Chapter VIII: Conclusion (3)

Of those who died on the morning after the arrival of the Connecticut was a young man belonging to the Rebel army. He had by chance been taken up among our wounded. He had his little Bible in his pocket, which he requested should be sent to his mother, with the message that he died happy, and hoped to meet her in a better world, but that he was a fool for having joined the army. As it was supposed that he might have some such regret in his last hours, he was asked if he were sorry that he had fought against the old flag. "Well, you need not say that," he said, "but that I was a fool ever to come to this war." With a smile of peace upon his countenance, he passed away. Several attempts have been made, in vain, since the close of the war, to find his mother; the Bible, and a ring taken from his finger, will possibly never reach her now.

Among the wounded were four men who had lost both legs; they were in the best of spirits, surely thinking to live, and earnestly planning for the future. Had the heat not been so excessive for the ten days after they came, they would probably have survived; but, one after another, they died, suddenly, overcome by fainting weakness. I remember, too, one boy, only sixteen years old, who had lost his right arm. "You have given a good deal for the country," was said to him. "Yes, and I would willingly give my other arm to help put down this Rebellion." Little did he think that within a few hours his life would be yielded in his country's cause.

Every day a funeral procession moved forth to the place of burial, the band playing the "Russian Dirge" or the "Dead March in Saul."

It seemed as if a special inspiration of silent endurance and courageous patience were given to the men who lingered in the most acute sufferings. Gangrene spread through the wards, and the remedy was like the application of fire to open wounds. Three times a day was this agony endured with a martyr's spirit. One man by the name of Hollenbeck would sing in joyous tones,--

"I'm glad I'm in this army,
I'm glad I'm in this army,
And I'll battle till the end.

"He will give me grace to conquer,
He will give me grace to conquer,
And keep me to the end."

While consciousness lasted, he firmly retained his self-control; but at last reason gave way, and the groans and distressing cries which for a few days preceded his death told over what a depth of agony his soul had triumphed, before his brain lost its power.

Not alone by the men themselves was this sublime fortitude shown. Mothers, who came to visit their sons, though crushed with grief at their hopeless state, would yet calmly and even cheerfully minister to their comfort.

There was one mother, especially, whom I remember,--a slight, fragile little woman, dressed in widow's mourning, for her husband had been killed in the war, and it was her third and last son who was now dying for the country. Her strength of mind and body was almost superhuman. She had an angelic expression of countenance, such as comes from learning the full and perfect love of God in the sharp lessons of suffering. She was only too thankful at being permitted to spend these last days and nights by the side of her son,--begging him to put his trust in the Saviour, and telling of the celestial glory prepared for him beyond the grave. She could hardly be persuaded to take even a few hours' sleep; she felt that she could not leave him with the nurse, but consented, if one of the ladies would stay with him, to take a little rest. It was my privilege to watch by him through that last night of restless pain, and then I found that he was in every way worthy of so noble a mother. He expressed his willingness to die, saying that it had been his duty to fight, and that now he gloried in dying for the nation. The tent sides' fluttering in the light breeze from the bay was the only sound that disturbed the quiet of that starry night, as in the solemn solitude the departing soul gathered fresh energy as the body grew weaker and weaker. Chapters of the Bible and Psalms were read over and over to him; he earnestly listened to each promise and benediction, and would at the low singing of hymns sleep gently for a few moments at a time. Early in the morning his mother resumed her place of loving care. In the afternoon she sent for two of the ladies to come over and sing to Frank. The chaplain was there, and life was fast ebbing away. After prayer, the hymn, "My heavenly home is bright and fair," was sung. As the dying boy thanked the ladies, he said that there was a hymn about "rest" that he would like to hear once more. "There is rest for the weary" having been sung, he folded his wasted hands, and said: "This is the last hymn I shall hear on earth. In a little while I shall know of that rest." He breathed for a few hours longer, and then his spirit was among the redeemed, "in the Christian's home in glory." The faithful, trusting mother only said, in the depth of her affliction, "It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him best."

Dr. Vanderkeift mingled with the pride of a surgeon the utmost kindliness toward each patient. He would, on examining a critical case, immediately after amputation, bend in the most fatherly manner over the man, and, patting him gently, would say, with his German accent: "Now, my dear fellow, do please to live. I am doing all I can for you, and will send you milk from my own Alderney every day."

Flowers were never more appreciated than in the hospital that summer. A bunch of these bright little treasures would make a man happy for hours, and would receive the most endearing care to preserve their beauty. On going in to see a wounded man one day, the attention of one of the ladies was attracted by a strange-looking object hanging from the tent. Her curiosity being excited, she inquired, "What have you here, John?" "Well, miss, it is a long while since I had seen any flowers before those you brought me in yesterday, and it was so warm that I was afraid water wouldn't keep them, and I hated to see them wither; so I got Evans to make me this calico bag and put some earth in it, and I am in hopes they will grow here by my side, if I keep them moist." Sure enough, when this admiring florist was able to leave on crutches in a few weeks, he carried these specimens of Maryland floriculture, all rooted and growing, to his Western home.

