Chapter III: Part 3

From Pompeii the summit may be made--on horseback as far as the foot of the cone--in about three hours. The railway on the Portici side ascends to the outside rim of the crater, within which, separated by fissured slabs of lava, which a yard below the surface yet glow with living fire, the main chimney or flue of the volcano rises some hundreds of feet higher. On the eastern side, below the rim, a lava stream of considerable magnitude had burst forth at the time of my visit, and was issuing with a fierce hissing sound. Its course could be traced down the slopes of the mountain for the distance of a mile. Its movement, at first quite rapid, was soon checked by the cooling effect of the atmosphere. The operations of the crater at this time were extremely interesting. Near the base of the finial cone a small secondary volcanic funnel had recently been formed, which sometimes almost silenced with its screeching and blubber the thunderous rumbling within the main chimney. Neither of the active craters could be approached with safety, but they made no objections to being looked at, and so, dismissing my guide, I remained about two hours on the summit, watching their antics. Sometimes the smaller crater, or safety-valve, as it seemed to be, would work itself up to a perfect frenzy of hysterical hissing and shrieking, as though all the misery of a hundred colicky locomotives were venting itself in one prolonged scream. During such spells the red liquid lava would bubble over the rim for a time, like the boiling of an overfilled pot; then suddenly some explosive interior force would throw it into the air in a sheaf of beautiful red spray, rising and descending in graceful parabolas all around the cone. After this performance, the little fellow would subside and keep tolerably quiet for ten minutes or so, when it would be seized with another paroxysm.

The larger crater, though also intermittent, was more progressive and less fidgety in its action. Its behavior had the dignified air of regular business, while the safety-valve demeaned itself more as a transient upstart, impatient of attracting popular attention. The masses of steam and smoke issuing from the main orifice were somewhat irregular, both in quantity and velocity, their increase in both respects being always accompanied by louder and more rapid interior explosions. At the moments of greatest activity showers of stones and lumps of red lava were hurled into the air to heights varying from three hundred to one thousand feet, and, descending, rolled rattling and smoking down the yellow, sulphurous sides of the cone. The spectacle was terrifically sublime at times, particularly when the safety-valve chimed in with its screaming accompaniment, and flung aloft its _jet-d'eau_-like pyrotechnics. The missiles projected from the main crater soared at an angle of about fifty degrees, and almost uniformly in the same direction, so that they fell on territory of which the spectator, looking on from the opposite point of the compass, was quite willing to accord monopoly of possession, with a liberal margin for unadjusted boundary.

As sunset approached, and the shades of evening were beginning to add new touches of grandeur to the sublime spectacle, I took leave of it reluctantly, and, with Brobdingnagian strides down the volcanic ash-heap, descended in not more than seven minutes a space which it had once cost me a weary half-hour and the help of two guides to climb. Three hours later the red currents of lava could be seen from my window in Naples, glittering far away in the darkness, and streaking the black sides of the volcano like descending streams of molten gold.

MOUNT ETNA IN ERUPTION.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

[It is not Etna in one of its gigantic throes of eruption that
we propose to describe. The traveller whose story of the mountain
we append was not fortunate enough to witness such a spectacle.
But he saw it in a minor phase of activity, and describes the
vision so well that his account is well worth repeating. It was
on his way from Malta to Sicily that he first caught sight of
the volcano, ninety miles away, rising in solitary state behind
the nearer mountains. He continued his course till abreast of
Syracuse, "with Etna as distant as ever."]

The fourth morning dawned, and--great Neptune be praised!--we were actually within the Gulf of Catania. Etna loomed up in all his sublime bulk, unobscured by cloud or mist, while a slender jet of smoke, rising from his crater, was slowly curling its wreaths in the clear air, as if happy to receive the first beam of the sun. The towers of Syracuse, which had mocked us all the preceding day, were no longer visible; the land-locked little port of Augusta lay behind us; and, as the wind continued favorable, ere long we saw a faint white mark at the foot of the mountain. This was Catania.

The shores of the bay were enlivened with orange-groves and the gleam of the villages, while here and there a single palm dreamed of its brothers across the sea. Etna, of course, had the monarch's place in the landscape, but even his large, magnificent outlines could not usurp all my feelings. The purple peaks to the westward and farther inland had a beauty of their own, and in the gentle curves with which they leaned towards each other there was a promise of the flowery meadows of Enna....

Catania presented a lovely picture as we drew near its harbor. Planted at the very foot of Etna, it has a background such as neither Naples nor Genoa can boast. The hills next the sea are covered with gardens and orchards, sprinkled with little villages and the country-places of the nobles,--a rich, cultured landscape, which gradually merges into the forests of oak and chestnut that girdle the waist of the great volcano. But all the wealth of southern vegetation cannot hide the footsteps of that Ruin, which from time to time visits the soil. Half-way up the mountain-side is dotted with cones of ashes and cinders, some covered with the scanty shrubbery which centuries have called forth, some barren and recent; while two dark, winding streams of sterile lava descend to the very shore, where they stand congealed in ragged needles and pyramids. Part of one of these black floods has swept the town, and, tumbling into the sea, walls one side of the port.

