Читать книгу Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - James Aitken Wylie - Страница 16

At Turin begins Pilgrimage to Rome—Description of Diligence—Dora Susina—Plain of Lombardy—Its Boundaries—Nursed by the Alps—Lessons taught thereby—The Colina—Inauspicious Sunset—The Road to Milan—The Po—Its Source—Tributaries and Function—Evening—Home remembered in a Foreign Land—Inference thence regarding Futurity—Thunderstorm among the Alps—Thunderstorm on the Plain of Lombardy—Grandeur of the Lightning—Enter Novara at Day-break.

I had two objects in view in crossing the Alps. The first was to visit the land of the Vaudois; the second was to see Rome. The first of these objects I had accomplished in part; the second remained to be undertaken.

This plain of Piedmont was the richest my foot had ever trodden; but often did I turn my eyes wistfully towards the Apennines, which, like a veil, shut out the Italy of the Romans and the City of the Seven Hills. At Turin, which the Po so sweetly waters, and over which the snow-clad hills of the Swiss fling their noble shadows, properly begins my journey to Rome.

I started in the diligence for Milan about four of the afternoon of the 21st October. Did you ever, reader, set foot in a diligence? It is a castle mounted on wheels, rising storey upon storey to a fearful height. It is roomy withal, and has apartments enough within its leathern walls for well-nigh the population of a village. There is the glass coupé in front, the drawing-room of the house. There is the interieur, which you may compare, if you please, to the dining-room, only there you do not dine; and there is the rotundo, a sort of cabin attached, the limbo of the establishment, in which you may find half-a-dozen unhappy wights for days and nights doing penance. Then, in the very fore-front of this moving castle—hung in mid air, as it were—there is the banquette. It is the roomiest of all, and has, moreover, spacious untenanted spaces behind, where you may stow away your luggage; and, being the loftiest compartment, it commands the country you may happen to traverse. On this account the banquette was the place I almost always selected, unless when so unfortunate as to find it already bespoke. Half-hours are of no value in the south of the Alps, and a very liberal allowance of this commodity was made us before starting. At last, however, the formidable process of loading was completed, and away we went, rumbling heavily over the streets of Turin to the crack of the postilion's whip and the music of the horses' bells.

On emerging from the buildings of the city, we crossed the fine bridge over the Dora Susina, an Alpine stream, which attains almost the dignity of a river, and which, swollen by recent rains, was hurrying on to join the Po. Our course now lay almost due east, over the great plain of Lombardy; and there are few rides in any part of the world which can bring the traveller such a succession of varied, rich, and sublime sights. The plain itself, level as the floor of one's library, and wearing a rich carpeting, green at all seasons, of fruits and verdure, ran out till it touched the horizon. On the north rose the Alps, a magnificent wall, of stature so stupendous, that they seemed to prop the heavens. On the south were the gentler Apennines. Between these two magnificent barriers, this goodly plain—of which I know not if the earth contains its equal—stretches away till it terminates in the blue line of the Adriatic. On its ample bosom is many a celebrated spot, many an interesting object. It has several princely cities, in which art is cultivated, and trade flourishes to all the extent which Austrian fetters permit. Its old historic towns are numerous. The hoar of eld is upon them. It has rags of castles and fortresses which literally have braved for a thousand years the battle and the breeze. It has spots where empires have been lost and won, and where the dead of the tented field sleep their dreamless sleep. It has fine old cathedrals, with their antique carvings, their recumbent statues of old-world bishops, and their Scripture pieces by various masters, sorely faded; and here and there, above the rich foliage of its various woods, like the tall mast of a ship at sea, is seen the handsome and lofty campanile, so peculiar to the architecture of Lombardy.