For the sake of convenience, the ladies usually dressed in dark attire; but when a light muslin appeared in the wards the effect was quite noticeable. I remember that one day a man asked the lady in charge of his own ward to get another lady, who was arrayed in pink, to come in from her ward and see him. "But what do you want with her? Can't I do everything for you?" "W-e-ll, y-e-s; but then she is dressed up so nice; if she would only walk through the tent, it would make me feel better."

In July there was threatened an invasion of the city of Annapolis, which produced much excitement in the hospital. As there were between six and seven hundred officers there at the time as patients, it was not deemed unlikely that Harry Gilmore, with his band of raiders, would, after burning Governor Bradford's house at Baltimore, make a dash in our direction, if only to terrify and then parole the officers and men. By degrees the telegraphic wires and railway lines were destroyed nearer and nearer to us, thus isolating the city, and giving rise to fearful anticipations. Outside the two entrances to the hospital were dug broad moats, protected by ramparts of earth and a very ludicrous structure of barrels; while about a mile off a line of rifle-pits was prepared, with cannon mounted in hastily made forts behind them. Every steamer, fishing-boat, or craft capable of carrying persons or property was put into requisition by the people of Annapolis, and kept constantly ready to start at the first appearance of the foe, and some of the valuable possessions of the hospital floated on the bay for a few days. Messages were left with us for home friends by the men hurrying off to the front, as we termed the spot of the impending encounter, as if the ladies were expected to be the sole survivors of the affair. Every man who could handle a spade or a pickaxe was required at this season of alarm. For three days and nights the reign of terror lasted, causing an injuriously nervous inquietude to the helpless and sick. It was useless to try to allay their apprehensions, for those who smiled at the idea of an attack were merely regarded as endowed with a Quixotic cheerfulness. When gunboats arrived to protect the city, a ray of hope dawned; and when the news reached us that the raiders had retreated across the Potomac, all felt safe once more. A man by the name of Beck, one of the most valued of the hospital attendants, was accidentally shot, though not fatally. He was the sole hero of this brief campaign of fright.

It was not until August that any of our wounded who had been taken prisoners were exchanged on parole. The New York came about the middle of the month, bringing six hundred. Many said that their wounds had been slight, but that amputation had been performed with the assurance from the Rebels that they would fix them so that they would never fight any more. I think that these were exceptional victims of cruelty, for the almost universal testimony of our soldiers was that the surgeons were their best friends at the South. They would insist upon the necessity of more food being given to their patients, and remonstrate with the Rebel authorities,--unfortunately without success.

One of the officers who came at this time was Lieutenant F----, belonging to a New York regiment. He had lost a limb, and remained a few weeks in the hospital. The first letter of joyous welcome which he received from home told him that his family had been wearing mourning four months for him, and a printed funeral sermon which shortly followed the letter gave an account of his supposed death at the Battle of the Wilderness, and contained a eulogy upon his character.

I remember being particularly impressed by a description of hunger in the hospital at Libby, given by Lieutenant William Foy Smith, who came at this time. He belonged to the First Massachusetts Cavalry. He was shot through the lungs, and left for dead on the battle-field. By the kind care of colored women, who brought him milk, he was resuscitated--to find himself a prisoner. He said that often at night in Libby he would amuse himself by calculating how many places there were in Washington Street, Boston, where edibles were to be had, and he would fancy the people getting oysters and thousands of good things; and then he would muse over all the bountiful dinners that he used to have at home, and reproach himself for not having partaken more heartily, resolving, if ever he had another opportunity, that his gnawing appetite should forever do itself justice. Then he would wildly scrape the wall by which he was lying, and ravenously devour the atoms from it, until at last he would dream in his sleep of happier days to come. After several months, Lieutenant Smith was able to rejoin his regiment, whose entrance into Richmond he thus describes: "I shall never repine again, while I have health; but who talks of repining after such a march as our last? I joined the regiment at Manchester, opposite Richmond. How often have I looked across the river to the field on which we camped, and longed for liberty! We passed in review through the city the next day. I cannot describe my sensations as I went by the old prison-house, with a good horse under me,--one seemed hardly sufficient,--health in my veins, and freedom,--it was too much. I had to shout. A lank, unshorn Rebel was looking through the bars where I had so often looked. We had the finest of music and the gayest of banners, but the people let us have them all to ourselves. But our glorious reception in Washington repaid us."

It was a great recompense for all his sufferings that this brave, modest young officer lived to see the day of victorious peace; but within a few months the wound from which he had partially recovered was the cause of his death.

Malarial fever was the prevalent disease in the hospital in the early autumn. Hundreds sank with it, after the hard marches and counter-marches with Sheridan in the hot Valley of the Shenandoah through the summer. Stimulating and nourishing diet came too late to many of these undermined constitutions, and disease worked its deadly ravages where ball and bayonet had missed their aim. Dr. Hunter, surgeon of a Pennsylvania regiment, lived but a short time in severe suffering. A man of strong character, his patriotism had responded when an urgent call for men had come from the War Department. Having no son to send to the war, he felt it to be his duty to leave a large practice and enlist as a private. He was immediately made surgeon of the regiment which he devotedly served for several months. His death-bed was the scene of the most serene peace. "Why should I stay longer below? I am only too glad to depart and be with Christ: it is far better." These and similar words showed the tone of his mind. His earnest prayers for the nation were his last rich legacy of dying faith. He cheerfully gave his life as part of the ransom of liberty and peace.