[What shall we say of Catania? It has not dwelt at the foot of
Mount Etna with impunity, but has been more than once destroyed.
During the week of Mr. Taylor's visit the centennial festival of
St. Agatha, the miracles of whose martyrdom had here their scene,
took place. This saint still performs miracles, "and her power
is equally efficacious in preventing earthquakes and eruptions
of Mount Etna." The festival was brilliant in illuminations and
pyrotechnic displays.]

Truly, except the illumination of the Golden Horn on the Night of Predestination, I have seen nothing equal to the spectacle presented by Catania during the past three nights. The city, which has been built up from her ruins more stately than ever, was in a blaze of light, all her domes, towers, and the long lines of her beautiful palaces revealed in the varying red and golden flames of a hundred thousand lamps and torches. Pyramids of fire, transparencies, and illuminated triumphal arches filled the four principal streets, and the fountain in the cathedral square gleamed like a jet of molten silver, spinning up from one of the pores of Etna. At ten o'clock a gorgeous display of fireworks closed the day's festivities, but the lamps remained burning nearly all night.

On the second night the grand Procession of the Veil took place. I witnessed the imposing spectacle from the balcony of Prince Gessina's palace. Long lines of waxen torches led the way, followed by a military band, and then a company of the highest prelates in their most brilliant costumes, surrounding the bishop, who walked under a canopy of silk and gold, bearing the miraculous veil of St. Agatha. I was blessed with a distant view of it, but could see no traces of the rosy hue left upon it by the flames of the saint's martyrdom....

To-night Signor Scava, the American vice-consul, took me to the palace of Prince Biscari, overlooking the harbor, in order to behold the grand display of fireworks from the end of the mole. The showers of rockets and colored stars, and the temples of blue and silver fire, were repeated in the dark, quiet bosom of the sea, producing the most dazzling and startling effects....

Among the antiquities of Catania which I have visited are the Amphitheatre, capable of holding fifteen thousand persons, the old Greek Theatre, in which Alcibiades made his noted harangue to the Catanians, the Odeon, and the ancient baths. The theatre, which is in tolerable preservation, is built of lava, like many of the modern edifices in the city. The baths proved to me, what I had supposed, that the Oriental bath of the present day is identical with that of the ancients. Why so admirable an institution has never been introduced into Europe is more than I can tell. From the pavement of these baths, which is nearly twenty feet below the surface of the earth, the lava of later eruptions has burst up, in places, in hard black jets. The most wonderful token of that flood which whelmed Catania two hundred years ago is to be seen at the grand Benedictine convent of San Nicola, in the upper part of the city. Here the stream of lava divides itself just before the convent, and flows past on both sides, leaving the buildings and garden untouched. The marble courts, the fountains, the splendid galleries, and the gardens of richest Southern bloom and fragrance stand like an epicurean island in the midst of the terrible stony waves, whose edges bristle with the thorny aloe and cactus....

The noises of the festival had not ceased when I closed my eyes at midnight. I slept soundly through the night, but was awakened before sunrise by my Sicilian landlord. "Oh, Excellenza! have you heard the Mountain? He is going to break out again; may the holy St. Agatha protect us!"

It is rather ill-timed on the part of the Mountain, was my involuntary first thought, that he should choose for a new eruption precisely the centennial festival of the only saint who is supposed to have any power over him. It shows a disregard of female influence not at all suited to the present day, and I scarcely believe that he seriously means it. Next comes along the jabbering landlady: "I don't like his looks. It was just so the last time. Come, Excellenza, you can see him from the back terrace."

The sun was not yet risen, but the east was bright with his coming, and there was not a cloud in the sky. All the features of Etna were sharply sculptured in the clear air. From the topmost cone a thick stream of white smoke was slowly puffed out at short intervals, and rolled lazily down the eastern side. It had a heavy, languid character, and I should have thought nothing of the appearance but for the alarm of my hosts. It was like the slow fire of earth's incense burning on that grand mountain altar.

I hurried off to the post-office to await the arrival of the diligence from Palermo. The office is in the Strada Etnea, the main street of Catania, which runs straight through the city from the sea to the base of the mountain whose peak closes the long vista. The diligence was an hour later than usual, and I passed the time in watching the smoke, which continued to increase in volume, and was mingled, from time to time, with jets of inky blackness. The postilion said he had seen fires and heard loud noises during the night. According to his account, the disturbances commenced about midnight.

At last we rolled out of Catania. There were in the diligence, besides myself, two men and a woman, Sicilians of the secondary class. The road followed the shore, over rugged tracts of lava, the different epochs of which could be distinctly traced in the character of their vegetation. The last great flow (of 1679) stood piled in long ridges of terrible sterility, barely allowing the aloe and cactus to take root in the hollows between. The older deposits were sufficiently decomposed to nourish the olive and vine, but even here the orchards were studded with pyramids of the harder fragments, which are laboriously collected by the husbandmen. In the few favored spots which have been untouched for so many ages that a tolerable depth of soil has accumulated, the vegetation has all the richness and brilliancy of tropical lands. The palm, orange, and pomegranate thrive luxuriantly, and the vines almost break under their heavy clusters. The villages are frequent and well-built, and the hills are studded, far and near, with the villas of rich proprietors, mostly buildings of one story, with verandas extending their whole length. Looking up towards Etna, whose base the road encircles, the views are gloriously rich and beautiful. On the other hand is the blue Mediterranean and the irregular outline of the shore, here and there sending forth promontories of lava, cooled by the waves into the most fantastic forms.

