has never known Caprarola.”
We spent several days at Viterbo—“the city of beautiful fountains”—which has never been half appreciated by travellers, and made many curious excursions into Etruria, which are all described in my book; and then proceeded to Orvieto—all-glorious Orvieto. Once more I will quote “Days near Rome.”
“Long before reaching Orvieto, one comes in sight of it. It occupies an Etruscan site. On turning the crest of the hills which shelter Bolsena, one looks down into a wide valley filled with the richest vegetation—peach-trees and almonds and figs, with vines leaping from tree to tree and chaining them together, and beneath, an unequalled luxuriance of corn and peas and melons, every tiniest space occupied. Mountains of the most graceful forms girdle in this paradise, and, from the height whence we first gaze upon it, endless distances are seen, blue and roseate and snowy, melting into infinity of space; while, from the valley itself, rises, island-like, a mass of orange-coloured rock, crowned with old walls and houses and churches, from the centre of which is uplifted a vast cathedral, with delicate spray-like pinnacles, and a golden and jewelled front—and this is Orvieto.
“The first impression is one which is never forgotten—a picture which remains; and the quiet grandeurs of the place, as time and acquaintance bring it home to one, only paint in the details of that first picture more carefully.
“We descend into the plain by the winding road, where wains of great oxen are always employed for the country-work of the hillside, and we ascend the hill on which the city stands and enter it by a gate in rocky walls. The town is remarkably clean, but one has always the feeling of being in a fortress. Unlike Viterbo, gaiety and brightness seem to have deserted its narrow streets of dark houses, interspersed with huge tall square towers of the Middle Ages, and themselves, in the less frequented parts, built of rich brown stone, with sculptured cornices to their massive doors and windows, and resting on huge buttresses. From one of the narrowest and darkest of these streets we come suddenly upon the cathedral, a blaze of light and colour, the most aërial gothic structure in the world, every line a line of beauty. There is something in the feeling that no artists worked at this glorious temple but the greatest architects, the greatest sculptors of their time, that no material was used but that which was most precious, most costly, and which would produce the most glorious effect, which carries one far away from all comparisons with other earthly buildings—to the description in the Revelation of the New Jerusalem. The very platform on which the cathedral stands is of purple Apennine marble; the loveliest jaspers and pietre dure are worked into its pinnacles and buttresses; the main foundation of its pictured front is gold. A hundred and fifty-two sculptors, of whom Arnolfo and Giovanni da Pisa are the greatest names handed down to us, worked upon the ornamentation near the base: sixty-eight painters and ninety workers in mosaic gave life to the glorious pictures of its upper stories. All the surroundings are harmonious—solemn old houses, with black and white marble seats running along their basement, on which one may sit and gaze: a tower surmounted by a gigantic bronze warrior, who strikes the hours with the clash of his sword upon a great bell: an ancient oblong palace with gothic arches and flat windows, where thirty-four popes have sought a refuge or held a court at different times—all serving as a dark setting to make more resplendent the glittering radiancy of the golden front of the temple in their midst.
“No passing traveller, no stayer for one night, can realise Orvieto. Hours must be passed on those old stone benches, hours in reading the wondrous lessons of art, of truth, of beauty and of holiness which this temple of temples can unfold. For Orvieto is not merely a vast sculpture-gallery and a noble building, but its every stone has a story to tell or a mystery to explain. What depths of thought are hidden in those tremendous marble pictures between the doors! First the whole story of Genesis, then the Old Testament story which followed Genesis, leading on to the birth of Christ; then the story of our Saviour’s life upon earth; and lastly, the lesson of His redemption wrought for us, in the resurrection of the dead to the second life. Even the minor figures which surround these greater subjects, how much they have to tell us! Take the wondrous angels which surround the story of Christ; the Awe-stricken Angel of the Salutation, the Welcoming Angel of the Flight into Egypt, the Praying Angel of the Temptation, the Suffering Angel of the Betrayal, the Agonised Angel (and, oh, what a sublime figure, with its face covered with its hands!) of the Crucifixion, the Angel, rapt in entire unutterable beatitude, of the Resurrection. Or let us look at the groups of prophets, who, standing beneath the life of Christ, foresee and foretell its events—their eager invocation, their meditation, their inspiration, their proclamation of that which was to be.”
My companions returned to Rome from Orvieto and I went on to Florence, where I found two old friends of my childhood—Ann-Emilia and Kate Malcolm, the latter of whom has always been one of the most agreeable and charming women I have ever known.[58] I remember her telling me, on this occasion, of a friend of hers who was one day sitting at the end of her terrace at a retired watering-place, and heard a bride and bridegroom talking together beneath. “My dear,” said the bridegroom, “I think it would not be unpleasant if a friend were to turn up this evening.”—“My dear,” retorted the bride, “I should be thankful to see even an enemy.” She had also a story of an old Scotch minister, who, being summoned to marry some couples, thus addressed them:—“Ma freends, to many, marriage is a great curse: ma freends, to some marriage is a great blessing: ma freends, to all marriage is a great uncertainty: wull ye risk it?” and they all said “Yes.” With the Malcolms I saw much of Sir James Lacaita. He was very full of convents and their abuses. He told me that he had personally known a nun who was forced into a convent to prevent her from marrying the man she loved; but he made a silken ladder, and, by bribing the gardener, got it fixed to her window. The nun escaped, but was in such a hurry to descend, that she slid down the cords, cut open both her hands, and bore the marks all her life. Her lover was rich, had relays of horses, and they escaped to Sicily, were married at once, and had eleven children. Lacaita also told me:—
“A beautiful girl of good family was left £6000 by her father, on condition that she did not enter a convent. To prevent her doing so, he ordained that the money should revert to her brother in case of her becoming a nun.
“The girl hated the very idea of a convent, but the brother made a compact with an abbess to give her a third of the girl’s fortune if they could force her to take the veil. She resisted vigorously, though the brother’s wife ill-treated her in every possible way, and she had no other home. She possessed a lover, who professed great devotion, but never would come to the point. At last the time came when the brother had arranged for her to go to the convent. Her treatment was such that she had no other course. Her lover came and pitied her. She implored him: she knelt at his feet: she stretched out her hands: she said, ‘You know you can save me;’ but he feared the priests, the Church, and her brother too much. As she knelt there, her sister-in-law opened the door. Then her horror at her position was so great, she at once declared that she would take the veil: she only wished the event hurried on.
“At last the day of the sacrifice arrived. Lacaita was present. The bride came in, in her wedding splendour, fière, darting defiance at them all; but Lacaita said he never should forget the