On one of those autumnal days died, too, Major Butler. Wounded at Petersburg, one leg had been fractured in seven places, from the thigh to the ankle. Three months he lingered in distress which can be imagined, but to which his heroic spirit never gave utterance.

The hospital was brilliantly illuminated when the result of the Presidential election was made known, in November. Music and shouts of rejoicing rent the air, and all were filled with exulting confidence that the beginning of the end had been accomplished by the overwhelming verdict of the people at home.

The National Thanksgiving was celebrated by a service in the chapel, and a fine dinner, which one man said he "could not have enjoyed better had he eaten it at his grandmother's,--only the folks would have been there."

At last, in December, the earnest entreaties of hearts breaking with wild anguish and suspense prevailed upon the authorities in Washington to effect the release of our prisoners. To no one person was this happy result so much due as to General Mulford, our Commissioner of Exchange. He was unceasing in his exertions to accomplish this end on almost any terms, for he knew what tortures our men were enduring, and how rapidly they were dying. The soldiers looked upon him as their deliverer, and with good reason. His arduous care and kindly manner deserved their warmest enthusiasm and gratitude. His personal watchfulness in receiving the men may be illustrated by a little incident. A man who was feebly walking fell down quite exhausted, just before reaching the New York; he lay behind a pile of wood, and could not make himself heard. Just as the boat was about putting off, General Mulford stepped on shore to look round and be certain that no one was left. "I should have lain there till I died had he not in his kindness found me," said the man.

The first exchange was of ten thousand men. Large ocean steamers found their way up Chesapeake Bay, and our band played "Home again," "Home, Sweet Home," and other strains of welcome, to their ghastly passengers. As one man looked up, in landing, to the flag waving in the hospital grounds, he said earnestly, "We're glad to see you; we know there's grub enough under you." Such inexpressible relief and joy were never felt by mortals before. Libby Prison and Belle Isle had startled the ear of humanity by their records of woe, but the story of Andersonville far exceeded theirs. The revolting torments inflicted in that place are too well known to need repetition. Rather let us dwell upon the happiness of those fortunate enough to escape. The hospital was crowded to its utmost capacity. Many lived only a few minutes or hours after reaching the wards; others survived but a day or two, breathing their last in peace and comfort. An elderly man, quite pulseless when brought in, was resuscitated with brandy sufficiently to express his gratitude. "God has been very good in bringing me here," he said, as a beam of joy irradiated his wan face; "I can die willingly here, and lay my bones under the old flag, but I didn't want to die down there." And when asked if he had kept his faith in God while suffering so much at Andersonville: "O yes! He has been my leader these twenty years, and I thought He would bring me out all right." His name was John Buttery; he did not live long enough to hear from his wife and six children, in Connecticut.

Among the unknown was a boy apparently about seventeen years old, with clustering curls of auburn hair, and eyes, that once must have been full of life, now sending forth only a vacant stare. I worked over him, hoping to get him to utter one word before he died that would give some hint of his name or home, but in vain.

That month of December, with its cold, leaden sky, and bleak, wintry winds, will never be forgotten. On going down one dreary morning, in the obscurity of early dawn, I found that a tent in which five men dangerously ill had been left the night before was not to be seen; at first I distrusted my senses,--it was surely the place where the tent had stood, but the only vestige left was the plank floor. On inquiry, I found that in the middle of the night the tent had blown over, and men, furniture, and all had been moved in a furious storm.

Sixty men were buried at one time, and several times over forty were borne in a long train of ambulances to the cemetery. The martial dirge, with the sound of its muffled drum, was daily mingled with the groans of the dying. Many a man who did not shrink from death still desired to live long enough to hear from his home once more, and died piteously lamenting his lot. Others, though dying, would cling to the hope of going home; and when told that the doctor feared they could not live an hour, and asked if they had any messages to leave, with their last gasp would say, "O, I shall live! I am going home to see my mother."

In contrast with such cases were others of calm fortitude. These lines were dictated at midnight by a man who had hoped to live, but whose strength suddenly failed:--

"DEAR WIFE:--I am on my death-bed. Get N---- E---- to settle
our affairs, draw my pay, &c. If our daughter is still
living, I want her to have a share of three hundred dollars.
I die under the protecting folds of the starry banner of
freedom. You must take good care of the little one. Trust in
God, and meet me in heaven. I bid a last farewell to all my
friends. I die happy. God bless you.

"Your husband,

"H. W. VARNEY."