We had not proceeded far before a new sign called my attention to the mountain. Not only was there a perceptible jar or vibration in the earth, but a dull, groaning sound, like the muttering of distant thunder, began to be heard. The smoke increased in volume, and, as we advanced farther to the eastward, and much nearer to the great cone, I perceived that it consisted of two jets issuing from different mouths. A broad stream of very dense white smoke still flowed over the lip of the topmost crater and down the eastern side. As its breadth did not vary, and the edges were distinctly defined, it was no doubt the sulphureous vapor rising from a river of molten lava. Perhaps a thousand yards below a much stronger column of mingled black and white smoke gushed up in regular beats or pants from a depression in the mountain-side, between two small extinct cones. All this part of Etna was scarred with deep chasms, and in the bottoms of those nearest the opening I could see the red gleam of fire. The air was perfectly still, and as yet there was no cloud in the sky.

When we stopped to change horses at the town of Aci Reale, I first felt the violence of the tremor and the awful sternness of the sound. The smoke by this time seemed to be gathering on the side towards Catania, and hung in a dark mass about half-way down the mountain. Groups of the villagers were gathered in the streets which looked upward to Etna and discussing the chances of an eruption. "Ah," said an old peasant, "the Mountain knows how to make himself respected. When he talks, everybody listens." The sound was the most awful that ever met my ears. It was a hard, painful moan, now and then fluttering like a suppressed sob, and had, at the same time, an expression of threatening and of agony. It did not come from Etna alone. It had no fixed location; it pervaded all space. It was in the air, in the depths of the sea, in the earth under my feet, everywhere, in fact; and as it continued to increase in violence I experienced a sensation of positive pain. The people looked anxious and alarmed, although they said it was a good thing for all Sicily; the last year they had been in constant fear from earthquakes, and an eruption invariably left the earth quiet for several years. It is true that during the past year parts of Sicily and Calabria have been visited with severe shocks, occasioning much damage to property. A merchant of this city [Messina] informed me yesterday that his whole family had slept for two months in the vaults of his warehouse, fearing that their residence might be shaken down in the night.

As we rode along from Aci Reale to Taormina, all the rattling of the diligence over the rough road could not drown the awful noise. There was a strong smell of sulphur in the air, and the thick pants of smoke from the lower crater continued to increase in strength. The sun was fierce and hot, and the edges of the sulphureous clouds shone with a dazzling whiteness. A mounted soldier overtook us, and rode beside the diligence, talking with the postilion. He had been up to the mountain, and was taking his report to the governor of the district.

The heat of the day and the continued tremor of the air lulled me into a sort of doze, when I was suddenly aroused by a cry from the soldier and the stopping of the diligence. At the same time there was a terrific peal of sound, followed by a jar that must have shaken the whole island. We looked up to Etna, which was fortunately in full view before us. An immense mass of snow-white smoke had burst up from the crater, and was rising perpendicularly into the air, the rounded volumes rapidly whirling one over the other, yet urged with such impetus that they only rolled outward after they had ascended to an immense height. It might have been one minute or five, for I was so entranced by this wonderful spectacle that I lost the sense of time, but it seemed instantaneous (so rapid and violent were the effects of the explosion), when there stood in the air, based on the summit of the mountain, a mass of smoke four or five miles high, and shaped precisely like the Italian pine-tree.

Words cannot paint the grandeur of this mighty tree. Its trunk of columned smoke, one side of which was silvered by the sun, while the other, in shadow, was lurid with red flame, rose for more than a mile before it sent out its cloudy boughs. Then parting into a thousand streams, each of which again threw out its branching tufts of smoke, rolling and waving in the air, it stood in intense relief against the dark blue of the sky. Its rounded masses of foliage were dazzlingly white on one side, while, in the shadowy depths of the branches, there was a constant play of brown, yellow, and crimson tints, revealing the central shaft of fire. It was like the tree celebrated in the Scandinavian sagas, as seen by the mother of Harold Hardrada,--that tree whose roots pierced through the earth, whose trunk was of the color of blood, and whose branches filled the uttermost corners of the heavens.

The outburst seemed to have relieved the mountain, for the tremors were now less violent, though the terrible noise still droned in the air, and earth, and sea. And now, from the base of the tree, three white streams slowly crept into as many separate chasms, against the walls of which played the flickering glow of the burning lava. The column of smoke and flame was still hurled upward, and the tree, after standing about ten minutes,--a new and awful revelation of the active forces of nature,--gradually rose and spread, lost its form, and, slowly moved by a light wind (the first that disturbed the dead calm of the day), bent over to the eastward.

We resumed our course. The vast belt of smoke at last arched over the strait, here about twenty miles wide, and sank towards the distant Calabrian shore. As we drove under it, for some miles of our way, the sun was totally obscured, and the sky presented the singular spectacle of two hemispheres of clear blue, with a broad belt of darkness drawn between them. There was a hot, sulphureous vapor in the air, and showers of white ashes fell from time to time. We were distant about twelve miles, in a straight line, from the crater, but the air was so clear, even under the shadow of the smoke, that I could distinctly trace the downward movement of the rivers of lava.

