served as a barrack for prisoners. When Monarchy revived, Napoleon spent ten millions of francs in restoring and refurnishing it. Later on he used it as a prison for his spiritual father, Pius the Seventh; here he divorced Josephine, and here he lived with Marie Louise of Austria. Here too he signed his famous abdication, and reviewed a year later, in the self-same court, the grenadiers of the Hundred Days who bore him back to the Tuileries. There its memories end. What need to speak of lesser things that have happened since, and obscure the recollection of those great days in its history?

THE RICCARDI PALACE

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

The Riccardi Palace was built by Cosmo the Elder, whom his country turned out twice as a beginning and ended by calling him its father.

Cosmo arrived at one of those happy epochs at which everything in a nation tends to expand at once, and a man of genius has every facility for being great. In fact, the brilliant era of the republic had arrived with him: the arts were making their appearance on every side. Brunelleschi was building his churches, Donatello was carving his statues and Orcagna his porticos, Masaccio was covering the walls with his frescoes, and finally public prosperity, keeping pace with the progress of the arts, rendered Tuscany, situated between Lombardy, the States of the Church and the Venetian Republic, not only the most powerful but also the happiest in Italy.

Cosmo was born to immense wealth which he had almost doubled, and without being anything more than a citizen he had acquired a strange influence. Being outside the government, he made no attacks upon it, but neither did he flatter it. If the government followed the right path it was sure of his praise; if it departed from the right way it did not escape his blame; and the praise or blame of Cosmo the Elder was of supreme importance, for his weight, his wealth and his clients gave to Cosmo the rank of a public man. He was not yet the head of the government, but he was already more than that;--he was its censor.

Thus we can understand what a tempest must be secretly brewing for such a man. Cosmo heard it muttering and saw it coming; but, entirely occupied with the vast works that concealed his great projects, he did not even turn his head towards the rising storm, but finished the chapel of St. Lorenzo, built the church of the Dominican convent of St. Mark, erected the monastery of S. Frediano, and, finally, laid the foundations of the beautiful Palace of the Via Larga, now called the Riccardi Palace. Only, when his enemies threatened him too openly, since the time for struggle had not yet arrived for him, he left Florence and went to Bugallo, the cradle of his race, to build the convents of Bosco and St. Francis; returned under the pretext of having a look at his novitiate chapel of the Fathers of the Holy Cross and of the Camandule Convent of the Angels; then again departed to press forward the work on his villas of Careggi, Caffaggio, Fiesole and Tribbio; and founded a hospital for poor pilgrims at Jerusalem. This being done, he returned to see in what condition the affairs of the republic were, and to look after his palace of the Via Larga.

And all these immense buildings arose from the ground at once, occupying a whole world of labourers, workmen and architects; and five million crowns were spent upon them without the luxurious citizen’s appearing in the slightest degree impoverished by this constant and royal expenditure.

This was because Cosmo was, in fact, wealthier than many of the kings of the day, his father Giovanni had possessed nearly four millions in cash and eight or ten in paper, and by banking operations he had more than quintupled that sum. In various parts of Europe, he had sixteen active banking-houses either in his own name or in those of his agents. In Florence, everybody was in his debt, for his purse was open to all, and this generosity was in some people’s eyes so clearly the result of calculation that it was asserted that it was his custom to advise war so as to force the ruined citizens to have recourse to him.

But it was a protracted struggle: Cosmo, driven from Florence, left as a prescribed man and returned a triumpher. Thenceforward Cosmo adopted that policy that his grandson Lorenzo followed afterwards: he devoted himself to his commerce, his exchanges and his monuments, leaving his vengeance to the care of his partisans who were then in power. The proscriptions were so long and the executions so numerous that one of his most intimate and faithful friends thought he ought to go and tell him that he was depopulating the city. Cosmo raised his eyes from an exchange calculation on which he was engaged, laid his hand on the shoulder of the messenger of mercy, gazed at him fixedly and said with an imperceptible smile: “I would rather depopulate than lose it.” And then the inflexible arithmetician returned to his work.

Thus he grew old; rich and honoured, but struck by the hand of God within his own family. By his wife he had had several children, only one of whom survived him. Therefore, broken down and impotent, when he had himself carried through the vast halls of his immense palace to inspect the sculptures, gilding, and frescoes, he sadly shook his head and said: “Alas! alas! this is a very large house for such a small family!”