The friends of many came as soon as they heard of their arrival and illness, but often failed to recognize them. One woman, on being taken into the ward where her husband was asleep, persisted in saying that she had never seen that man before; and on being shown his name and regiment on the card, she refused to be convinced, feeling sure that there must be some mistake, till he opened his eyes and greeted her by name.

On the evening of a day on which there had been a new arrival of men, I was sitting in the comfortably heated tent, while eight happy faces looked from the warmly blanketed beds. Each man had his own tale of prison experience to tell. "Not for all the gold that could be heaped into this tent would I voluntarily spend one more day at Andersonville." Another said, "We suffered enough in body; but the mental agony, the mental agony, no one can ever imagine." And so they went on, dwelling at last upon their anxiety for home friends, wondering if mothers, wives, and children were yet alive. Then one manly voice told, in earnest tones, how he could bless the Lord for the perilous trials through which he had passed; that he had been brought up religiously, but never had truly loved the Saviour until he became his only refuge. "His love in my heart is well worth all the discipline I have endured, and I can thank him for it." These words came from John S. Farnell, a Michigan boy of eighteen years of age. Since the battle of Gettysburg, seventeen months before, he had been a prisoner. He enjoyed reading his own little new Bible, and the meetings for prayer and singing held in his tent. He seemed to be gaining strength, until an attack of pneumonia occurred, when the utmost care failed to save his life. He talked peacefully of dying, in intervals of consciousness, but at last sank into a heavy stupor. Just as I closed his eyes, and while he ceased to breathe, the band struck up the strain, "Do they miss me at home?"

It needed a stout heart to turn from the frequent scenes of death, at that gloomy time, to cheer and amuse the less dangerously ill. The coming of Christmas was a source of excitement for a few days. Some of the boys had never heard of Santa Claus and his visits down the chimney at this merry season; and when his descent through the pipes, and passage through the stove-doors, and appearance in the tents became possibilities, there was as much amusement and anticipation among them as ever gladdened a nursery full of children. On the morning of this happy festival every man found a sock hanging by his side stuffed with mittens, scarfs, knives, suspenders, handkerchiefs, and many little things. Out of the top of each sock peeped a little flag; and as the men awoke, one by one, and examined the gifts of Santa Claus, shouts of merriment rang through the wards, and they were satisfied that he was a friend worth having.

All that was possible under the pressure of the melancholy circumstances was done to make the day a happy one; but it was not celebrated with the same rejoicings as the year before, nor was there much time to be spared from the sick and dying. Steamers were constantly arriving, and filling up the vacant places with new patients.

On a ragged, soiled piece of paper which a man handed me on landing were these lines, written at Andersonville by a boy of sixteen who died there. They are surely worthy of remembrance.

"Will you leave us here to die?
When our country called for men,
We came from forge and store and mill,
The broken ranks to fill;
We left our quiet, happy homes,
And ones we loved so well,
To vanquish all the Union foes,
Or fall where others fell.
Now, in prisons drear we languish,
And it is our constant cry,
O ye who yet can save us,
Will you leave us here to die?

"The voice of slander tells you
That our hearts were weak with fear,
That nearly every one of us
Was captured in the rear.
The scars upon our bodies
From the musket-ball and shell,
The missing legs and shattered arms
A truer tale will tell.
We have tried to do our duty
In the sight of God on high:
O ye who yet can save us,
Will you leave us here to die?

"There are hearts with hope still beating
In our pleasant Northern homes,
Waiting, watching for the footsteps
That may never, never come.
In Southern prisons pining,
Meagre, tattered, pale, and gaunt,
Growing weaker, weaker daily
From pinching cold and want.
Here brothers, sons, and husbands,
Poor and hopeless, captured lie:
O ye who yet can save them,
Will you leave us here to die?

"From out our prison gate,
There's a grave-yard close at hand,
Where lie ten thousand Union men
Beneath the Georgia sand.
Scores and scores are laid beside them,
As day succeeds to day;
And thus it ever will be
Till they all shall pass away,
And the last can say when dying,
With upturned and glazing eye,
Both love and faith are dead at home,--
They have left us here to die!"

A proof of the humanity with which the Rebel prisoners were treated by our government is found in the fact of their reluctance to be exchanged; they said that they were very comfortable, and would far rather remain at the North until the war was over. One general, who was having an artificial leg made, was forced to return against his will. His entreaties to be left behind prevailed for a few days; but at last he was obliged to take passage on the transport for exchange, as one of our own generals was awaiting his return to come home.

Among the prisoners who came in January was Boston Corbett, of the Seventeenth New York Cavalry. Every name made public even in remote connection with the death of our beloved President becomes an object of interest. The following is a characteristic letter from the brave and earnest-hearted patriot at whose hand the assassin met his doom:--

"VIENNA, VA., March 9, 1865.