This was the eruption, at last, to which all the phenomena of the morning had been only preparatory. For the first time in ten years the depths of Etna had been stirred, and I thanked God for my detention at Malta, and the singular hazard of travel which had brought me here, to his very base, to witness a scene the impression of which I shall never lose to my dying day. Although the eruption may continue, and the mountain pour forth fiercer fires and broader tides of lava, I cannot but think that the first upheaval, which lets out the long-imprisoned forces, will not be equalled in grandeur by any later spectacle.

After passing Taormina, our road led us under the hills of the coast, and although I occasionally caught glimpses of Etna, and saw the reflection of fire from the lava which was filling up his savage ravines, the smoke at last encircled his waist, and he was then shut out of sight by the intervening mountains. We lost a bolt in the deep valley opening to the sea, and during our stoppage I could still hear the groans of the mountain, though farther off and less painful to the ear. As evening came on, the beautiful hills of Calabria, with white towns and villages on their sides, gleamed in the purple light of the setting sun. We drove around headland after headland, till the strait opened, and we looked over the harbor of Messina to Cape Faro and the distant islands of the Tyrrhene Sea.

PLEBEIAN LIFE IN VENICE.

HORACE ST. JOHN.

[Venice is not all made up of palaces and patricians, not all
bronze and marble, pictures and statuary. Out of the range of all
this, unseen by the ordinary traveller, lies another and humbler
Venice, where the poor pass their straitened lives, but which has
a character and attraction of its own, worthy of being seen and
described. We give St. John's story of discovery in this realm of
what he calls "vulgar Venice."]

It may not be a discovery, but it is a fact not often noticed, that there is an every-day Venice which is decidedly vulgar,--which means that it is not all Rialto, Bridge of Sighs, Grand Canal, or Doge's Palace. But, to judge from poems, pictures, and tourists, the city is one beautiful dream, of marble and bronze, of jasper and vermilion, of pictures and the sculptor's breathing models. The temptation is, no doubt, seducing to pass all your time where the great columns stand, where the bronze horses, near St. Mark's, glow with all the colors of the sunset, and where that strangely composed young girl shows you through the horrible labyrinths of the state prison.

Yet there is another Venice which artists rarely touch, as if all low life were confined to the Low Countries, where they are eager enough to sketch fish-stalls and kitchens by the light of "single candle" Schendel. And this Venice has not a solitary element of romance or beauty about it. Step into the "omnibus gondola"--the very thought is enough to obliterate an epic of enthusiasm--and it will land you where the Venetians lead their common lives, without any Byron to bewail them. The songless gondoliers of these public boats are a miserable set of folk. They never save anything; their fathers never saved anything before them; but they keep up their spirits notwithstanding. Thus, between Giacomo passing Beppo, "Good luck to you!" "Thanks!" "Be hanged, you and your thanks!" Or, "Many patrons?" "Many." "You and your patrons be hanged!" These affectionate greetings are universal.

But the grimy gondola has stopped, and the buying and selling quarter has been reached. No stately ladies, or very few, here "serpentining," as Balzac says, whatever he may mean, along the pavement, and not too many of the white-bodiced damsels, who look so graceful on canvas, as if they were always clean and dark Madonnas into the bargain; because, to tell the truth, these ladies are accustomed, in warm weather, to lay aside those pretty bodices, and work in an attire at once more light and more loose. They are exceedingly busy, and the scene is wonderfully animated.

Venice, providing its dinner, has been compared with a huge ship in port, taking in provisions. Padua and Vicenza have brought their corn and oil; the islands have sent their indescribably superb fruit; Friuli, Istria, Illyria, and the Turkish Archipelago contribute grain, meat, game, conserves, and pickles; Austria, Hungary, and Dalmatia supply wine, which is diluted, by the humbler sort of consumers, with sea water, which the "stick girls," so called from the yokes they carry on their shoulders, bring about. They are from Friuli, whose snow-white summits are just visible from here,--and striking enough they are in their bright bodices, short blue or green skirts, with red borders, and white Calabrian hats, daintily tipped on one side, in order that the massive gold hair ornaments or polished steel pins may be admired. But these charming water-carriers are despised; they live apart from the other inhabitants; and not a Venetian will ever marry one of them. Still, they often return to their mountains, tolerably rich, and their Titian faces are quite as proud with scorn of the Venetians as those of Venetians are for them.

However, it is market-time, which must not be wasted upon international antipathies. Nearly everything in Venice is sold, and nearly everything eatable is eaten, among the inferior classes, in the open air,--polenta, beef, mutton, fish, frying, grilling, roasting, and perpetually passing hot into the hands of the _al fresco_ customers. It is generally very good; but best of all is the bread made "on the Continent" expressly for Venice, in the incomparable little district of Piava. Armed with a "tasting order," which a few of the smallest coins imaginable will command, you pass through the hungry throng. This is soup, by no means bad, at two-thirds of a half-penny the basin. That is calves'-head; these are lamb- and pork-chops, with heart and tripe, the savor whereof is suggestive of ancient sacrifices.