The great Alps look down with most benignant aspect upon this plain. They seem quite proud of it, and nurse it with the care and tenderness of a parent. Noble rivers not a few—the Ticino, the Adige, and streams and torrents without number—do they send down, to keep its beauty ever fresh. These streams cross and re-cross its green bosom in all directions, forming by their interlacings a curious network of silvery lines, like the bright threads in the mine, or the white veins in the porphyritic slab. Observe this little flower, with its bright petals, growing by the wayside. That humble flower owes its beauty to yonder chain. From the frozen summits of the Alps come the waters at which it daily drinks. And when the dog-days come, and a fiery sun looks down upon the plain from a sky that is cloudless for months together, and when every leaf droops, and even the tall poplar seems to bow itself beneath the intolerable heat, the mountains, pitying the panting plain, send down their cool breezes to revive it. Would that from the lofty pinnacles of rank and talent there descended upon the lower levels of society an influence equally wholesome and beneficent! Were there more streams from the mountain, there would be more fruits upon the plain. The world would not be the scorched desert which it is, in which the vipers of envy and discontent hiss and sting; but a fragrant garden, full of the fruits of social order and of moral principle. Truly, man might learn many a useful lesson from the earth on which he treads: the great, to dispense freely out of their abundance—for by dispensing they but multiply their blessings, as Mont Blanc, by sending down its streams to enrich the plain, feeds those snows which are its glory and crown—and the humble, the lesson of a thankful reciprocation. This plain does not drink in the waters of the Alps, and sullenly refuse to own its obligations. Like a duteous child, it brings its yearly offering to the foot of Mont Blanc—fields of golden wheat, countless vines with their blood-red clusters, fruits of every name, and flowers of every hue;—such is the noble tribute which this plain, year by year, lays at the feet of its august parent. There is but one drawback to its prosperity. Two sombre shadows fall gloomily athwart its surface. These are Austria and Rome.

The plain of Lombardy is so broad, and the road to Milan by Novara is so much on a level with its general surface, that the eye catches the distant Apennines only at the more elevated points. The screen which here, and for miles after leaving Turin, shuts out the view of the Apennines, is the Colina. The Colina is a range of lovely hills, which rise to a height of rather more than 1200 feet, and run eastward along the plain a few miles south of the Milan road. Soft and rich in their covering, picturesque in their forms, and indented with numerous dells, they look like miniature Alps set down on the plain, nearly equidistant from the great white hills on the north and the purple peaks on the south. The sun was near his setting; and his level rays, passing through fields of vapour—presages of storm—and shorn of the fiery brilliancy which is wont at eve to set these hills on a blaze, fell softly upon the dome of the Superga, and lighted up the white villas which stud the mountain by hundreds and hundreds throughout its whole extent. Vividly relieved by the deep azure of the vineyards, and looking, from their distance, no bigger than single blocks, these villas reminded one of a shower of marble, freshly fallen, and glittering in pearly whiteness in the setting rays.

The road, which to me had an almost sacred character, being the beginning of my journey to Rome, was a straight line—straight as the arrow's flight—between fields of rich meadow land, and rows of elms and poplars, which ran on and on, till, in the far distance, they appeared to converge to a point. It was a broad, macadamized, substantial highway, of about thirty feet in width, having a white line of curb-stones placed eight or ten paces apart; outside of which was an excellent pathway for foot passengers. On the left rose the Alps, calm and majestic, clothed in the purple shadows of evening.