In fact, he left, as sole heir to his name, his possessions, and his power, Pietro de’Medici, who, coming between Cosmo the Father of his Country and Lorenzo the Magnificent, obtained as his only surname that of Pietro the Gouty.

The refuge of the Greek savants driven from Constantinople, the cradle of the renaissance of the arts during the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Century, and now the seat of the meetings of the Della Crusca Academy, the Riccardi Palace was successively occupied by Pietro the Gouty and by Lorenzo the Magnificent who retired thither after the Pazzi conspiracy as his grandfather had done after his exile. Lorenzo bequeathed the palace with his immense collection of precious stones, antique cameos, splendid armour and original manuscripts to his son Pietro who deserved the title not of Pietro the Gouty, but Pietro the Mad.

It was the latter who opened the gates of Florence to Charles VIII. and delivered to him the keys of Sarzane, Pietra-Santa, Pisa, Libra-Fatta, and Livorno, and who undertook to make the Republic pay him as a subsidy the sum of two hundred thousand florins.

Besides this, in his palace of Via Larga he offered a hospitality that the King of France was quite disposed to take even if it had not been offered. In fact, as everybody knows, Charles VIII. entered Florence as a conqueror and not as an ally, mounted on his battle-horse, with lance in rest and visor lowered: thus he traversed the whole city from the San Friano gate to Pietro’s palace, the latter and his followers having been driven from the city by the Florentine lords the day before.

The Riccardi Palace was the scene of the discussion of the treaty concluded by Charles VIII. and Pietro in the name of the republic,--a treaty that the republic was unwilling to recognize. Matters went to extremes and the parties were on the verge of taking up arms, for the deputies having been introduced into this great hall in the presence of Charles VIII. who received them seated and without removing his hat, the royal secretary, standing beside the throne, began to read the conditions of this treaty article by article, and as each new article created fresh discussion, Charles VIII. impatiently exclaimed: “It shall be so, however, or I will have my trumpets sounded!” “Very well,” replied Pietro Capponi, the Secretary of the Republic, snatching the parchment from the hands of the reader and tearing it to pieces, “very well, Sire, have your trumpets sounded and we will have our bells rung!”

That rejoinder saved Florence. The King of France believed that the Republic was as powerful as she was proud. Pietro Capponi had already dashed out of the room: Charles had him called back and then presented other conditions that were accepted.

Eleven days later, the King left Florence for Naples, letting his soldiers devastate treasures, galleries, collections and libraries.

The Riccardi Palace remained empty for eighteen years, while the exile of the Medicis lasted; at length, at the end of that period, they returned, brought back by the Spaniards, and notwithstanding this powerful aid, they reentered, said the capitulation, not as princes, but as simple citizens.

But at length the gigantic trunk had put forth such mighty branches that its sap began to dry up and the tree gradually to wither. In fact, when Lorenzo II. was dead and laid in his tomb that was sculptured by Michelangelo, only three bastards remained of all the race of Cosmo the Elder: Hippolyte, bastard of Julian II., a cardinal; Julio, bastard of Julio the Elder who had been assassinated by the Pazzi, who became Pope under the name of Clement VII.; and finally Alexander, Duke of Tuscany, bastard of Julian II., or Clement VII., it is not clear which. As they stayed all once for an instant in Florence, lodging on the same square, it received the mocking name of the Square of the Three Mules.

To the same degree that the Medicis of the elder branch had at first been held in honour, so it had become execrated and fallen into contempt at this period. Therefore the Florentines only awaited an opportunity to drive Alexander and Hippolyte out of Florence; but their uncle Clement VII. on the pontifical throne afforded them too potent a support for the last remnants of the republican party to dare to undertake anything against them.

The sack of Rome by the soldiers of the Constable of Bourbon, and the imprisonment of the Pope in the Castle of St. Angelo afforded the Florentines the opportunity they awaited. They immediately seized it, and the Medicis went into exile for the third time. Clement VII. who was a man of much resource, extricated himself from the affair by selling seven cardinals’ hats, with the proceeds of which he paid part of his ransom, and by pledging five more as guarantee for the remainder. Then, as on account of this guarantee he was allowed a little more liberty, he took advantage of it to escape from Rome disguised as a valet, and gained Orvieto. The Florentines were therefore quite tranquil as to the future on seeing Charles the Fifth a conqueror and the Pope a fugitive.

