A Book of the Riviera/Chapter 19

by Sabine Baring-Gould

CHAPTER XIX

SAVONA

The city and port—Pope Sixtus IV.—The Delia Rovere family—Nepotism—Assassination of Giuliano di Medici—Methods of filling the treasury—Sixtus and the Spirituals—Julius II.—A fighting pope: his portrait by Raphael—Pius VII. at Savona: his removal from Rome—Death of Princess Borgia—Bishop Grossulano—The Margravate of Savona—The Sanctuario—Crowned images—Jacques de Voragine—The Albizzola Palace: and Gardens—Mme. de Genlis and travelling on Corniche Road—Ruined palaces of Liguria.

SAVONA, with its port, its towers, its engirdling mountains, and its wide-stretching orange and lemon orchards, is a very charming town.

The port, with its picturesque tower, engages the eye at once. The cathedral, built in 1604, is in the uninteresting style of that period. It contains some good pictures by Brea, 1495, and Aurelio Robertelli, 1449; and the tomb of the parents of Pope Sixtus IV. who was a native of Celle, near Savona. His father was a poor boat or fisherman called della Rovere; but it was the whim of Francesco della Rovere, when he became Pope under the title of Sixtus IV., to be thought a scion of the ancient house of the same name at Turin. A false pedigree was forged, and he purchased the complaisance of the Turin family, and silenced their jibes, by giving them two cardinal's hats. He assumed their arms—a golden oak tree on an azure ground—which figures on the tomb at Savona, and which Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in compliment to Pope Sixtus and to his nephew Julius.

Francis de la Rovere was born in 1414, and entered the Franciscan order, became provincial of Liguria, and finally general of the order. He was elevated to be Cardinal by the advice of Bessarion, who had conceived a high notion of his learning and abilities. He became Pope in 1471 and occupied the papal chair till 1484, and was perhaps the second wickedest pontiff seated on that throne, coming only a short way after Alexander VI.

"He began his career with a lie," says Mr. Addington Symonds, "for though he succeeded to the avaricious Paul, who had spent his time in amassing money which he did not use, he declared that he had only found 5,000 florins in the Papal treasury. This assertion was proved false by the prodigality with which he lavished wealth immediately upon his nephews. It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope's nephews. Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered the most monstrous stories plausible. We may, however, dwell on the principal features of his nepotism; for Sixtus was the first pontiff who deliberately organised a system for pillaging the Church in order to exalt his own family to principalities. The names of the Pope's nephews were Leonardo, Giuliano, and Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of his brother Raffiello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons of his sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another sister, married to Giovanno Basso. With the notable exception of Giuliano della Rovere, these young men had no claim to distinction beyond good looks and a certain martial spirit which ill suited with the ecclesiastical dignities thrust upon some of them. Leonardo was made Prefect of Rome and married to a natural daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Giuliano received a cardinal's hat, and after a tempestuous warfare with the intervening Popes, ascended the holy chair as Julius II. Girolamo Basso was created Cardinal of San Cristogono."

But the favourite nephew of all was Pedro Riario, whom his uncle loaded with ecclesiastical benefices, though aged only five-and-twenty. Scandal asserted, and Muratori believed it, that this Pietro was really the son of the Pope. When scarce out of the hobbledehoy age, he was made Cardinal Patriarch of Constantinople and Archbishop of Florence. His annual income was 60,000 gold florins, in our money about £100,000; and yet when he died, broken down by his debaucheries, in 1474, three years after he had been made Cardinal Archbishop, he was deep in debt.

"He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but his beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the extravagant profligacy of his own life, to recommend him to the notice of posterity. All Italy during two years rang with the noise of his debaucheries. When Leonora of Aragon passed through Rome, on her way to wed the Marquess of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch erected a pavilion in the Piazza di' Sante Apostole for her entertainment. The air of the banquet hall was cooled with pure water; on a column in the centre stood a naked gilded boy, who poured forth water from an urn. The servants were arrayed in silk, and the seneschal changed his dress of richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of the banquet. Nymphs and centaurs, singers and buffoons, drank choice wines from golden goblets. … Happily for the Church and for Italy, he expired at Rome in January, 1474, after parading his impudent debaucheries through Milan and Venice, as the Pope's Legate."