Some of the people keep stalls; others shops, without doors or windows. It appears odd to a stranger, upon entering a wine-hall, to be offered a plateful of highly-salted mutton, a comestible which everybody appears to be devouring. After it a service of fish, the entire flavor of which has been absorbed in brine. Then you are ready to drink; but the wine is salted also! There are two delicacies, however, in which persons of every degree delight, and which induce the denizens of the opulent quarter to bring their nobility here. The first is a small white biscuit, made of the most exquisite flour and fresh butter, so speckless, light, and fragile that they crumble at a rough touch, and will not keep longer than twelve hours. Who wants to feast upon them, then, must come to the oven, and, tenderly handling the _bianchetti_, dip them in the wine of Cyprus, and believe in solid ambrosia. The second rarity--uniqueness I would say, if there were such a word--is a little fish, fried in oil, which is sold from morning till night, all through the season. You shall see a maiden of Venice, gloved like a Parisian, "well knotted," elegant of costume, and in air patrician, buy two pennyworth of these dainties,--the whitebait of Italy,--smelling of oil, fire, and the frying-pan, wrap them in paper, take them to a cabaret, sit down, and relish them unmistakably over a flask of Cyprus. She is never alone, however, but accompanied by an escort, who is stamped a gentleman by that sign infallible in Venice, whether or not it be so elsewhere,--his dress. At the same table may be seated, possibly, the very fisherman who provided the banquet.

But what is the meaning of the phrase just used, "well knotted"? Let her wear the richest silk ever spun in Italy, and the haughtiest Hungarian hat, with its aigrette of a dove's wing, your Venetian lady of blue blood is not distinguishable, except by what she has upon her neck. And this is a gold chain, of apparently countless links, beautifully brilliant, with that reddish tinge which has so often been the perplexity of painters, though Titian mastered it, as he did everything else; and falling from the throat is gathered in a coil at the waist, where, the larger and heavier the knot, the higher the patent of social splendor.

Though I am not concerned at present with the aristocracy of the sea-born city, still, if lofty dames will eat little fishes in a market-place, they cannot complain of personalities, should the remark be made that some are dark as ever Giorgione or Carpaccio painted; while others, to borrow the ejaculation of a rapturous wanderer from Paris, who was not really in a rapture, and who, of course, did not mean what he was saying, might be mistaken for the daughters of Aurora, a contrast reminding you of Adam's two wives in the Talmud.

But madame has finished her _gouter_, and, once more taking a liberty with my Frenchman, I remark that she "undulates always with an appearance of perfect satisfaction." She will not be seen here again until the same freak of appetite seizes her. For, as a rule, the lower classes--as, indeed, they do everywhere--have their own neighborhoods to themselves, though in Venice, naturally, owing to the peculiarity of its position, there are subdivisions. The workmen and artificers and traders are quite distinct from the boatmen and fishermen, upon whom they look with contempt, and with whom they were formerly in a state of incessant feud. The former wear red caps and belts; the belts and caps of the latter are entirely either black or blue, the capes having tassels of the same color, which give an Oriental character to a Venetian crowd.

And here a curious point occurs. Your great lady prides herself upon the knot in her gold chain; your fisherman or ferryman wears a scarf round his neck, and the bigger the knot he can tie the prouder he is of himself. Again, the gondoliers have their grades of rank. The lords of the black "water broughams," as some one very much in want of a smart saying termed them, are in the service of private families, and hold themselves ready for orders like coachmen. The second degree is composed--to carry on the analogy--of the canal cabmen, who live upon chance, upon travellers, and upon Romeos and Juliets, whenever these young persons are engaged in adventure. Lastly, there are the gondoliers with fixed stations and fixed destinations, ferrymen who float to and fro. But they are all very important to Venice. They are the links of its life; for, singularly enough, it has not bridges enough, and in this respect is utterly unlike Amsterdam, with which it is so often and so absurdly compared. If, however, they swear at one another, they swear at the railway in a chorus. It is rarely, in these days, that any good luck befalls them. Now and then, to be sure, a music and singing party, dizzy with the juice of the Dalmatian grape, attempt to wake the echoes of Tasso among the lagoons, or two fond fools, fresh from their nuptials in the north, glide over the moonlit sea, regardless of expense, and look at life through the stars; yet such Jessica evenings are few and far between, and the Venetian gondoliers, seen by daylight, look like anything rather than Fenimore Cooper's hero, or even a daub in a Canaletti canvas. Still, his ancient art has not deserted him, and he can push his craft along at a wonderful speed.

There is one peculiarity about them which the stranger does not readily understand. They speak as though their language was as limpid as the water on which they live, and made up almost entirely of vowels. You wish to be set ashore at the steps of the "Luna" hotel? Certainly; your gondolier knows the "Una" hotel perfectly well. He has another characteristic, not quite so uncommon: he is an unblushing cheat. His Venetian customers pay him tenpence, when you, being a stranger, must pay him half a crown, which is an Italian method of expressing patriotism, I suppose. Yet he is continually to be found upon his knees before the altar, and has a patron of his own, whom he invokes upon every necessary or unnecessary occasion.