I have mentioned the Po as flowing past Turin. This stream is doubtless the relic of that mighty flood which covered, at some former period, the vast space between the Alps and the Apennines, from the Graian and Cottian chains on the west, to the shores of the Adriatic on the east. As the waters drained off, this central channel alone was left, to receive and convey to the sea the innumerable torrents which are formed by the springs and snows of the mountains. The noble river thus formed is called the Po—the pride of Italy, and the king of its streams. The Greeks, who clothed it with fable, and drowned Phaeton in its stream, called it Eridanus. Its Roman appellation was Padus, which in course of time resolved itself into its present name, the Po. Unlike the Nile, which rolls in solemn and solitary majesty through Egypt without permitting one solitary rill to mingle with its flood, the Po welcomes every tributary, and accepts its help in discharging its great function of giving drink to every flower, and tree, and field, and city, in broad Lombardy. It receives, in its course through Piedmont alone, not fewer than fifty-three torrents and rivers; and in depth and grandeur of stream it is not unworthy of the praises which the Greek and Roman poets lavished upon it. The cradle of this noble stream is placed in the centre of the ancient territory of the Vaudois, whose most beautiful mountain, Monte Viso, is its nursing parent. A fountain of crystal clearness, placed half-way up this hill, is its source. Thence it goes forth to water Piedmont and Venetian-Lombardy, and to mingle at last with the clear wave of the Adriatic—emblem of those living waters which were to go forth from this same land into all quarters of Europe.

The sun had now set; and I marked that this evening no golden beams among the mountains, no burning peaks, attended his departure. He went in silent sadness, like a friend quitting a circle which he fears may before his return be visited with calamity. With him departed the glory of the scene. The vine-clad Colina, erst sparkling with villas, put out its lights, and resolved itself into a dark bank, which leaned, cloud-like, against the sky. The stupendous white piles on the left drew a thin night vapour around them, and retired from the scene, like some mighty spirit gathering his robe about him, and leaving the earth, which his presence had enlightened, dark and solitary. The plain lay before us a sombre expanse, in which all objects—towns, spires, and forests—were fast blending into one darkly-shaded and undefined picture. Dwellers in diligences, as well as dwellers in hotels, must sleep if they can; but the hour for "turning in" had scarce arrived, and meanwhile, I remember, my thoughts took strongly a homeward direction.

With these, of course, I shall not trouble the reader; only I must be permitted to mention a misconception into which I had fallen, in connection with my journey, and into which it is possible others may fall in similar circumstances. One is apt to imagine, before starting, that should he reach such a country as Italy, he will there feel as if home was very distant, and the events of his former life far removed in point of time. He thinks that a journey across the Alps has somehow a talismanic power to change him. He crosses the Alps, but finds that he is the same man still. Home has come with him: the friendships, the joys, the sorrows, of his past existence are as near as ever; nay, far nearer, for now he is alone with them; and though he goes southward, and kingdoms and mountain-chains are between him and his native country, he cannot feel that he is a foot-breadth more distant than ever. He moves about through strange lands in a shroud of home feelings and recollections.

How wretched, thought I, the man whom guilt chases from his country! He flies to distant lands in the hope of shaking off the remembrance of his crime. He finds that, go where he will, the spectre dogs his steps. In Paris, in Milan, in Rome, the grizzly form starts up before him. He must change, not his country, but his heart—himself—before he can shake off his companion.

May not the same principle be applicable, in some extent, to our passage from earth into the world beyond? When at home in Scotland, I had thought of Italy as a distant country; but now that I was in Italy, Scotland seemed very near—much nearer than Italy had done when in Scotland. We who are dwellers on earth think of the state beyond as very remote; but once there, may we not feel as if earth was in close proximity to us—as if, in fact, the two states were divided by but a narrow gulph? Certain it is that the passage across it will work in us no change; and, like the stranger in a foreign country, we shall enter with an eternal shroud of joys and sorrows, springing out of the deeds and events of our present existence.