Another nephew was Girolamo Riario, who married a natural daughter of Galeazzo Sforza. For him the Pope bought the town of Imola with Church money. He had created him Count of Bosco in 1472. As Imola did not content his ambition, his uncle gave him Forli, and elevated this boatboy to a dukedom. The young ruffian found that the Medici family stood in the way of extending his power over Florence, and he formed a plot for their destruction. In the conspiracy were involved Francis di Pazzi, head of the bank of that name in Rome, and Salviati, a Florentine, Archbishop of Pisa, whose elevation had been opposed by the Medici. The plot was atrocious; it was no less than to assassinate Giuliano and Lorenzo di Medici in the duomo at Florence on Easter Day at high mass. It had the hearty concurrence of him who held the keys of heaven and hell. Into the wicked confederacy was taken a Captain Montesecco, an intimate friend of Girolamo Riario, the Pope's nephew, and Bandini, a hired murderer. It was arranged among them that Montesecco was to poignard Giuliano, and Bandini was to stab Lorenzo; and the signal for the deed was to be the Elevation of the Host. On the Sunday appointed, 1478, the assassin Montesecco embraced the two Medici as they entered the church and assured himself by his touch that they were unprotected with coats of chain-mail, such as they usually wore under their silken habits. But at the last moment this captain, cut-throat though he was, felt hesitation at committing the deed in the sacred building and at such a solemn moment, and communicated his scruples to Girolamo Riario; and the latter had hastily to open his scheme to a couple of priests and induce them to undertake the murder. As a chronicler of the time says: "Another man was found, who, being a priest, was more accustomed to the place and therefore less scrupulous about its sanctity." The second priest was to take the place of Bandini should he entertain qualms.

But this change of persons spoiled all. The priest, though more irreligious, was less expert. Giuliano was indeed stabbed to death by Bandini di Pazzi, at the moment of the Elevation of the Host, but Lorenzo escaped with a flesh wound from the inexperienced hand of the priest, and fled into the sacristy. The congregation, the whole populace of Florence, rose as a man, and pursued the murderers. The Archbishop Salviati di Pazzi, and some of the others, were seized and hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico, the same day; and the eighteen-year-old Cardinal Raphael Riario was flung into prison.

Sixtus was furious at the failure of the plot, and demanded the liberation of his great nephew, the boy-Cardinal, and at the same time the expulsion of the Medici from Florence. As the citizens refused to do this, he excommunicated Lorenzo di Medici, and all the heads of the Republic, and placed Florence under an interdict. After a few days the boy was released; but that was as far as the Florentines would go. Accordingly the Pope, his nephew Riario, and the King of Naples, who had entered into league with the Pope, raised armies to attack Florence, and a savage war of revenge raged for years. It was not till 1481 that a descent of the Turks on Otranto made Sixtus tremble for his own safety, and forced him to make peace with Florence.

After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his nephew, Giovanni della Rovere, into the favour that Pietro had enjoyed. He married him to Giovanna, daughter of the Duke of Urbino, and created him Duke of Sinigaglia. This fellow founded the second dynasty of the Dukes of Urbino.

"The plebeian violence of the Della Rovere temper," says Mr. Addington Symonds, "reached a climax in Giovanni's son,

Savona

the Duke Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister's lover with his own hands, when a youth of sixteen, and stabbed the Papal Legate to death in the streets of Bologna, when at the age of twenty, and knocked Guicciardini, the historian, down with a blow of his fist during a council of war in 1526.

"Christendom beheld in Sixtus the spectacle of a Pope who trafficked in the bodies of his subjects, and the holy things of God, to squander basely-gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same worthless favourites. Sixtus destroyed to annex Ferrara to the dominions of Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly planted for centuries and connected by marriage or alliance with the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood and broils were equalled only by his avarice and his libertinism, rushed with wild delight into a project which involved the discord of the whole peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when, finally, tired of fighting for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury, because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the sake of a favourite nephew."

This Pope seemed unable to exist without some cringing favourite about his person. In 1463 he made his valet, a lad of no character and parts, of base birth, with nothing but his good looks and obsequiousness to speak for him—Cardinal and Bishop of Parma, when his age was only twenty.

Sixtus was always impecunious. To replenish his treasury he had two resources. One was the public sale of places about the Court, and of benefices and of ecclesiastical privileges. "Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, even heaven and our God, are all purchasable," is the exclamation of Baptista Mantuanus, a scholar of the period. His second expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States. Fictitious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine prices, and good grain was sold out of the States of the Church and bad grain was imported, that the Pope might pocket the profits of the transaction. Sixtus forced his subjects to buy at his stores, and regarded their sufferings, and the disease bred of famine, with indifferent eye.