"MISS ----:--Many times I have thought I would write to
acknowledge the kindness shown by you and the other good
ladies of the hospital to us poor soldiers when we were
brought from Savannah, Andersonville, and Millen. I remember
with gratitude the first kind words expressed towards us,
and how strange and good they sounded after being so long
deprived of them. Although they might not seem much to the
giver, yet I believe they will live in the memory of us
soldier boys long after the war is over. I can never forget
how much was done for us all on our return from prison to
hospital; but many thousands lie under the soil of Georgia,
monuments of the cruelty and wickedness of this
Rebellion,--the head of all the rebellions of earth for
blackness and horror. Those only can feel the extent of it
who have seen their comrades, as I have, lying in the
broiling sun, without shelter, with swollen feet and parched
skin, in filth and dirt, suffering as I believe no people
ever suffered before in the world. But, thank God, these
things have come, I hope, to an end. May they never exist
again in the good land! With kind regards to all,

"Very truly,

"BOSTON CORBETT."

The ravages of the malignant fever which had broken out in the hospital were not confined to the patients. Surgeons and chaplain yielded their lives at its deadly touch. Then, too, was the bond severed which had harmoniously united a happy sisterhood for many months. Of the six who went down to the brink of the river of death, five crossed over to the heavenly shore. She who alone remained gives these simple memories to the reader.

MINOR ITALIAN TRAVELS.

I.

PISA.

I am afraid that the talk of the modern railway traveller, if he is honest, must be a great deal of the custodians, the _vetturini_, and the _facchini_, whose agreeable acquaintance constitutes his chief knowledge of the population among which he journeys. We do not now-a-days carry letters recommending us to citizens of the different places. If we did, consider the calamity we should be to the be-travelled Italian communities we now bless! No; we buy our through-tickets, and we put up at the hotels praised in the hand-book, and are very glad of a little conversation with any native, however adulterated he may be by contact with the world to which we belong. I do not blush to own that I love the whole rascal race which ministers to our curiosity and preys upon us, and I am not ashamed to have spoken so often as I have done in former sketches of the lowly and rapacious but interesting porters who opened to me the different gates of that great realm of wonders, Italy. I doubt if they can be much known to the dwellers in the land, though they are the intimates of all sojourners and passengers; and if I have any regret in the matter, it is that I did not more diligently study them when I could. The opportunity, once lost, seldom recurs; they are all but as transitory as the Object of Interest itself. I remember that years ago, when I first visited Cambridge, there was an old man appeared to me in the character of Genius of the College Grounds, who showed me all the notable things in our city,--its treasures of art, its monuments,--and ended by taking me into his wood-house, and sawing me off from a wind-fallen branch of the Washington Elm a bit of the sacred wood for a remembrancer. Where now is that old man? He no longer exists for me, neither he nor his wood-house nor his dwelling-house. Let me look for a month about the College Grounds, and I shall not see him. But somewhere in the regions of traveller's faery he still lives, and he appears instantly to the new-comer; he has an understanding with the dryads who keep him supplied with boughs from the Washington Elm, and his wood-house is full of them.

Among memorable cicerones in Italy was one whom we saw at Pisa, where we stopped on our way from Leghorn after our accident in the Maremma, and spent an hour in viewing the Quattro Fabbriche. The beautiful old town, which every one knows from the report of travellers, one finds possessed of the incommunicable charm which keeps old towns forever novel to the visitor. Lying on either side of the Arno, it mirrors in the flood architecture almost as fair and noble as that glassed in the Canalazzo, and its streets seemed to us as tranquil as the canals of Venice. Those over which we drove, on the day of our visit, were paved with broad flag-stones, and gave out scarcely a sound under our wheels. It was Sunday, and no one was to be seen. Yet the empty and silent city inspired us with no sense of desolation. The palaces were in perfect repair; the pavements were clean; behind those windows we felt that there must be a good deal of easy, comfortable life. It is said that Pisa is one of the few places in Europe where the sweet, but timid, spirit of Inexpensiveness--everywhere pursued by Railways--still lingers, and that you find cheap apartments in those well-preserved old palaces. No doubt it would be worth more to live in Pisa than it would cost, for the history of the place would alone be to any reasonable sojourner a perpetual recompense and a princely income far exceeding his expenditure. To be sure, the Tower of Famine, with which we chiefly associate the name of Pisa, has been long razed to the ground, and built piecemeal into the neighboring palaces; but you may still visit the dead wall which hides from view the place where it stood, and you may thence drive on, as we did, to the great Piazza where stands the unrivalledest group of architecture in the world after that of St. Mark's Place in Venice. There is the wonderful Leaning Tower, there is the old and beautiful Duomo, there is the noble Baptistery, there is the lovely Campo Santo. There, too,--somewhere lurking in portal or behind pillar, and keeping out an eagle eye for the marvelling stranger,--is the much experienced cicerone who shows you through the edifices. Yours is the fourteen-thousandth American family to which he has had the honor of acting as guide, and he makes you feel an illogical satisfaction in thus becoming a contribution to statistics.

