Foot-prints of Travel, Maturin Murray Ballou [best romantic books to read .txt] 📗

niches presenting statues in place of the customary capitals. The pavement is finished in marble and mosaic. The edifice was in course of construction for five hundred years, and to look at it one would hardly suppose there was white marble enough in Europe to furnish the raw material of which it is built. The principal part of the work has been performed during the last hundred years.

One mounts nearly five hundred stone steps to reach the summit of the cathedral, where we stand in the highest pinnacle, nearly four hundred feet from the street. Far below lies the city, the dwellings and churches resembling toy-houses, while the people moving about in the thoroughfares assume pigmy proportions, horses looking like exaggerated insects. We gaze about in dizzy wonder, and are half inclined to believe it all a trick of the imagination. After the first surprise is over, the true aspect gradually dawns upon the stranger, and the labor of ascending those tedious steps is forgotten. The distant view is particularly fine; the green and fertile plains of Lombardy stretching away from the city walls in all directions until they meet the foot-hills of the Alpine range, or mingle with the horizon towards the shores of the Adriatic. Mont Blanc, Mont Cenis, Mont St. Bernard, the Simplon Pass, the Bernese Oberland range, and further to the northeast the long range of the Tyrolean Alps, are recognized with their white snow-caps glittering in the bright sunlight. The forest of pinnacles beneath our feet, mingled with a labyrinth of ornamented spires, statues, flying buttresses, and Gothic fretwork, piled all about the roof, is seen through a gauze-like veil of golden mist.

Milan has several other churches more or less interesting, but the visitor rarely passes much time in examining them. No traveller should fail, however, to visit the Brera Palace, the one gallery of art in this city. It was formerly a Jesuit college, but is now used for a public school, with the title of Palace of Arts and Sciences, forming a most extensive academy, containing paintings, statuary, and a comprehensive library of nearly two hundred thousand volumes. There is also attached a fine botanical garden, exhibiting many rare and beautiful exotics as well as native plants. In the gallery of paintings the visitor is sure to single out for appreciation a canvas, by Guercino, representing Abraham banishing Hagar and her child. The tearful face of the deserted one, with its wonderful expression, tells the whole story of her misery. This picture is worthy of all the enthusiastic praise so liberally bestowed by competent critics.

No picture is better known than Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," millions of copies of which have been circulated in engravings, oil paintings, and by photography. We find the original in the Dominican monastery, where the artist painted it upon the bare wall or masonry of a lofty dining-hall. It is still perfect and distinct, though not so bright as it would have been had it been executed upon canvas. Da Vinci was years in perfecting it, and justly considered it to be the best work of his artistic life. The moment chosen for delineation is that when Christ utters the words, "One of you shall betray me!" The artist said that he meditated for two years how best to portray upon a human face the workings of the perfidious heart of Judas, and ended at last by taking for his model the prior of this very monastery, who was well known to be his bitterest enemy! The likeness at the period of its production was unmistakable, and thus perpetuated the scandal.

We must not fail to make an excursion from Milan to Pavia, one of the oldest of Italian cities. It lies on the left bank of the Ticino River, and was in the olden times the residence of the Lombard kings, who did not fail to beautify and improve it in their day to such an extent that it was known all over Europe as the "City of a Hundred Towers," many of which are extant and in excellent preservation. Though the finger of time has pressed heavily upon it, and its ancient glory has departed, still Pavia has a population of over thirty thousand, and lays claim to no inconsiderable importance. If it were not a little off the usual track of travellers, we should hear much more of its associations. The university founded here by Charlemagne, over a thousand years ago, is still prosperous; and the famous church of San Michael, erected at even an earlier period, is still an object of profound interest. As we wander about the quaint streets the impress of antiquity is upon everything that meets the eye. Just north of the city, about a league from the walls, is the Certosa, one of the most splendid monasteries in Europe, founded about five hundred years since. It is absolutely crowded with fine paintings, statuary, mosaics, and rich art ornamentation. Private palaces abound, though now largely diverted from their original purposes. There are also theatres, libraries, museums, gymnasiums, still thriving after a moderate fashion. Pavia looks backward to her past glories rather than forward to new hopes. Sacked by Hannibal, burned by the Huns, conquered and possessed by the Romans, won by the Goths and Lombards, it was long the capital of what was then known as the kingdom of Italy. Then came a period of fierce civil wars, when its history merged in that of the conquerors of Lombardy. Taken and lost by the French so late as 1796, it was stormed and pillaged by Napoleon, but once more came into the possession of Austria, until it finally found refuge in the bosom of United Italy. The famous battle of Pavia, which occurred in 1525, when Francis I. was taken prisoner, was fought close to the Certosa.

