Cumbrous
Handsome Paintings Adorn The Walls And Chapels, Decorated With
Pompous Monuments Of Grand Masters.
Beneath is a crypt, where more
of these honourable and reverend warriors lie, in a state that a
Simpson would admire.
In the altar are said to lie three of the
most gallant relics in the world: the keys of Acre, Rhodes, and
Jerusalem. What blood was shed in defending these emblems! What
faith, endurance, genius, and generosity; what pride, hatred,
ambition, and savage lust of blood were roused together for their
guardianship!
In the lofty halls and corridors of the Governor's house, some
portraits of the late Grand Masters still remain: a very fine one,
by Caravaggio, of a knight in gilt armour, hangs in the dining-
room, near a full-length of poor Louis XVI., in Royal robes, the
very picture of uneasy impotency. But the portrait of De
Vignacourt is the only one which has a respectable air; the other
chiefs of the famous Society are pompous old gentlemen in black,
with huge periwigs, and crowns round their hats, and a couple of
melancholy pages in yellow and red. But pages and wigs and Grand
Masters have almost faded out of the canvas, and are vanishing into
Hades with a most melancholy indistinctness. The names of most of
these gentlemen, however, live as yet in the forts of the place,
which all seem to have been eager to build and christen: so that
it seems as if, in the Malta mythology, they had been turned into
freestone.
In the armoury is the very suit painted by Caravaggio, by the side
of the armour of the noble old La Valette, whose heroism saved his
island from the efforts of Mustapha and Dragut, and an army quite
as fierce and numerous as that which was baffled before Gibraltar,
by similar courage and resolution. The sword of the last-named
famous corsair (a most truculent little scimitar), thousands of
pikes and halberts, little old cannons and wall-pieces, helmets and
cuirasses, which the knights or their people wore, are trimly
arranged against the wall, and, instead of spiking Turks or arming
warriors, now serve to point morals and adorn tales. And here
likewise are kept many thousand muskets, swords, and boarding-pikes
for daily use, and a couple of ragged old standards of one of the
English regiments, who pursued and conquered in Egypt the remains
of the haughty and famous French republican army, at whose
appearance the last knights of Malta flung open the gates of all
their fortresses, and consented to be extinguished without so much
as a remonstrance, or a kick, or a struggle.
We took a drive into what may be called the country; where the
fields are rocks, and the hedges are stones - passing by the stone
gardens of the Florian, and wondering at the number and
handsomeness of the stone villages and churches rising everywhere
among the stony hills. Handsome villas were passed everywhere, and
we drove for a long distance along the sides of an aqueduct, quite
a Royal work of the Caravaggio in gold armour, the Grand Master De
Vignacourt.
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