Unfortunately, Charles the Fifth had been elected Emperor in 1519, and he needed to be crowned. Interest thus brought together those whom it had separated. Clement VII. undertook to crown Charles the Fifth; and the latter promised to capture Florence and to make it the dowry of his natural daughter, Margaret of Austria, who was affianced to Alexander.

The two promises were religiously kept. Charles the Fifth was crowned at Bologna, for in his new tenderness for the Pope he did not want to see the ravage done by his troops in the holy city; and after a terrible siege in which Florence was defended by Michelangelo and capitulated by Malatesta, July 30, 1531, Alexander made his solemn entry into the future capital of his duchy.

Alexander had almost all the vices of his epoch and very few of the virtues of his race. The son of a Moorish woman, he had inherited ardent passions. Constant in hatred and inconstant in love, he tried to have Pietro Strozzi assassinated and caused his cousin, Cardinal Hippolyte to be poisoned.

Therefore, there were numerous conspiracies against him during his reign of six years.

Pietro Strozzi placed an immense sum in the hands of a Dominican friar of Naples, who was said to have great influence with Charles the Fifth, to induce him to get Charles the Fifth to restore liberty to Florence. Jean Baptiste Cibo, Archbishop of Marseilles, tried to profit from Alexander’s amour with his brother’s wife, who was separated from her husband and lived in the Pazzi palace, by having him slain one day when he should come to see her in that palace; and since he knew that Alexander usually wore beneath his clothes a coat of mail so marvellously made that it was proof against sword and dagger, he had a chest, upon which the duke was accustomed to sit when he came to visit the marquise, filled with powder, and this was to be exploded. But this conspiracy was discovered, as well as all others that followed with one exception. In the latter case, success was due to the fact that there was only one conspirator who accomplished everything for himself. That conspirator was Lorenzo de’Medici, the eldest scion of that younger branch that sprang from the paternal trunk with Lorenzo, the next brother of Cosmo the Father of his country.

Lorenzo was born in Florence, March 25, 1514, of Pietro Francisco de’Medici, a double nephew of Lorenzo, Cosmo’s brother, and Maria Soderini, a woman of exemplary goodness and recognized prudence.

Lorenzo lost his father early, and, as he was scarcely nine years of age, his first instruction was given under his mother’s supervision. But as the child learned with great facility, this education was very soon ended, and he left this female tutelage for that of Philippe Strozzi, where his strange character developed. He was a strange medley of mockery, restlessness, desire, suspicion, impiety, humility and pride; whence it resulted that, unless he had motives to conceal, his most intimate friends never saw him twice in the same mood. He was one of those hermaphrodite beings that capricious Nature produces in her periods of dissolution.

It was in a house adjoining the Riccardi Palace that Lorenzo, aided by the Spadassin Scoronconcolo, poniarded Duke Alexander, the natural brother of Catherine de’Medici, first Duke of Florence and last descendant of Cosmo the Father of the Country, for Pope Clement VII. had died in 1534 and Cardinal Hippolyte in 1535; and on his assassination a singular thing was noticed, namely the six-fold combination of the number six. Alexander was assassinated in the year 1536, at the age of twenty-six, on the 6th day of January, at six o’clock at night, with six wounds, after having reigned six years.

The house in which he was assassinated was situated on the spot where the stables now stand.

The proverb of the evangelist: “They that take the sword shall perish with the sword” was applied to Lorenzo in its rigorous exactitude. Lorenzo, who had slain with the poignard, died by the poignard in Venice about the year 1557 without any one knowing for certain what hand struck the blow; it was only remembered that when Cosmo the First mounted the throne he swore not to leave the murder of Duke Alexander unpunished.

The murder of Alexander was the last important event that happened in this beautiful palace. Abandoned by Cosmo I. in 1540, when he resolved to live in the Palazzo Vecchio, it was sold to the Riccardi family, whose name it has kept, although I believe it came again into the possession of the Medicis under the reign of Ferdinand II.

To-day the famous Della Crusca Academy holds its sessions there: there they sift adverbs and shell participles, as our good and witty Charles Nodier says.

It is not so poetic, but it is more moral.