We entered the Duomo in our new friend's custody, and we saw the things which it was well to see. There was mass, or some other ceremony, transacting, but, as usual, it was made as little obtrusive as possible, and there was not much to weaken the sense of proprietorship with which travellers view objects of interest. Then we ascended the Leaning Tower, skilfully preserving its equilibrium, as we went, by an inclination of our persons in a direction opposed to the tower's inclination, but perhaps not receiving a full justification of the Campanile's appearance in pictures till we stood again at its base, and saw its vast bulk and height as it seemed to sway and threaten in the blue sky above our heads. There the sensation was too terrible for endurance,--even the architectural beauty of the tower could not save it from being monstrous to us,--and we were glad to hurry away from it to the serenity and solemn loveliness of the Campo Santo.

Here are the frescos painted five hundred years ago to be ruinous and ready against the time of your arrival in 1864, and you feel that you are the first to enjoy the joke of the Vergogñosa,--that arch jade who peers through her fingers at the shameful condition of deboshed Father Noah, and seems to wink one eye of wicked amusement at you. Turning afterward to any book written about Italy during the time specified, you find your impression of exclusive property in the frescos erroneous, and your Muse naturally despairs where so many muses have labored in vain to give a just idea of the Campo Santo. Yet it is most worthy celebration. Those exquisitely arched and traceried colonnades seem to grow like the slim cypresses out of the sainted earth of Jerusalem; and those old paintings enforce more effectively than their authors conceived the lessons of life and death, for they are themselves becoming part of the triumphant decay they represent. If it was awful once to look upon that strange scene where the gay lords and ladies of the chase come suddenly upon three dead men in their coffins, while the devoted hermits enjoy the peace of a dismal righteousness on a hill in the background, it is yet more tragic to behold it now, when the dead men are hardly discernible in their coffins, and the hermits are but the vaguest shadows of gloomy bliss. Alas! Death mocks even the homage done him by our poor fears and hopes: with dust he wipes out dust, and with decay he blots the image of decay.

I assure the reader that I made none of these apt reflections in the Campo Santo at Pisa, but have written them out this morning, in Cambridge, because there happens to be an east wind blowing. No one could have been sad in the company of our cheerful and patient cicerone, who, although visibly anxious to get his fourteen-thousandth American family away, still would not go till he had shown us that monument to a dead enmity which hangs in the Campo Santo. This is the mighty chain which the Pisans, in their old wars with the Genoese, once stretched across the mouth of their harbor to prevent the entrance of the hostile galleys. The Genoese with no great trouble carried the chain away, and kept it ever afterward till 1860, when Pisa was united to the kingdom of Italy. Then the trophy was restored to the Pisans, and with public rejoicings placed in the Campo Santo, an emblem of reconciliation and perpetual amity between ancient foes.[101] It is not a very good world,--_e pur si muove_.

The Baptistery stands but a step away from the Campo Santo, and our guide ushered us into it with the air of one who had till now held in reserve his great stroke and was ready to deliver it. Yet I think he waited till we had looked at some comparatively trifling sculptures by Nicolò da Pisa before he raised his voice and uttered a melodious species of howl. While we stood in some amazement at this, the conscious structure of the dome caught the sound, and prolonged it with a variety and sweetness of which I could not have dreamed. The man poured out in quick succession his musical wails, and then ceased, and a choir of heavenly echoes burst forth in response. There was a supernatural beauty in these harmonies of which I despair of giving any true idea. They were of such tender and exalted rapture that we might well have thought them the voices of young-eyed cherubim, singing as they passed through Paradise over that spot of earth where we stood. They seemed a celestial compassion that stooped and soothed, and rose again in lofty and solemn acclaim, leaving us poor and penitent and humbled.

We were long silent, and then broke forth with cries of admiration of which the marvellous echo at once made eloquence.

"Did you ever," said the cicerone after we had left the building, "hear such music as that?"

"The papal choir does not equal it," we answered with one voice.

The cicerone was not to be silenced even with such a tribute, and he went on:--

"Perhaps, as you are Americans, you know Moshu Feelmore, the President? No? Ah, what a fine man! You saw that he had his heart actually in his hand! Well, one day he said to me here, when I told him of the Baptistery echo, 'We have the finest echo in the world in the Hall of Congress.' I said nothing, but for answer I merely howled a little,--thus! Moshu Feelmore was convinced. Said he, 'There is no other echo in the world besides this. You are right.' I am unique," pursued the cicerone, "for making this echo. But," he added with a sigh, "it has been my ruin. The English have put me in all the guide-books, and sometimes I have to howl twenty times a day. When our Victor Emanuel came here, I showed him the church, the tower, and the Campo Santo. Says the king, 'Pfui!'"--here the cicerone gave that sweeping, outward motion with both hands by which Italians dismiss a trifling subject,--"'make me the echo!' I was forced," concluded the cicerone, with a strong sense of injury in his tone, "to howl half an hour without ceasing."

II.

COMO.