From him I turn for a moment to another type,--the _ciceroni_,--only, however, to mention a single example. She was a young girl who undertook to show the visitor, fresh from the glories of the ducal palace, through the black labyrinths of the ducal prison. She took two wax tapers, lighted them, gave him one, keeping the other herself, and jingled a great bunch of keys. Then the really pretty and graceful maiden led the way down a worn, slippery, dark staircase, up another across the Bridge of Sighs, down again, telling all the way fearful legends of the place, and plunged deeper into the shadowy recesses at every step.

"Are you not afraid?" she is asked.

"A Venetian girl feels no fear," is her answer.

That is a terrible interior, however, with its range upon range of hideous cells; but worst of all is a vault, without a spark of natural light in it, which seems as if dug in the rock. Its roof is stained by lampblack; its walls bear traces of clamps and chains. "Here the secret executions took place; here the son of a doge was beheaded for daring to love a foreign lady. Only great criminals--that is, great lords--were put to death here." I wonder whether this tender turnkey, if she had prisoners under her charge, would be pitiless to them. There is something painful in the contrast between such a gaol and such a gaoler.

Leaving her, you pass across the square with its corner group of beggars, its swarm of bare-headed children, its clusters of boys with their hair flowing wild, and their brown necks and chests exposed, who give you an idea that they are expecting their photographs to be taken, but who, nevertheless, bake themselves in the sun languidly enough, and act upon the national maxim, "_bisogna stare allegro_." There is but a solitary influence which can rouse your true Venetian to a state of excitement, and that is the presence of death. Rich or poor, he hates it; rich, he rides or rows away to the farthest possible distance; poor, he hides, if he can, until the object of his abhorrence is removed. Somehow these vagrants of the island city never starve. They earn, by one means or another, sufficient for the day, which signifies sufficient for dinner,--two pennyworth of fish, ready cooked, as already described; one pennyworth of soup, and one of bread; and it may be suspected that women and girls do a principal part of whatever work is done in Venice at all.

You turn into a sequestered nook, resembling one of the smaller courts opening upon Fleet Street, and a number of damsels, without dulcimers, are chattering or singing. These are the pearl-threaders, for pearl-threading is a universal occupation, just as embroidery was at one time in England. The wealthy do it for amusement, the humbler classes for gain, of which, as I have said, a very little goes a long way. It is a popular saying, "You may die of love or hatred in Venice, but not of hunger;" still, you see many ragged, hollow-eyed, and pallid wretches, who, in former days, might have been mistaken for lottery-hunters; but those times, happily, have passed away, though they presented a spectacle sufficiently interesting four or five years ago....

Some one has compared Venice to a page of music, with its curious streets, palaces, museums, canals, and bridges; resembling lines, notes, double notes, points, crotchets, pauses; its long and straight, its short, narrow and crooked ways; its open spaces scattered up and down; its mounting and descending of bridges. I cannot myself see the truth of the comparison; but so much may be readily admitted,--that the stranger can easily lose his way, and not easily find it again, in this maze of land and water, worse than Amsterdam. Unless, however, the wanderer has some business on hand, the very best way to see Venice is to be lost in it; because then, instead of the regulation round of sights, a thousand unexpected novelties strike the eye, in the narrow, ill-paved, and generally noiseless streets that intersect the islands, though the hoof of a horse or rumbling of a wheel is never heard in them.

Opening upon these dingy and tortuous thoroughfares are many of those back entrances to the mansions of the opulent, which play so prominent a part in romance and drama, though, as a rule, they are inhabited by the poorest of the poor to whom an abode is a retreat, not a home,--since their lives are habitually passed out of doors. As for furniture, a bedstead and a huge chest or coffer, with a stool or two, and a small but solid table, constitute the inventory,--if exception be made of the bowls, and spoons, and bread-knives which the inmates carry abroad when they intend to banquet beneath that sky in which Tintoretto and Veronese exulted.

Nothing of marble or mosaic here; nothing of gold or purple; only squalor, such as is never seen in a town of Holland; such as is seldom met with, indeed, anywhere out of Ireland or Italy. The water, however, mingles so intricately with the land that it is impossible to go many steps without coming upon a bridge and a canal,--not the canal of the artist, all blue except where richer tints are reflected by the architecture on either side, but narrow, crooked, overhung by ugly houses, and rather less sweet to the nostrils than becomes a city famous for its love of violets. Hither come the itinerants of the public places when the last loiterers have left the square of St. Mark's and there is no longer a chance of selling fried cakes or fish, salt mutton or salt tripe, mock pearls or gold thread to string them upon; and here my glimpse closes upon Venice, a thousand times described, yet rarely, I think, from this particular point of view.

ATHENS AND ITS TEMPLES.

J. L. T. PHILLIPS.

[To say anything concerning the claims of Athens to the
traveller's attention would be but a waste of words. For the
student of art and architecture it will long remain a place of
pilgrimage. We reproduce here such a student's story of a visit
to the antiquities of Athens. It is the ancient city of which he
speaks; modern Athens has far less to commend it to attention.]