RABY CASTLE

WILLIAM HOWITT

As we proceed towards Barnard Castle, we suddenly come into view of the Castle of Raby. The road brings us within a few hundred yards of it. Its grey extent of towers rises before us, with its park, well peopled with herds of deer, stretching around it. Comparatively flat again as is the situation, and which would seem to have been better liked by the Nevilles than more hilly and romantic ones, there is nothing that we recollect to have seen anywhere which impresses us at the first view with a stronger feeling of the old feudal grandeur. It stands in its antiquity and vastness, the fitting abode of the mighty Nevilles. We can almost imagine that we shall find them still inhabiting it. The royal Joan, walking with her maidens on the green terrace that surrounds it, or the first great Earl of Westmoreland setting out with all his train, to scour its wide chases and dales for the deer, or to proceed to the Marches to chastise the boldness of the Scots. The exterior of the whole place has been well preserved in its true ancient character; it is the great, grey, and stately feudal castle,

“With all its lands and towers.”

Pennant, when he visited it, had a proper feeling of its exterior. “It is a noble massy building of its kind, uninjured by any modern strokes inconsistent with the general taste of the edifice; but, simply magnificent, it strikes by its magnitude, and that idea of strength and command naturally annexed to the view of vast walls, lofty towers, battlements, and the surrounding outworks of an old baron’s residence. The building itself, besides the courts, covers an acre of land; the size may from this be concluded. The south front is very beautiful; the centre is from a design of Inigo Jones; nothing in the Gothic taste can be more elegant than the style and proportion of the windows. The rooms are very numerous, and more modern in their proportion and distribution than one would easily conceive to be possible within the walls of so ancient a building; but by means of numerous passages and closets, many of which have been scooped out of the walls, and back-stairs, the apartments are extremely convenient, well connected, and at the same time perfectly distinct. Several improvements have been lately made, which add greatly to the spaciousness and convenience of the apartments in general. The bed-chambers and dressing-rooms are of a good size and proportion, and some of the lower apartments large, and elegantly fitted up. One of the drawing-rooms is thirty feet by twenty, and the adjoining dining-room is fifty-one by twenty-one; the windows of both of plate glass, and in the smallest and lightest of brass frames,” etc.

It is, in fact, this complete adaptation to modern uses and splendour, which disappoints one in the interior of Raby. The exterior is so fine, so feudal, so antiquely great, that when we step in and find ourselves at once in modern drawing-rooms, with silken couches and gilt cornices, the Nevilles and their times vanish. We forget again that we are at Raby, the Castle of the victims of Neville’s Cross, and of Joan, the daughter of John of Gaunt, and feel that we are only in the saloons of the modern Duke of Cleveland. We revert to the quaint description of Leland, and wish that we could see it as he did. “Raby is the largest castel of logginges in all the north countery, and is of a strong building; but not set either on hill, or very strong ground. As I enterid by a causey into it, there was a litle stayre on the right honde; and in the first area, were but two towers on a ech ende as entres, and no other buildid. In the 2 area, as in entring was a great gate of iren, with a tour, and 2 or 3 mo on the right hond. These were all the three toures of the 3 court, as in the hart of the castel. The haul and al the houses of office be large and stately, and in the haul I saw an incredible great leame of an hart. The great chambre was exceeding large, but now it is fals rofid, and divided into 2 or 3 partes. I saw ther a litle chambre wherein was in windowes of colorid glasse al the petigre of the Nevilles; but it is now taken down and glasid with clere glasse. Ther is a tour in the castel having the mark of 2 capital Bs for Bertram Bulmer. Ther is another towr bering the name of Jane, bastard sister to Henry IV., and wife to Rafe Neville, the first Erl of Westmerland. Ther ’long 3 parkes to Raby, whereof 2 be plenished with dere. The midle park hath a lodge in it; and thereby is a chace, bering the name of Langeley, and hath fallowe dere. It is a 3 miles in length.”

It is, in fact, these old towers; these old courts; this great baronial hall, and the kitchen, that are objects of real interest in Raby; remnants of its antiquity, the co-temporaries of those who stamped them with the feeling of belonging to them and their fortunes. The Cliffords’ tower, and the tower of Bertram Bulmer, let us ascend to them, and gaze over the parks and glades of Raby, to the far distant scenes that once formed the princely possessions of the Nevilles. Near the top of this tower, which stands separated from the rest of the building, and to which you ascend by eighty-nine steps, are raised those old letters, the initials of Bertram Bulmer, mentioned by Leland, and a splendid prospect south eastward lies before you. Conscliff, Darlington, Sadberge, Long-Newton, Stockton, with the Cleveland Hills and “Black” Hamilton. From other points of the castle you catch equally noble and far views--the distant mountains of Hope and Arkendale, and westward the vale filled with the woods of Streatlam and Lady Close.

