I Found High, Painted Ceilings And Many Things Of Marble, A
Vast Kitchen, And All The Apparatus Of The Great Houses - At The
Service Of A Handful Of Contented, Unknown Men.
So in England, when we
have worked out our full fate, happier but poorer men will sit in the
Faded country-houses (a community, or an inn, or impoverished
squires), and rough food will be eaten under mouldering great
pictures, and there will be offices or granaries in the galleries of
our castles; and where Lord Saxonthorpe (whose real name is
Hauptstein) now plans our policy, common Englishmen will return to the
simpler life, and there will be dogs, and beer, and catches upon
winter evenings. For Italy also once gathered by artifice the wealth
that was not of her making.
He was a good man, the innkeeper of this palace. He warmed me at his
fire in his enormous kitchen, and I drank Malaga to the health of the
cooks. I ate of their food, I bought a bottle of a new kind of sweet
wine called 'Vino Dolce', and - I took the road.
LECTOR. And did you see nothing of Piacenza?
AUCTOR. Nothing, Lector; it was raining, and there was mud. I stood in
front of the cathedral on my way out, and watched it rain. It rained
all along the broad and splendid Emilian Way. I had promised myself
great visions of the Roman soldiery passing up that eternal road; it
still was stamped with the imperial mark, but the rain washed out its
interest, and left me cold. The Apennines also, rising abruptly from
the plain, were to have given me revelations at sunset; they gave me
none. Their foothills appeared continually on my right, they
themselves were veiled. And all these miles of road fade into the
confused memory of that intolerable plain. The night at Firenzuola,
the morning (the second morning of this visitation) still cold, still
heartless, and sodden with the abominable weather, shall form no part
of this book.
Things grand and simple of their nature are possessed, as you know, of
a very subtle flavour. The larger music, the more majestic lengths of
verse called epics, the exact in sculpture, the classic drama, the
most absolute kinds of wine, require a perfect harmony of circumstance
for their appreciation. Whatever is strong, poignant, and immediate in
its effect is not so difficult to suit; farce, horror, rage, or what
not, these a man can find in the arts, even when his mood may be heavy
or disturbed; just as (to take their parallel in wines) strong Beaune
will always rouse a man. But that which is cousin to the immortal
spirit, and which has, so to speak, no colour but mere light, _that_
needs for its recognition so serene an air of abstraction and of
content as makes its pleasure seem rare in this troubled life, and
causes us to recall it like a descent of the gods.
For who, having noise around him, can strike the table with pleasure
at reading the Misanthrope, or in mere thirst or in fatigue praise
Chinon wine?
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