young trees, so that the forests rapidly diminish, except those trees which they do not eat, as pines and firs." July 23, 1840. 18. Between Faenza and Imola, just now, I saw a large building standing back from the road, on the right, with two places somewhat like lodges in front, on the roadside. On one of them was the inscription "Labor omnia vicit," and the lines about iron working, ending "Argutæ lamina serræ." On the other were Horace's lines about drinking, without fear of "insanæ leges." Therefore, I suppose that these buildings were an iron foundry, and a public or café; but the classical inscriptions seemed to me characteristic of that foolery of classicalism which marks the Italians, and infects those with us who are called "elegant scholars." It appears to me that in Christian Europe the only book from which quotations are always natural and good as inscriptions for all sorts of places, is the Bible; because every calling of life has its serious side, if it be not sinful; and a quotation from the Bible relating to it, is taking it on this serious side, which is at once a true side, and a most important one. But iron foundries and publics have no connexion with mere book literature, which to the people concerned most with either, is a thing utterly uncongenial. And inscriptions on such places should be for those who most frequent them: a literary man writing up something upon them, for other literary men to read, is like the impertinence of two scholars talking to each other in Latin at a coach dinner. 19. Bologna, July 23, 1840. And now this is the last night, I trust, in which I shall sleep in the Pope's dominions; for it is impossible not to be sickened with a government such as this, which discharges no one function decently. The ignorance of the people is prodigious,-how can it be otherwise? The booksellers' shops sad to behold,-the very opposite of that scribe, instructed to the kingdom of God, who was to bring out of his treasures things new and old,—these scribes, not of the kingdom of God, bring out of their treasures nothing good, either new or old, but the mere rubbish of the past and the present. Other governments may see an able and energetic sovereign arise, to whom God may give a long reign, so that what he began in youth, he may live to complete in old age. But here every reign must be short; for every sovereign comes to the throne an old man, and with no better education than that of a priest. Where, then, can there be hope under such a system, so contrived as it should seem for every evil end, and so necessarily exclusive of good? I could muse long and deeply on the state of this country, but it is not my business; neither do I see, humanly speaking, one gleam of hope. "1517," said Niebuhr, "must precede 1688;" but where are the symptons of 1517 here? And if one evil spirit be cast out, there are but seven others yet more evil, if it may be, ready to enter. Wherefore, I have no sympathy with the so-called Liberal party here any more than has Bunsen. They are but types of the counter evil of Popery,—that is, of Jacobinism. The two are obverse and reverse of the coin,-the imprinting of one type on the one side, necessarily brings out the other on the other side; and so in a perpetual series; for [Newmanism] leads to [Socialism], and [Socialism] leads to [Newmanism],-the eternal oscillations of the drunken mima,-the varying vices and vileness of the slave, and the slave broken loose. 'Half of our virtue," says Homer, "is torn away when a man becomes a slave," and the other half goes when he becomes a slave broken loose. Wherefore may God grant us freedom from all idolatry, whether of flesh or of spirit; that fearing Him and loving Him, we may fear and bow down before no idol, and never worshipping what ought not to be worshipped, may so escape the other evil of not worshipping what ought to be worshipped. Good night, my darlings. July 24, 1840. 20. As we are going through this miserable State of Modena, it makes me feel most strongly what it is to be ἐλευθέρας πολέως πολίτης. What earthly thing could induce me to change the condition of an English private gentleman for any conceivable rank or fortune, or authority, in Modena? How much of my nature must I surrender; how many faculties must consent to abandon their exercise before the change could be other than intolerable? Feeling this, one can understand the Spartan answer to the Great King's satrap: "Hadst thou known what freedom was, thou wouldst advise us to defend it not with swords, but with axes." Now there are some, Englishmen unhappily, but most unworthy to be so, who affect to talk of freedom, and a citizen's rights and duties, as things about which a Christian should not care. Like all their other doctrines, this comes out of the shallowness of their little minds, " understanding neither what they a "He fears God thoroughly, and he fears neither man nor Devil beside," was his characteristic description of a thoroughly courageous man. say, nor whereof they affirm." True it is, that St. Paul, expecting that the world was shortly to end, tells a man not to care even if he were in a state of personal slavery. That is an endurable evil which will shortly cease, not in itself only, but in its consequences. But even for the few years during which he supposed the world would exist, he says, "if thou mayst be made free, use it rather." For true it is that a great part of the virtues of human nature can scarcely be developed in a state of slavery, whether personal or political. The passive virtues may exist, the active ones suffer. Truth, too, suffers especially; if a man may not declare his convictions when he wishes to do so, he learns to conceal them also for his own convenience; from being obliged to play the hypocrite for others, he learns to lie on his own account. And as the ceasing to lie is mentioned by St. Paul, as one of the first marks of the renewed nature, so the learning to lie is one of the surest marks of nature unrenewed. . . . . . . True it is, that the first Christians lived under a despotism, and yet that truth, and the active virtues, were admirably developed in them. But the first manifestation of Christianity was in all respects of a character so extraordinary as abundantly to make up for the