The day is a happy one to the student-traveller from the Western World in which he first looks upon the lovely plain of Athens. Rounding the point where Hymettus thrusts his huge length into the sea, the long, featureless mountain-wall of Southern Attica suddenly breaks down, and gives place to a broad expanse of fertile and well-cultivated soil, sloping gently back with ever-narrowing bounds until it reaches the foot-hills of lofty Pentelicus. The wooded heights of Parnes enclose it on the north, while bald Hymettus rears an impassable barrier along the south. In front of the gently recurved shore stretch the smooth waters of the Gulf of Salamis, while beyond rises range upon range of lofty mountain-peaks with strikingly varied outline, terminating on the one hand in the towering cone of Egina, and on the other in the pyramidal, fir-clad summit of Cithæron.

Upon the plain, at the distance of three or four miles from the sea, are several small rocky hills of picturesque appearance, isolated and seemingly independent, but really parts of a low range parallel to Hymettus. Upon one of the most considerable of these, whose precipitous sides make it a natural fortress, stood the Acropolis, and upon the group of lesser heights around and in the valleys between clustered the dwellings of ancient Athens.

It was a fitting site for the capital of a people keenly sensitive to beauty, and destined to become the leaders of the world in matters of taste, especially in the important department of the Fine Arts. Nowhere are there more charming contrasts of mountain, sea, and plain,--nowhere a more perfect harmony of picturesque effect. The sea is not a dreary waste of waters without bounds, but a smiling gulf mirroring its mountain-walls and winding about embosomed isles, yet ever broadening as it recedes, and suggesting the mighty flood beyond from which it springs. The plain is not an illimitable expanse over which the weary eye ranges in vain in quest of some resting-place, but is so small as to be embraced in its whole contour in a single view, while its separate features--the broad, dense belt of olives which marks the bed of its principal stream, the ancient Cephisus, the vineyards, the grain-fields, and the sunny hill-side pastures--are made to produce their full impression. The mountains are not near enough to be obtrusive, much less oppressive; neither are they so distant as to be indistinct or to seem insignificant. Seen through the clear air, their naked summits are so sharply defined and so individual in appearance as to seem almost like sculptured forms chiselled out of the hard rock....

So the student-pilgrim from the Western World with native ardor strains his sight to catch the first glimpse of the Athenian plain and city. He is fresh from his studies, and familiar with what books teach of the geography of Greece and the topography of Athens. He needs not to be informed which mountain-range is Parnes, and which Pentelicus,--which island is Salamis, and which Egina. Yet much of what he sees is a revelation to him. The mountains are higher, more varied, and more beautiful than he had supposed, Lycabettus and the Acropolis more imposing, Pentelicus farther away, and the plain larger, the gulf narrower, and Egina nearer and more mountainous, than he had fancied. He is astonished at the smallness of the harbor at Peiræus, having insensibly formed his conception of its size from the notices of the mighty fleets which sailed from it in the palmy days when Athens was mistress of the seas. He is not prepared to see the southern shore of Salamis so near to the Peiræus, though it explains the close connection between that island and Athens, and throws some light upon the great naval defeat of the Persians. In short, while every object is recognized as it presents itself, yet a more correct conception is formed of its relative position and aspect from a single glance of the eye than had been acquired from books during years of study.

Arrived at the city, his experience is the same. He needs no guide to conduct him to its antiquities, nor cicerone to explain in bad French or worse English their names and history. Still, unexpected appearances present themselves not unfrequently. Hastening towards the Acropolis, he will first inspect the remains of the great theatre of Dionysus, so familiar to him as the place where, in the presence of all the people and many strangers, were acted the plays of his favorite poets, Æschylus and Sophocles, and where they won many prizes. Hurrying over the eastern brow of the hill, he comes suddenly upon the spot, enters at the summit, as many an Athenian did in the olden time, and is smitten with amazement at the first glance, and led to question whether this be indeed the site of the ancient theatre. He finds, it is true, the topmost seats cut in the solid rock, row above row, stripped now of their marble lining and weather-worn, but yet the genuine ancient seats of the upper tier. These he expected to find. But whence are those fresh seats which fill the lower part of the hollow, arranged as neatly as if intended for immediate use? and whence the massive stage beyond? He bethinks himself that he has heard of recent excavations under the patronage of the government, and closer inspection shows that these are actually the lower seats of the theatre in the time of the emperor Hadrian, whose favorite residence was Athens, and who did so much to embellish the city. The front seats consist of massive stone chairs, each inscribed with the name of its occupant, generally the priestess of some one of the numerous gods worshipped by that people so given to idolatry. In the centre of the second row is an elevated throne inscribed with the name of Hadrian. The stage is seen to be the ancient Greek stage enlarged to the Roman size to suit the demands of a later style of theatrical representation.

After looking in vain for the seat occupied by the priestess of the Unknown God, our traveller passes on and enters with a beating heart the charmed precincts of the Acropolis itself. The Propylæa, which he has been accustomed to regard too exclusively as a mere entrance-gate to the glories beyond, impresses him with its size and grandeur, and the little temple of Victory by its side with its elegance. But the steepness of the ascent perplexes him. It seems impracticable for horses, yet he knows by unexceptionable testimony that the Athenian youth prided themselves upon driving their matched steeds in the great Panathenaic procession which once every four years wound up the hill, bearing the sacred peplus to the temple of the goddess. A closer examination reveals the transverse creases of the pavement designed to give a footing to the beasts, as well as the marks of the chariot-wheels. Nevertheless, the ascent (and much more the descent) must have been a perilous undertaking, unless the teams were better broken than the various accounts of chariot-races furnished by the poets would indicate.

