Their Silent Presence Was Only Invaded,
When I Saw Them, By The Twittering Of The Many Birds That Were
Flying In And Out Of The Crevices In The Stones And Little Nooks In
The Architecture, Where They Had Made Their Nests.
They were busy,
rising from the cold shade of Temples made with hands, into the
sunny air of Heaven.
Not so the worshippers within, who were
listening to the same drowsy chaunt, or kneeling before the same
kinds of images and tapers, or whispering, with their heads bowed
down, in the selfsame dark confessionals, as I had left in Genoa
and everywhere else.
The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this church is
covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and depressing
influence. It is miserable to see great works of art--something of
the Souls of Painters--perishing and fading away, like human forms.
This cathedral is odorous with the rotting of Correggio's frescoes
in the Cupola. Heaven knows how beautiful they may have been at
one time. Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now; but such
a labyrinth of arms and legs: such heaps of foreshortened limbs,
entangled and involved and jumbled together: no operative surgeon,
gone mad, could imagine in his wildest delirium.
There is a very interesting subterranean church here: the roof
supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there seemed to
be at least one beggar in ambush: to say nothing of the tombs and
secluded altars. From every one of these lurking-places, such
crowds of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men and
women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic
gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad infirmity, came
hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in the cathedral
above, had been suddenly animated, and had retired to this lower
church, they could hardly have made a greater confusion, or
exhibited a more confounding display of arms and legs.
There is Petrarch's Monument, too; and there is the Baptistery,
with its beautiful arches and immense font; and there is a gallery
containing some very remarkable pictures, whereof a few were being
copied by hairy-faced artists, with little velvet caps more off
their heads than on. There is the Farnese Palace, too; and in it
one of the dreariest spectacles of decay that ever was seen--a
grand, old, gloomy theatre, mouldering away.
It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape; the lower
seats arranged upon the Roman plan, but above them, great heavy
chambers; rather than boxes, where the Nobles sat, remote in their
proud state. Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre,
enhanced in the spectator's fancy by its gay intention and design,
none but worms can be familiar with. A hundred and ten years have
passed, since any play was acted here. The sky shines in through
the gashes in the roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away,
and only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew smear the faded colours,
and make spectral maps upon the panels; lean rags are dangling down
where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium; the stage has
rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it
would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy
depth beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all
the senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste;
any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are
muffled and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have
changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time will
seam and roughen a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act
them on this ghostly stage.
It was most delicious weather, when we came into Modena, where the
darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways skirting the
main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable by
the bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all the glory
of the day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was performing,
feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions
before all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning
the usual chant, in the usual, low, dull, drawling, melancholy
tone.
Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stagnant town, this
same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, the centre
of the same torpid, listless system, I came out by another door,
and was suddenly scared to death by a blast from the shrillest
trumpet that ever was blown. Immediately, came tearing round the
corner, an equestrian company from Paris: marshalling themselves
under the walls of the church, and flouting, with their horses'
heels, the griffins, lions, tigers, and other monsters in stone and
marble, decorating its exterior. First, there came a stately
nobleman with a great deal of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous
banner, on which was inscribed, MAZEPPA! TO-NIGHT! Then, a
Mexican chief, with a great pear-shaped club on his shoulder, like
Hercules. Then, six or eight Roman chariots: each with a
beautiful lady in extremely short petticoats, and unnaturally pink
tights, erect within: shedding beaming looks upon the crowd, in
which there was a latent expression of discomposure and anxiety,
for which I couldn't account, until, as the open back of each
chariot presented itself, I saw the immense difficulty with which
the pink legs maintained their perpendicular, over the uneven
pavement of the town: which gave me quite a new idea of the
ancient Romans and Britons. The procession was brought to a close,
by some dozen indomitable warriors of different nations, riding two
and two, and haughtily surveying the tame population of Modena:
among whom, however, they occasionally condescended to scatter
largesse in the form of a few handbills. After caracolling among
the lions and tigers, and proclaiming that evening's entertainments
with blast of trumpet, it then filed off, by the other end of the
square, and left a new and greatly increased dulness behind.
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