But, bad as he was, Sixtus did some good things. He laid the basis of the great Vatican library, built a bridge over the Tiber, and widened some of the streets.

To him is due the introduction into the calendar of the Feasts of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, also of the Presentation in the Temple, and of Ste. Anne, all three of which find their place in the Anglican calendar; also of S. Joseph.

Sixtus happily put an end to the cruel persecution of the "Spirituals," a branch of the Franciscan Order which advocated absolute poverty, and adherence to the original mandates of the founder. Their prophet and theologian had been d'Oliva. Pope John XXII. had pronounced the writings of d'Oliva heretical, and had handed over the "Spirituals" to the Inquisition, to be dealt with as heretics. Between 1316 and 1352 as many as 114 of them were burnt at the stake ; but Sixtus IV. reversed the judgment of John XXII. and declared this teaching of Oliva to be orthodox; so that those who had been burnt in accordance with the judgment of one Pope, were martyrs for the truth according to the decision of another.

Sixtus died in 1484.

Stephanus Infessura, a contemporary diarist, writes on his death:—

"Sixtus died, on which most happy day God showed His power on earth, in that He liberated His Christian people from the hand of such an impious and iniquitous ruler, in whom was no fear of God, no love for the rule of Christian people, no charity, no tenderness, nothing but vile lusts, avarice, pride, and vain glory."

He goes on with a catalogue of his crimes too horrible to be quoted.

So impressed was the College of Cardinals, on the death of Sixtus IV., with the injury done to the Church by the nepotism of the deceased Pope, by his alienation of Church fiefs to his kinsmen and favourites, that on the election of his successor, Innocent VIII., they made him swear on every relic and by everything that is held most sacred in Christendom, that he would not continue the same abuses. He took the required oath, and no sooner was he enthroned than he absolved himself from the oaths he had taken.

The same farce was enacted with Julius II. in 1503. It really seemed like a Nemesis, that the Popes, who, since the time of Gregory VII., had shown a rare ingenuity in inventing oaths by means of which to entangle men's consciences and bring everything under their power, now themselves took oaths, which they as regularly broke, Indeed, it became obvious that no solemn oath taken by a Pope was worth the breath that uttered it, as he could at once absolve himself from observing it; and it is a riddle how the cardinals should have persisted in exacting capitulations from the Popes, when they must have known that they would break their plighted word as soon as ever they assumed the tiara. Julius II. pushed on the fortunes of his family, which had been already aggrandised by Sixtus IV. This done, he could devote himself, undisturbed by the importunities of his kindred, to the gratification of that innate love for war and broil which was the ruling passion of his life.

He was the fighting Pope, stern, resolute, indomitable. The whippings he had received from his father had steeled his spirit instead of breaking it. His portrait by Raphael admirably expresses the character of this second Delia Rovere Pope. The hard, cold eye, the set frown, the determined mouth, about which a smile never quivered, and the flowing white beard, are eminently characteristic of the man. There is not in the face a trace of the ecclesiastic, not an indication of his having led a spiritual life. But for the habit, he might have been a doge or a military leader.

Ranke thus describes him:—

"Old as Julius was, worn by the vicissitudes of good and evil fortune experienced through a long life, by the fatigues of war and exile, and, above all, by the consequences of intemperance and profligacy, he yet did not know what fear or irresolution meant. In the extremity of age, he still retained that great characteristic of manhood, an indomitable spirit. He felt little respect for princes, and believed himself capable of mastering them all. He took the field in person, and having stormed Mirandola, he pressed into the city across the frozen ditches and through the breach; the most disastrous reverses could not shake his purpose, but seemed rather to waken new resources in him. He was accordingly successful; not only were his own baronies rescued from the Venetians, but in the fierce contest that ensued he finally made himself master of Parma, Placentia, and even Reggio, thus laying the foundation of a power such as no Pope ever possessed before him."

Pope Sixtus IV

A shrewd, dissolute, wicked man, he was superior to Sixtus in ability.

He had his mistresses, his luxury, his simony, and his cruelty, as Macchiavelli wrote of him.^[1] Savona has no cause to glory in those whom she sent to occupy the chair of S. Peter.