My visit to Lake Como has become to me a dream of summer,--a vision that remains faded the whole year round, till the blazing heats of July bring out the sympathetic tints in which it was vividly painted. Then I behold myself again in burning Milan, amidst noises and fervors and bustle that seem intolerable after my first six months in tranquil, cool, mute Venice. Looking at the great white Cathedral, with its infinite pinnacles piercing the cloudless blue, and gathering the fierce sun upon it, I half expect to see the whole mass calcined by the heat, and crumbling, statue by statue, finial by finial, arch by arch, into a vast heap of lime on the Piazza, with a few charred English tourists blackening here and there upon the ruin, and contributing a smell of burnt leather and Scotch tweed to the horror of the scene. All round Milan smokes the great Lombard plain, and to the north rises Monte Rosa, her dark head coifed with tantalizing snows as with a peasant's white linen kerchief. And I am walking out upon that fuming plain as far as to the Arco della Pace, on which the bronze horses may melt any minute; or I am sweltering through the city's noonday streets, in search of Sant' Ambrogio, or the Cenacolo of Da Vinci, or what know I? Coming back to our hotel, "Alla Bella Venezia," and greeted on entering by the immense fresco which covers one whole side of the court, it appeared to my friend and me no wonder that Garibaldi should look so longingly from the prow of a gondola toward the airy towers and balloon-like domes that swim above the unattainable lagoons of Venice, where the Austrian then lorded it in coolness and quietness, while hot, red-shirted Italy was shut out upon the dusty plains and stony hills. Our desire for water became insufferable; we paid our modest bills, and at six o'clock we took the train for Como, where we arrived about the hour when Don Abbondio, walking down the lonely path with his book of devotions in his hand, gave himself to the Devil on meeting the bravos of Don Rodrigo. I counsel the reader to turn to _I Promessi Sposi_, if he would know how all the lovely Como country looks at that hour. For me, the ride through the evening landscape, and the faint sentiment of pensiveness provoked by the smell of the ripening maize, which exhales the same sweetness on the way to Como that it does on any Ohio bottom-land, have given me an appetite, and I am to dine before wooing the descriptive Muse.

After dinner, we find at the door of the hotel an English architect whom we know, and we take a boat together for a moonlight row upon the lake, and voyage far up the placid water through air that bathes our heated senses like dew. How far we have left Milan behind! On the lake lies the moon, but the hills are held by mysterious shadows, which for the time are as substantial to us as the hills themselves. Hints of habitation appear in the twinkling lights along the water's edge, and we suspect an alabaster lamp in every casement, and in every invisible house a villa such as Claude Melnotte described to Pauline, and some one mouths that well-worn fustian. The rags of sentimentality flutter from every crag and olive-tree and orange-tree in all Italy,--like the wilted paper collars which vulgar tourists leave by our own mountains and streams, to commemorate their enjoyment of the landscape.

The town of Como lies, a swarm of lights, behind us; the hills and shadows gloom around; the lake is a sheet of tremulous silver. There is no telling how we get back to our hotel, or with what satisfied hearts we fall asleep in our room there. The steamer starts for the head of the lake at eight o'clock in the morning, and we go on board at that hour.

There is some pretence of shelter in the awning stretched over the after part of the boat; but we do not feel the need of it in the fresh morning air, and we get as near the bow as possible, that we may be the very first to enjoy the famous beauty of the scenes opening before us. A few sails dot the water, and everywhere there are small, canopied row-boats, such as we went pleasuring in last night. We reach a bend in the lake, and all the roofs and towers of the city of Como pass from view, as if they had been so much architecture painted on a scene and shifted out of sight at a theatre. But other roofs and towers constantly succeed them, not less lovely and picturesque than they, with every curve of the many-curving lake. We advance over charming expanses of water lying between lofty hills; and as the lake is narrow, the voyage is like that of a winding river,--like that of the Ohio, but for the primeval wildness of the acclivities that guard our Western stream, and the tawniness of its current. Wherever the hills do not descend sheer into Como, a pretty town nestles on the brink, or, if not a town, then a villa, or else a cottage, if there is room for nothing more. Many little towns climb the heights half-way, and where the hills are green and cultivated in vines or olives, peasants' houses scale them to the crest. They grow loftier and loftier as we leave our starting-place farther behind, and as we draw near Colico they wear light wreaths of cloud and snow. So cool a breeze has drawn down between them all the way that we fancy it to have come from them till we stop at Colico, and find that, but for the efforts of our honest engine, sweating and toiling in the dark below, we should have had no current of air. A burning calm is in the atmosphere, and on the broad, flat valley,--out of which a marshy stream oozes into the lake,--and on the snow-crowned hills upon the left, and on the dirty village of Colico upon the right, and on the indolent beggars waiting to welcome us, and sunning their goitres at the landing.

The name Colico, indeed, might be literally taken in English as descriptive of the local insalubrity. The place was once large, but it has fallen away much from sickness, and we found a bill posted in its public places inviting emigrants to America on the part of a German steamship company. It was the only advertisement of the kind I ever saw in Italy, and I judged that the people must be notoriously discontented there to make it worth the while of a steamship company to tempt from home any of the home-keeping Italian race. And yet Colico, though undeniably hot, and openly dirty, and tacitly unhealthy, had merits, though the dinner we got there was not among its virtues. It had an accessible country about it; that is, its woods and fields were not impenetrably walled in from the vagabond foot, and after we had dined we went and lay down under some greenly waving trees beside a field of corn, and heard the plumed and panoplied maize talking to itself of its kindred in America. It always has a welcome for tourists of our nation wherever it finds us in Italy, and sometimes its sympathy, expressed in a rustling and clashing of its long green blades, or in its strong, sweet perfume, has, as already hinted, made me homesick; though I have been uniformly unaffected by potato-patches and tobacco-fields. If only the maize could impart to the Italian cooks the beautiful mystery of roasting-ears! Ah! then indeed it might claim a full and perfect fraternization from its compatriots abroad.