Carriages can pass through the large Gothic saloon, or entrance hall into the interior court. Above the saloon is the old baronial hall, which forms one side of the square of the inner area. It is of the most magnificent proportions--ninety feet in length, thirty-six in breadth, and thirty-four in height. The roof is flat and made of wood; the joints ornamented with shields of arms of the family of the Nevilles. Here, it is said, assembled in their time, 700 knights who held of that family. A gallery of stone crosses the west end of this room used in ancient times for music, and that mimicry with which our ancestors were so much pleased. Unfortunately, here again our notions of the old times are completely disturbed. This roof, which no doubt is of real oak, is now smartly painted oak; and this hall, which should only display massy furniture, suits of armour, and arms and banners properly disposed, is converted into a museum of stuffed birds, Indian dresses, and a heap of things which may be better and more numerously seen elsewhere. In fact, any ordinary room of this many-roomed castle might have served this need. The kitchen, however, remains in all its huge and unalloyed antiquity. “It is,” says Pennant, “a magnificent and lofty square; has three chimneys--one for the grate, a second for stoves, the third for the great cauldrons. The top is arched, and a small cupola lights it in the centre; but on the sides are five windows, with a gallery passing all round before them, and four steps from each pointing down into the kitchen, but ending a great height above the floor. There have been many conjectures respecting their use, but they certainly must have been in some manner for the conveying away of viands. From the floor is another staircase, that conducts to the great hall, but the passage is now stopped. What hecatombs must have been carried that way!” To this account must be added, that the kitchen is a square of thirty feet; the side where no chimney is, opens into the larders; opposite to the grate, the steps descend to the floor, and are wide enough for three persons abreast. On each of the other sides, to the right and left of the grate, are two windows, with five steps descending, but not low enough to enable the persons who should stand thereon to receive anything from those in the kitchen. There are narrow passages channeled in the walls, but not capacious enough, we conceive, to allow a person to bear a dish of provisions for the 700 knights and retainers of the Nevilles. Yet we may very well imagine, that in the hurry and confusion of such a dining, those windows and descending steps might be very serviceable for the delivery of orders, and the passages in the walls for enabling one bustling person to avoid another. Besides, they might have some contrivance by a pulley or so, to raise the dishes to the person on the steps. Be that as it may, the kitchen is a right ancient and singular relic of the genuine baronial time.

The park has many fine woods, glades, and lawns, and gives prospects of far beauty, but its aspect partakes of the character of the interior of the castle--newness. We are surprised to see so little timber bearing a relative antiquity to the castle. The trees are comparatively young. You see groups and plantations of a very modern date. The whole has the air rather of a place new made, than of one old as the days of Canute, who is said to have built some part of the original house. You do not see those old, grey, and gnarled oaks around you that you see in the forests of Sherwood, Needwood--Chartley and other parks. It seems as if some great revolution, as is the fact, has passed over it; and that in its days of change, the axe of the spoiler has laid low its ancient forests. The castle looks like a grey patriarch left amid a more juvenile race. Let us rejoice that the strong wall of the stout old Nevilles have defied the ravages of politics as well as of time, and that future generations may see in them a fine example of what the habitation of the great old English noble was. For my part, I looked on the old house with eyes of affection. It had, through the beautiful ballad of the _Hermit of Warkworth_, been to me a dream of youthful poetry. I was carried back into the days when at school we chanted that lovely poem over, day by day, under sunny walls and in our walks, and even at night when we should have been asleep. There was in it a spirit so pure, so refined, so delicate, so full of beauty, of love, and of heroic magnanimity, that it mingled itself entirely with the pulses of our hearts, because our hearts were then like it in soul, in temperament, and in imaginative freedom. What dales of Northumberland--what mountains, and glens, and chieftains’ towers of Scotland, did it not bring to our spirits’ vision! With what eagerness did we follow the forlorn Sir Bertram and his brother, in their northern quest for the lost fair Isabel of Widrington. How did we weep over the catastrophe!--and when the young Earl Percy and his lovely bride, of the house of Neville, appeared for our comfort, how earnestly did we follow the venerable prior who, to propitiate the princely parents of Eleanor,

“Then straight to Raby’s distant walls
Did kindly wend his way.”