Entering beneath the great gate, a little distance forward to the left may readily be found the site of the colossal bronze statue of the warrior-goddess in complete armor, formed by Phidias out of the spoils taken at Marathon. The square base, partly sunk in the uneven rock, is as perfect as if just put in readiness to receive the pedestal of that famous work. A road bending to the right and slightly hollowed out of the rock leads to the Parthenon. The outer platform which sustains this celebrated temple is partly cut from the rock of the hill and partly built up of common limestone. The inner one of three courses, as well as the whole superstructure, is formed of Pentelic marble of a compact crystalline structure and of dazzling whiteness. Long exposure has not availed to destroy its lustre, but only to soften its tone. The visitor, planting himself at the western front, is in a position to gain some adequate idea of the perfection of the noble building. The interior and central parts suffered the principal injury from the explosion of the Turkish powder magazine in 1687. The western front remains nearly entire. It has been despoiled, indeed, of its movable ornaments. The statues which filled the pediment are gone, with the exception of a fragment or two. The sculptured slabs have been removed from the spaces between the triglyphs, and the gilded shields which hung beneath have been taken down. Of the magnificent frieze, representing the procession of the great quadrennial festival, only the portion surrounding the western vestibule is still in place. Still, as these were strictly decorations, and wholly subordinate to the organic parts of the structure, their presence, while it would doubtless greatly enhance the effect of the whole, is not felt to be essential to its completeness. The whole Doric columns still bear the massive entablature sheltered by the covering roof. The simple greatness of the conception, the just proportion of the several parts, together with the elaborate finishing of the whole work, invest it with a charm such as the works of man seldom possess,--the pure and lasting pleasure which flows from apparent perfection.

Entering the principal apartment of the building, traces are seen of the stucco and pictures with which the walls were covered when it was fitted up as a Christian church in the Byzantine period. Near the centre of the marble pavement is a rectangular space laid with dark stone from the Peiræus or from Eleusis. It marks the probable site of the colossal precious statue of the goddess in gold and ivory,--one of the most celebrated works of Phidias. The smaller apartment beyond, accessible only from the opposite front of the temple, was used by the state as a place of deposit and safe-keeping for bullion and other valuables in the care of the state treasurer.

Having examined the great temple, and tested the curvature of its seemingly horizontal lines by sighting along the unencumbered platform, and having stopped at several points of the grand portico to admire the fine views of the city and surrounding country, the traveller picks his way northward, across a thick layer of fragments of columns, statues, and blocks of marble, towards the low-placed, irregular, but elegant Erechtheum, the temple of the most ancient worship and statue of the patron-goddess of the city. This building sits close by the northern as the Parthenon does by the southern wall of the enclosure. It has suffered equally with the other from the ravages of time, and its ruins, though less grand, are more beautiful. Most of the graceful Ionic columns are still standing, but large portions of the roof and entablature have fallen. Fragments of decorated cornice strew the ground, some of them of considerable length, and afford a near view of that delicate ornamentation and exquisite finish so rare outside the limits of Greece.

The elevated porch of the Caryatides, lately restored by the substitution of a new figure in place of the missing statue now in the British Museum, attracts attention as a unique specimen of Greek art, and also as showing how far a skilful treatment will overcome the inherent difficulties of a subject. The row of fair maidens looking out towards the Parthenon do not seem much oppressed by the burden which rests upon them, while their graceful forms lend a pleasing variety to the scene. Passing out by the northern wing of the Propylæa, a survey is had of the numerous fragments of sculpture discovered among the ruins upon the hill, and temporarily placed in the ancient Pinacotheca. The eye rests upon sweet infant faces and upon rugged manly ones. Sometimes a single feature only remains, which, touched by the finger of genius, awakens admiration. A naked arm severed from the trunk, of feminine cast, but with muscles tightly strained and hand clinched as in agony, will arrest attention and dwell in the memory.

Northwest of the Acropolis, across a narrow chasm, lies the low, rocky height of the Areopagus, accessible at the southeast angle by a narrow flight of sixteen rudely-cut steps, which lead to a small rectangular excavation on the summit, which faces the Acropolis, and is surrounded upon three sides by a double tier of benches hewn out of the rock. Here undoubtedly the most venerable court of justice at Athens had its seat and tried its cases in the open air. Here too, without doubt, stood the great apostle when, with bold spirit and weighty words, he declared unto the men of Athens that God of whom they confessed their ignorance; who was not to be represented by gold or silver or stone graven by art and man's device; who dwelt not in temples made with hands, and needed not to be worshipped with men's hands. In no other place can one feel so sure that he comes upon the very footsteps of the apostle, and on no other spot can one better appreciate his high gifts as an orator or the noble devotion of his whole soul to the work of the Master. How poor in comparison with his life-work appear the performances of the greatest of the Athenian thinkers or doers!