absence of more ordinary instruments for the elevation of the human mind. It is more to the purpose to observe, that immediately after the Apostolic times, the total absence of all civil self-government was one great cause which ruined the government of the Church also, and prepared men for the abominations of the priestly dominion; while, on the other hand, Guizot has well shown that one great cause of the superiority of the Church to the heathen world was because, in the Church alone, there was a degree of freedom and a semblance of political activity; the great bishops, Athanasius and Augustine, although subjects of a despotic ruler in the State, were themselves free citizens and rulers of a great society, in the management of which all the political faculties of the human mind found sufficient exercise. But when the Church is lost in the weakness and falsehood of a priesthood, it can no longer furnish such a field, and there is the greater need therefore of political freedom. But the only perfect and entirely wholesome freedom, is where the Church and the State are both free, and both one. Then, indeed, there is Civitas Dei, then there is ἀρίστη καὶ τελειοτάτη τῇ πολιτείᾳ. And now this discussion has brought me nearly half through this Duchy of Modena, for we must be more than half way from Rubbiero to Reggio. Canton Ticino, July 25, 1840. 21. We have now just passed the Austrian frontier, and are entered into Switzerland, that is into the Canton Ticino-Switzerland politically, but Italy still, and for a long time geographically. In comparing this country with central Italy, I observe the verdure of the grass here, and the absence of the olive, and mostly of the fig, and the comparative rarity of the vine. Again, the villages are more scattered over the whole landscape, and not confined to the mountains; and the houses themselves, white and large and with overhanging roofs, and standing wide and free, have no resemblance to the dark masses of uncouth buildings which are squeezed together upon the scanty surface of their mountain platforms in central Italy. Here, too, is running water in every field-which keeps up this eternal freshness of green. But in central Italy all the forms are more picturesque, the glens are deeper, the hills are bolder, and at the same time softer, besides the indescribable charm thrown over every scene there by the recollection of its antiquities. Still I am not sure that I could justify to another person my own preference beyond all comparison of the country between Antrodoco and Terni over this between Como and Lugano. Mola di Gaeta, Naples, Terracina, and Vietri, having the sea in their landscape, cannot fairly be brought into comparison. July 28, 1840. Left Amsteg, 6.50. The beauty of the lower part of this valley is perfect. The morning is fine, so that we see the tops of the mountains, which rise 9000 feet above the sea directly from the valley. Huge precipices, crowned with pines, rising out of pines, and with pines between them, succeed below to the crags and glaciers. Then in the valley itself, green hows, with walnuts and pears, and wild cherries, and the gardens of these picturesque Swiss cottages, scattered about over them; and the roaring Reuss, the only inharmonious element where he is,-yet he himself not incapable of being made harmonious if taken in a certain point of view, at the very bottom of all. This is the Canton Uri, one of the Wald Staaten, or Forest Cantons, which were the original germ of the Swiss confederacy. But Uri, like Sparta, has to answer the question, what has mankind gained over and above the ever precious example of noble deeds, from Murgarten, Sempach, or Thermopyle? What the world has gained by Salamis and Platæa, and by Zama, is on the other hand no question, any more than it ought a be a peston what the world has gazed by the kid of Pallis & armada, or by Tafalgar and Frerico. Ba only does great fee is that may be, and bes not show some worthy shject for which it has Frei—and Un and Svizzerian & ban shown but too late of any such-then our sympathy with the great leeds of their history can hardly go beyond the gebencia by which those leeds were performed. and I annot help thin ing of the memetary Swiss of Novara and Mangano, and of the oppression exemised over the Italian ballvicks and the Pays le Vaud, and all the tyrannical exclusiveness of these ble barren Lgarttles, as much as of the heroic leeds of the three men. Telei his comrades, or of the self-devation of my namesake of Winkelhed. when at Sempach he received into his breast a sheaf of Austrian spears." Steamer on the Lake of Lazern, July 9, 1842 22. We arrived at Fizelen about half past eight, and having had some food, and most commendable food it was, we are embarked on the Lake of Luzern, and have already passed Brunnen, and are outside the region of the high Alps. It would be difficult certainly for a Swiss to admire our lakes, because he would ask, what is there here which we have not, and which we have not on a larger scale? I cannot deny that the meadows here are as green as ours, the valleys richer, the woods thicker, the cliffs grander, the mountains by measurement twice or three times higher. And if Switzerland were my home and country, the English lakes and mountains would certainly never tempt me to travel to see them, destitute as they are of all historical interest. In fact, Switzerland is to Europe, what Cumberland and Westmoreland are to Lancashire and Yorkshire; the general summer touring-place. But all country that is actually beautiful, is capable of affording to those who live in it the highest pleasure of scenery, which no country, however beautiful, can do to those who merely travel in it; and thus while I do not dispute the higher interest of Switzerland to a Swiss, (no Englishman ought to make another country his home, and therefore I do not speak of Englishmen,) I must still maintain that to me Fairfield is a hundred times more beautiful than the Righi, and Windermere than the Lake of the Four Cantons. Not that I think this is overvalued by travellers, it cannot be so; but most people undervalue greatly what mountains are when they form a part of our daily life, and combine not with our hours of leisure, of wandering, and of enjoyment, but |