And how many times did we clap our hands as we learnt that

“Meantime their suit such favour found
At Raby’s stately hall;
Earl Neville and his princely spouse
Now gladly pardon all.

She, suppliant at her nephew’s throne,
The royal grace implored;
To all the honours of his race
The Percy was restored!”

Mr. Surtees has written a ballad full of the true spirit of that composition, suggested by a scene in Raby Park--Langley Dale; a beautiful dale and ancient chase, belonging to Raby Castle. An old tower, close by the park, is said to have been the residence of a mistress of the last Earl of Westmoreland. Mr. Surtees’s ballad, however, rather connects itself with the general circumstances of “The Rising of the North” than with this particular incident, and, like “The Flowers of the Forest,” perpetuates a natural and beautiful sentiment, which must have been deeply and long felt, on beholding Raby after that fatal event. With this poem we will close our visit to Raby.

LANGLEY DALE.

As I down Raby Park did pass,
I heard a fair maid weep and wail,
The chiefest of her song it was,
Farewell the sweets of Langley Dale.

The bonny mavis cheers his love,
The throstlecock sings in the glen;
But I must never hope to rove
Within the sweet Langley Dale again.

The wild-rose blushes in the brae,
The primrose shows its blossom pale;
But I must bid adieu for aye,
To all the joys of Langley Dale.

The days of mirth and peace are fled,
Youth’s golden locks to silver turn;
Each northern flowret droops its head
By Marwood Chase and Langley Burn.

False Southrons crop each lovely flower,
And throw their blossoms to the gale;
Our foes have spoilt the sweetest bower--
Alas! for bonny Langley Dale.

CASTEL DEL MONTE

EDWARD LEAR

To the south, on a spur of the hills overlooking the maritime part of the province of Basilicata and Capitanata, stands Minervino, and thither we directed our course, over undulating green meadows which descend to the plain, and we arrived about an hour before sunset at the foot of the height on which the town is situated. Minervino enjoys a noble prospect northward, over the level of Cannæ to the bay and mountain of Gargano, at which distance the outspread breadth of plain is so beautifully delicate in its infinity of clear lines, as to resemble sea more than earth. The town is a large clean and thriving place, with several streets flanked by loggie, and altogether different in its appearance and in its population from Abruzzese or Calabrese towns. The repose, or to speak more plainly, the stagnation of the latter, contrasts very decidedly with these communities of Apulia--all bustle and animation--where well-paved streets, good houses, and strings of laden mules, proclaim an advance in commercial civilization.

We encountered in the street Don Vincenzino Todeschi, who on reading a letter of introduction, given to us for him by Signor Manassei, seemed to consider our dwelling with him as a matter of course, and shaking hands with us heartily, begged us to go to his house and use it as our own; he was busy then, but would join us at supper....

P---- and I are not a little perplexed as to what we shall do to-morrow, for, owing to time running short, we have but one day left ere we return towards Naples. Canosa (ancient Cannæ) and Castel del Monte, are the two points, either of which we could be content to reach, but as each demands a hard day’s work, we finally resolve to divide them, P---- choosing Canosa, and I the old castle of Frederick Barbarossa, of which I had heard so much as one of the wonders of Apulia.

_September 23._--Before daylight each of us set off on his separate journey on horseback,--P---- with the bulky Don Sebastiano to Canosa, I to the Castel del Monte, with a guardiano of Don Vincenzino’s family. Oh me! what a day of fatigue and tiresome labour! Almost immediately on leaving Minervino we came to the dullest possible country,--elevated stony plains--weariest of barren undulations stretching in unbroken ugliness towards Altamura and Gravina. Much of this hideous tract is ploughed earth, and here and there we encountered a farm house with its fountain: no distant prospect ever relieves these dismal shrubless Murgie (for so is this part of the province of Bari called), and flights of “calendroni,” with a few skylarks above, and scattered crocuses below, alone vary the sameness of the journey. At length, after nearly five hours of slow riding, we came in sight of the castle, which was the object of my journey; it is built at the edge of these plains on one of the highest, but gradually rising eminences, and looks over a prospect perfectly amazing as to its immense extent and singular character. One vast pale pink map, stretching to Monte Gargano, and the plains of Foggia, northward is at your feet; southward, Terra di Bari, and Terra di Otranto, fade into the horizon; and eastward, the boundary of this extensive level is always the blue Adriatic, along which, or near its shore, you see, as in a chart, all the maritime towns of Puglia in succession, from Barletta southward towards Brindisi.

