Greeks, Turks, Armenians
Were Protected Equally With English And Dutch, And Infidel And Heretic
Were Alike Free In Their Worship.
It was the great prison of the
galley-slaves, who were chiefly the pirates and corsairs taken on the
high seas by the duke's ships.
These captives not only served as models
for the Moors at the base of his monument, but they must have been very
useful in the different public works which he and his successors carried
out. Now they and their like are gone, and though the Greeks, the
Armenians, the English, and the Scotch still have their churches, I do
not suppose there is a mosque in all Leghorn.
I do not speak very confidently, because my researches in that sort were
not exhaustive. I indeed visited the cathedral, not wholly because Inigo
Jones had something to do in planning it, but because I had formed the
habit of visiting churches in Rome, and I mechanically went into one
wherever I saw it. Generally speaking, I think that they were rather
bare in painting or sculpture, but they were such churches as in America
one would go a long way to see and think one's self well rewarded by
their objects of interest. I do not know what defence to offer for not
having visited the galleries of the Museo Civico, where by actual count
in the guide-book I missed one hundred and sixty-nine works of art,
though just how many masterpieces I am not able to say: probably one out
of every ten was a masterpiece. But, if I did not much resort to the
churches and galleries in Leghorn, I roamed gladly through its pleasant
streets and squares, and by the shores of the canals which once gave it
the name of New Venice, and which still invite the smaller shipping up
among its houses in right Venetian fashion. The streets of Leghorn are
not so straight as they are long, but many are very straight, and the
others are curved rather than crooked. The longest and straight-est were
streets of low dwelling-houses, uncommon in Italian towns, where each
family lived under its own roof with a little garden behind, and a
respective entrance, as people still mostly do in our towns. From the
force of the mid-April sun in these streets I realized what they might
be in summer, and, if I lived in Leghorn, I would rather live on the
sea-front, in one of the comfortable, square, stone villas which border
it. But everywhere Leghorn seemed a pleasant place to live, and
convenient, with lively shops and cafes and trams and open spaces, and
statues and monuments in them. The city, I understood, is of somewhat
radical politics, tending from clericalism to socialism; and, like every
other Italian city, it is full of patriotic monuments. There is a Victor
Emmanuel on horseback, plump and squat, but heroic as always, and a
Garibaldi struggling in vain for beauty in his poncho and his round,
flat cap; there is a Mazzini, there is a Cavour, and, above all, there
is a Guerrazzi, no great thing as to the seated figure, but most
interesting, most touching in two of the bas-reliefs below.
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