Our next objective point is Vienna, and we take the route through Innspruck, the capital of the Tyrol, which is most charmingly situated in the valley of the Inn just where it joins the Sill. The town is about two thousand feet above sea-level, and is surrounded by mountains six and eight thousand feet in height. It derives its name from the bridge which here crosses the river--Inn's Bruecke (that is, the Inn's Bridge). We enter Austria through the Brenner Pass, and after a long Alpine journey of three or four hundred miles are very glad to pause here both for rest and observation. There must be about twenty thousand inhabitants, but the town seems almost solemnly silent. At certain periods of the year, known as "the season," doubtless its two or three large hotels are plentifully supplied with guests. Historical associations are not wanting; among them is the Franciscan church of Innspruck, containing the elaborate and costly monument to the Emperor Maximilian I., which, though constructed by order of the monarch himself, does not contain his remains. The structure consists of a marble sarcophagus supporting the emperor's effigy in bronze in a kneeling position, while on the other side of the aisle are rows of monumental bronze figures, twenty-eight in number, representing various historic characters. The mention of this unique group in the old church of Innspruck, by the poet Longfellow, will be remembered.

The Schloss Ambras is of considerable interest, having been the favorite home of the Archduke Ferdinand II. The view from its battlements is worthy of a pilgrimage to enjoy. Innspruck looks like a toy-village, so far below, upon the plain. The broad streets of the new portion of the town lie spread out as upon a map. The three handsome bridges give variety to the scene. The central one, as the guide will tell us, was the scene of a fierce battle, in 1809, between the Bavarians and the Tyrolese. The former could not withstand the superior marksmanship of these chamois-hunters, who picked off the men at the cannon as fast as they came into action, until the Bavarians fled in despair, abandoning their guns.

On resuming our journey towards Vienna, we pass up the constantly narrowing valley of the Inn, through a range of mountain scenery, covered with snow, and grand beyond description, where Alp is piled upon Alp, until all distinctive outline is lost in the clouds which envelop them. Now and then we see a rude but picturesque chamois huntsman struggling up the mountain side in search of the special game which is growing annually scarcer and scarcer. There is a wild interest which actuates the chamois-hunter, amounting to fanaticism. The country is very sparsely inhabited, but we occasionally come upon a cluster of picturesque habitations, quite theatrical in effect, the counterpart of the familiar pictures and photographs we see in America. By and by, after a long day of travel, we reach Salzburg, in the Noric Alps.

Salzburg was the birthplace of Mozart, and is still a musical place, that branch of the fine arts being universally cultivated among the more refined class of inhabitants. There are several public monuments commemorative of the great composer, who played his own compositions before the public here at the age of five years! The massive wall which once surrounded the place is now mostly dismantled, and could only have been of use in the Middle Ages, at which time Salzburg was probably in its greatest state of prosperity. The manufacture of Majolica ware has been a specialty here for a couple of centuries or more, and it has a reputation for the production of fine fancy leather goods. Its connection by rail with Vienna, Munich, and Innspruck insures it considerable trade, but still there is a sleepiness about the place which is almost contagious. It was probably different when the archbishops held court here, at a period when those high functionaries combined the dignity of princes of the Empire with their ecclesiastical rank. It was at this period that the town received its few public ornaments, and the half-dozen fine public edifices, still to be seen, were erected.

In the absence of statistics one would say there was a population of fifteen thousand. Some of the street scenes are peculiar. We see single cows and oxen harnessed and worked like horses, not in shafts, but beside a long pole. The entire absence of donkeys, so numerous elsewhere in Europe, is quite noticeable. The women surprise us by their large size and apparent physical strength--quite a necessary possession, since they seem to perform the larger portion of the heavy work, while their lazy husbands are engaged in pipe-smoking and beer-drinking. We see girls and dogs harnessed together into milk and vegetable carts, which they draw through the streets at early morning, to deliver the required articles to the consumers. When the little team arrives before a customer's door, the girl drops her harness, measures out and delivers the milk or vegetables, while the dog waits patiently.

There is no special beauty observable among the female population. The dark eyes and hair with the lovely faces of the South are left behind, as well as the soft, musical cadence of voice which so charms the ear in Italy. German is not a musical tongue. It is a vigorous language, but not a harmonious one in speech. Doubtless there are pretty blonde Marguerites--like Goethe's heroine--hidden away somewhere among the domestic circles of Salzburg, but their long golden braids of hair and their fair, rose-tinted complexions are not often seen in public.


CHAPTER XIV.

Undoubtedly Vienna is the finest city on the European continent next to Paris, and it is often called the Northern Paris. It resembles the French capital both in its social life and its architecture. The style of the modern buildings is very attractive, displaying great richness and beauty of outline, while the charming perfection of detail is by no means neglected. At least one-quarter of Vienna is new, presenting broad streets lined