The barren stony hill from which you behold all this extraordinary outspread of plain, has upon it one solitary and remarkable building, the great hunting palace, called Castel del Monte, erected in the Twelfth Century by the Emperor Barbarossa, or Frederick II. Its attractions at first sight are those of position and singularity of form, which is that of an octagon, with a tower on each of the eight corners. But to an architect, the beautiful masonry and exquisite detail of the edifice (although it was never completed, and has been robbed of its fine carved-work for the purpose of ornamenting churches on the plain), render it an object of the highest curiosity and interest.

The interior of this ancient building is also extremely striking; the inner courtyard and great Gothic Hall, invested with the sombre mystery of partial decay, the eight rooms above, the numerous windows, all would repay a long visit from any one to whom the details of such architecture are desiderata.

Confining myself to making drawings of the general appearance of this celebrated castle, I had hardly time to complete two careful sketches of it, when the day was so far advanced that my guardiano recommended a speedy return, and by the time I had overcome the five hours of stony “murgie” I confess to having thought that any thing less interesting than Castel del Monte would hardly have compensated for the day’s labour. I reached Minervino at one hour of the night, and found P---- just arrived from his giro to Canosa.

While riding over the Murgie, slowly pacing over those stony hills, my guide indulged me with a legend of the old castle, which is worth recording, be it authentic or imaginary. The Emperor Frederick II., having resolved to build the magnificent residence on the site it now occupies, employed one of the first architects of the day to erect it; and during its progress despatched one of his courtiers to inspect the work, and to bring him a report of its character and appearance. The courtier set out; but on passing through Melfi, halted to rest at the house of a friend, where he became enamoured of a beautiful damesel, whose eyes caused him to forget Castel del Monte and his sovereign, and induced him to linger in the Norman city until a messenger arrived there charged by the Emperor to bring him immediately to the Court, then at Naples. At that period it was by no means probable that Barbarossa, engaged in different warlike schemes, would ever have leisure to visit his new castle, and the courtier, fearful of delay, resolved to hurry into the presence and risk a description of the building which he had not seen, rather than confess his neglect of duty. Accordingly he denounced the commencement of the Castel del Monte as a total failure, both as to beauty and utility, and the architect as an impostor; on hearing which the Emperor sent immediately to the unfortunate builder, the messenger carrying an order for his disgrace, and a requisition for his instant appearance in the capital. “Suffer me to take leave of my wife and children,” said the despairing architect, and shutting himself in one of the upper rooms, he forthwith destroyed his whole family and himself, rather than fall into the hands of a monarch notorious for his severity.

The tidings of this event was, however, brought to the Emperor’s ears, and with characteristic impetuosity, he set off for Apulia directly, taking with him the first courtier-messenger, doubtless sufficiently ill at ease, from anticipations of the results about to follow his duplicity. What was Barbarossa’s indignation at beholding one of the most beautiful buildings doomed, through the falsehood of his messenger, to remain incomplete, and polluted by the blood of his most skilful subject, and that of his innocent family!

Foaming with rage, he dragged the offender by the hair of his head to the top of the highest tower, and with his own hands threw him down as a sacrifice to the memory of the architect and his family, so cruelly and wantonly destroyed.

_September 24._--Having risen before sunrise, the energetic and practical Don Vincenzino gave us coffee by the aid of a spirit lamp, and we passed some hours in drawing the town of Minervino, the sparkling lights and delicate grey tints of whose buildings blended charmingly with the vast pale rosy plains of Apulia in the far distance. At nine we returned to a substantial _déjeûner_, and at half-past ten took leave of our thoroughly hospitable and good-natured host.