I found that if in this region the day had its beauty, the night had its sublimity and terrors. I had years before become familiar with the phenomena of thunder-storms among the Alps; and one who has seen lightning only in the sombre sky of Britain can scarce imagine its intense brilliancy in these more southern latitudes. With us it breaks with a red fiery flicker; there it bursts upon you like the sun, and pours a flood of noonday light over earth and sky. One evening, in particular, I shall never forget, on which I saw this phenomenon in circumstances highly favourable to its finest effect. I had walked out from Geneva to pass a few hours with the Tronchin family, whose mansion stands on the southern shores of the lake. It was evening; and the deep rolling of the thunder gave us warning that a storm had come on. We stepped out upon the lawn to enjoy the spectacle; for in the vicinity of the Alps, whose summits attract the fluid, the lightning is seldom dangerous to life. All was dark as midnight; not even the front of the mansion could we see. In a moment the flash came; and then it was day—boundless, glorious day. All nature was set before us as if under the light of a cloudless sun. The lawn, the blue lake, the distant Alpine summits, the landscape around, with its pines, villas, and vineyards, all leaped out of the womb of night, stood in vivid intense splendour before the eye, and in a twinkling was again gone. This amazing transition from midnight to noonday, and from noonday to midnight, was repeated again and again. I was now to witness the sublimities of a thunder-storm on the plain of Lombardy.

Right before us, on the far-off horizon, gleams of light began to shoot along the sky. The play of the electric fluid was so rapid and incessant, as to resemble rather the continuous flow of light from its fountain, than the fitful flashes of lightning. At times these gleams would mantle the sky with all the soft beauty of moonlight, and at others they would dart angrily and luridly athwart the horizon. Soon the storm assumed a grander form. A ball of fire would suddenly blaze forth, in livid, fiery brilliancy; and, remaining motionless, as it were, for an instant, would then shoot out lateral streams or rays, coloured sometimes like the rainbow, and quivering and fluttering like the outspread wings of eagles. One's imagination could almost conceive of it as being a real bird, the ball answering to the body, while the flashes flung out from it resembled the wings, which were of so vast a spread, that they touched the Apennines on the one hand, and the Alps on the other.

The storm took yet another form, and one that increased the sublimity of the scene, by adding a slight feeling of uneasiness to the admiration with which we had contemplated it so far. A cloud of pitchy darkness rose in the south, and crossed the plain, shedding deepest night in its track, and shooting its fires downward on the earth as it came onwards. It passed right over our heads, enveloping us for the while (like some mighty archer, with quiver full of arrows) in a shower of flaming missiles. The interval between the flashes was brief—so very brief, that we were scarcely sensible of any interval at all. There was not more than four seconds between them. The light was full and strong, as if myriads and myriads of bude lights had been kindled on the summits of the Apennines. In short, it was day while it lasted, and every object was visible, as if made so by the light of the sun. The horses which dragged our vehicle along the road—the postilion with the red facings on his dress—the meadows and mulberry woods which bordered our path—the road itself, stretching away and away for miles, with its rows of tall poplars, and its white curb-stones, dotted with waggons and couriers, and a few foot-passengers—and the red autumnal leaves, as they fell in swirling showers in the gust—all were visible. Indeed, we may be said to have performed several miles of our journey under broad daylight, excepting that these sudden revelations of the face of nature alternated with moments of profoundest night. At length the big rain-drops came rattling to the earth; and, to protect ourselves, we drew the thick leathern curtain of the banquette, buttoning it tight down all around. It kept out the rain, but not the lightning. The seams and openings of the covering seemed glowing lines of fire, as if the diligence had been literally engulphed in an ocean of living flame. The whole heavens were in a roar. The Apennines called to the Alps; the Alps shouted to the Apennines; and the plain between quaked and trembled at the awful voice. At length the storm passed away to the north, and found its final goal amid the mountains, where for hours afterwards the thunder continued to growl, and the lightnings to sport.

Order being now restored among the elements, we endeavoured to snatch an hour's sleep. It was but a dreamy sort of slumber, which failed to bestow entire unconsciousness to external objects. Faded towns and tall campaniles seemed to pass by in a ghost-like procession, which was interrupted only by the arrival of the diligence at the various stages, where we had to endure long, weary halts. So passed the night. At the first dawn we entered Novara. It lay, spread out on the dusky plain, an irregular patch of black, with the clear, silvery crescent of a moon hanging above it.