From where we lay beside the cornfield, we could see, through the twinkling leaves and the twinkling atmosphere, the great hills across the lake, taking their afternoon naps, with their clouds drawn like handkerchiefs over their heads. It was very hot, and the red and purple ooze of the unwholesome river below "burnt like a witch's oils." It was indeed but a fevered joy we snatched from nature there; and I am afraid that we got nothing more comfortable from sentiment, when, rising, we wandered off through the unguarded fields toward a ruined tower on a hill. It must have been a relic of feudal times, and perhaps in the cool season it is haunted by the wicked spirits of such lords as used to rule in the terror of the people beside peaceful and happy Como. But in summer no ghost, however sultrily appointed in the other world, could feel it an object to revisit that ruined tower. A few scrawny blackberries and other brambles grew out of its fallen stones; harsh, dust-dry mosses painted its weather-worn walls with their blanched gray and yellow. From its foot, looking out over the valley, we saw the road to the Splügen Pass lying white-hot in the valley; and while we looked, the diligence appeared, and dashed through the dust that rose like a flame before. After that it was a relief to stroll in dirty by-ways, past cottages of saffron peasants, and poor stony fields that begrudged them a scanty vegetation, back to the steamer blistering in the sun.

Now indeed we were glad of the awning, under which a silent crowd of people with sunburnt faces waited for the departure of the boat. The breeze rose again as the engine resumed its unappreciated labors, and, with our head toward Como, we pushed out into the lake. The company on board was such as might be expected. There was a German landscape-painter, with three heart's-friends beside him; there were some German ladies; there were the unfailing Americans and the unfailing Englishman; there were some French people; there were Italians from the meridional provinces, dark, thin, and enthusiastic, with fat, silent wives, and a rhythmical speech; there were Milanese with their families, out for a holiday,--round-bodied men, with blunt, square features, and hair and vowels clipped surprisingly short; there was a young girl whose face was of the exact type affected in rococo sculpture, and at whom one gazed without being able to decide whether she was a nymph descended from a villa gate, or a saint come from under a broken arch in a Renaissance church. At one of the little towns two young Englishmen in knickerbockers came on board, who were devoured by the eyes of their fellow-passengers, and between whom and our kindly architect there was instantly ratified the tacit treaty of non-intercourse which travelling Englishmen observe.

Nothing further interested us on the way to Como, except the gathering coolness of the evening air; the shadows creeping higher and higher on the hills; the songs of the girls winding yellow silk on the reels that hummed through the open windows of the factories on the shore; and the appearance of a flag that floated from a shallop before the landing of a stately villa. The Italians did not know this banner, and the Germans loudly debated its nationality. The Englishmen grinned, and the Americans blushed in silence. Of all my memories of that hot day on Lake Como, this is burnt the deepest; for the flag was that insolent banner which in 1862 proclaimed us a broken people, and persuaded willing Europe of our ruin. It has gone down long ago from ship and fort and regiment, and they who used to flaunt it so gayly in Europe probably pawned it later in the cheap towns of South France, whither so much chivalry retired when wealth was to be wrung from slaves no more forever. Still, I say, it made Como too hot for us that afternoon, and even breathless Milan was afterwards a pleasant contrast.

III.

TRIESTE.

If you take the midnight steamer at Venice you reach Trieste by six o'clock in the morning, and the hills rise to meet you as you enter the broad bay dotted with the sail of fishing-craft. The hills are bald and bare, and you find, as you draw near, that the city lies at their feet under a veil of mist, or climbs earlier into view along their sides. The prospect is singularly devoid of gentle and pleasing features, and looking at those rugged acclivities, with their aspect of continual bleakness, you readily believe all the stories you have ever heard of that fierce wind called the Bora, which sweeps from them through Trieste at certain seasons. While it blows, ladies walking near the quays are sometimes caught up and set afloat, involuntary Galateas, in the bay, and people keep in-doors as much as possible. But the Bora, though so sudden and so savage, does give warning of its rise, and the peasants avail themselves of this characteristic. They station a man on one of the mountain-tops, and when he feels the first breath of the Bora, he sounds a horn, which is a signal for all within hearing to lay hold of something that cannot be blown away, and cling to it till the wind falls. This may happen in three days or in nine, according to the popular proverbs. "The spectacle of the sea," says Dall' Ongaro, in a note to one of his ballads, "while the Bora blows, is sublime, and when it ceases the prospect of the surrounding hills is delightful. The air, purified by the rapid current, clothes them with a rosy veil, and the temperature is instantly softened, even in the heart of winter."