CASTEL DEL MONTE

HENRY SWINBURNE

A most disagreeable stony road brought us to Ruvo, through a vine country. The pomegranate hedges in flower, and the holme oak loaded with kermes, enlivened the prospect, which otherwise would have been very dull.... I here quitted the Roman way, and rode fifteen miles westward to Castel del Monte. The country I traversed is open, uneven and dry. The castle is a landmark, and stands on the brow of a very high hill, the extremity of a ridge that branches out from the Apennine. The ascent to it is near half a mile long, and very steep; the view from its terrace most extensive. A vast reach of sea and plain on one side, and mountains on the other; not a city in the province but is distinguishable; yet the barrenness of the foreground takes off a great deal of the beauty of the picture. The building is octangular, in a plain solid style; the walls are raised with reddish and white stones, ten feet six inches thick; the great gate is of marble, cut into very intricate ornaments, after the manner of the Arabians; on the balustrade of the steps lie two enormous lions of marble, their bushy manes nicely, though barbarously, expressed; the court, which is in the centre of the edifice, contains an octangular marble bason of a surprising diameter. To carry it to the summit of such a hill must have cost an infinite deal of labour. Two hundred steps lead up to the top of the castle, which consists of two stories. In each of them are fifteen saloons of great dimensions, cased throughout with various and valuable marbles; the ceilings are supported by triple clustered columns of a single block of white marble, the capitals extremely simple. Various have been the opinions concerning the founder of this castle; but the best grounded ascribe it to Frederick of Swabia. I dined and spent the hot hours with great comfort under the porch, which commands a noble view of the Adriatic.

In the evening I descended the mountain, and rode nine miles to Andria, a large feudal city, east of the Roman road.

THE GENERALIFE

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

The Generalife is situated not far from the Alhambra on a spur of the same mountain. You get to it by a kind of dug out road that traverses the ravine of Los Molinos, which is bordered all the way with fig-trees of enormous glistening leaves, green oaks, pistachio-trees, laurels, and rock roses of a remarkably exuberant vegetation. The ground on which you walk is composed of yellow sand oozing with water, wonderful in its fecundity. Nothing is more delightful than to follow this road, which has the appearance of running through a virgin forest of America, so thickly is it choked with foliage and flowers, and so great is the overwhelming scent of the aromatic plants you inhale there. Vines spring through the cracks of the broken walls, and hang from all their branches fantastic tendrils and leaves resembling the tracery of Arabian ornaments; the aloe opens its fan of bluish blades and the orange trees twist their knotty trunks and cling with fang-like roots to the rents in the steep slopes. Everything flourishes and blooms in a tangled disorder full of the most charming effects of chance. A straying branch of jasmin mingles its white stars with the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate, and a laurel leaps from one side of the road to the other to embrace a cactus, notwithstanding its thorns. Nature, left to herself, seems to take pride in her coquetry, and wishes to show how far she surpasses even the most exquisite and finished art.

After a quarter of an hour’s walk, you come to the Generalife, which is, in some sense, nothing but the _casa de campo_, the country house, of the Alhambra. The exterior, like that of all oriental buildings, is very simple: it consists of large walls without windows and surmounted by a terrace with a gallery divided into arcades, the whole being crowned with a little modern belvedere. Of the Generalife nothing now remains but some arcades and some large panels of arabesques, unfortunately plastered over with layers of whitewash that have been applied again and again with all the obstinacy of a dispiriting cleanliness. Little by little the delicate sculptures and the marvellous guilloches of this fairy-like architecture have been obliterated, filled up, and engulfed. What is at present nothing more than a faintly-vermiculated wall, was formerly open lace-work as fine as those ivory leaves which the patience of the Chinese carves for fans. The brush of the whitewasher has caused more _chefs d’œuvre_ to disappear than the scythe of Time, if I may be allowed to use that superannuated, mythological expression. In a fairly well preserved hall, you notice a series of smoky portraits of the kings of Spain, but these have only a chronological value.

The real charm of the Generalife consists in its gardens and waters. A canal paved with marble runs through the whole length of the enclosure, and rolls its abundant and rapid waves under a series of leafy arches, formed by yews curiously bent and clipped. Orange-trees and cypresses are planted on each border; it was at the foot of one of these cypresses, of a prodigious size, and which dates from the time of the Moors, that the favourite of Boabdil, if we may believe the legend, often proved that bolts and grilles are but slight protectors of the virtue of sultanas. One thing, at least, is certain,--that the yew is very large and very old.