But the place is associated with another Pope, and that one of a different stamp altogether, the unfortunate Pius VII., relegated there in 1809, and obliged to remain there till 1814. Pius was a good, quiet man, without force of character. When Napoleon let him understand that the States of the Church were to be taken from him, Pius was in dire distress and perplexity. Acting on the advice of his confidential attendant, Cardinal Pacca, he launched an excommunication at Bonaparte, Miollis, governor of Rome, all the French, and all such Romans as participated in the annexation of the States to the kingdom. The document was nailed up to the doors of several of the Churches of Rome,—

"But nobody seemed a penny the worse."

till an event occurred which startled the good people of the Eternal City.

There was a grand reception at the Chigi Palace, to which persons of all shades of politics were invited. A large company had already assembled, when the major-domo announced, "The Princess Borghese!" Now Prince Borghese had been an active partisan of Bonaparte and of the New Order. It was felt that the Prince and the Princess were both involved in the sentence of excommunication, and in former days no one would have dared to receive into his house those who had fallen under the ban of the Church. Presently the guests sat down to cards, and all went merrily until one o'clock struck, when the Princess fell back in her chair, and though she tried to speak, no intelligible sound issued from her lips. Helpless and speechless, she was conveyed to her own house, where she died three days later.

Then, as may be imagined, tongues wagged. It was confidently asserted that the Princess had been struck down by Providence. Her sudden death was represented as a just punishment for her sin in espousing the cause of the Pope's enemies ; and fanatics held her up as an awful example and a warning.

It was useless to hint that Providence had struck at very poor game—an already half-paralysed old woman—instead of smiting the real offenders. The Princess was in indifferent health at the time, had lost the use of her right arm through one stroke, and the recurrence was what might have been anticipated. No one would hear a word. She had reaped what others had sown.

Count Miollis now resolved on removing the Pope from the city. Although his excommunications and interdicts might safely be laughed at, yet his presence in Rome was a hindrance to general reform of abuses, and his person was a centre for every sort of cabal. The Pope was in the Quirinale, which was close barred. In the evening of June 5th the palace was surrounded by French soldiers, and pickets of cavalry patrolled the adjacent streets. Miollis authorised General Radet to use force if necessary, to enter the Quirinale and get possession of the Pope. Count Miollis stationed himself in a summer-house in the Colonna gardens, whence he could issue directions. Large numbers of the Italian and Roman nobles and people of the middle-class assembled to see what would take place.

The clock at the Quirinale was striking three-quarters after two when Miollis made a sign to commence operations. The gates remained fast shut. The French soldiers tried to scale the garden walls, but failed; and men were sent in hot haste to borrow ladders for the purpose. These were obtained; but the first who surmounted the wall, lost his footing in attempting to descend on the farther side, and broke his leg. Another judgment! and again levelled at very poor game. He was a mulatto. General Radet, with a small following, made good his entrance into the palace through a window, and reached the grand staircase, which was crowded with papal servants, who offered but a feeble and half-hearted resistance, and were at once overpowered.

In the meantime the other party had effected an entrance over the garden wall.

Radet lost no time in gaining the Pope's apartments. One or two doors had to be broken open, and then he reached the ante-chamber, where were drawn up the Papal Swiss guards. They at once laid down their arms, without a show of fight. When a couple more doors had been forced Radet reached the Pope's audience chamber. Pius had rigged himself up so as to produce an impression. He wore a white silk cassock, a mozetta on his head of crimson silk, and a gold stole. He was seated at a table with Cardinals Pacca and Despuig. But Radet was not overawed, as were the Gauls by the sight of the white-bearded senators. Advancing, he said, with courtesy,—

"I have a most painful and trying commission to execute, but I have sworn fidelity and obedience to the Emperor, and I must obey his orders. On the part, therefore, of his Majesty, I have to intimate to your Holiness that you must renounce all temporal sovereignty over Rome and the Roman States."

The Pope replied calmly: "I believed that I had complied with the Emperor's orders, when I took the oath of fealty and obedience to him. We cannot cede or renounce what is not our own. The temporal power belongs to the Roman Church, and we are only the administrators. Must we go alone?"

"No; your Holiness can take Cardinal Pacca with you."

A quarter of an hour afterwards the Pope, wearing his red hat and mantle, left the Quirinale, and, along with Cardinal Pacca, entered a carriage. General Radet and an officer took seats opposite, and the blinds were drawn down on the side on which sat the Pope.

When the carriage was on its way Pius suddenly exclaimed: "I have forgotten to bring my money; all I have in my pocket is twenty bajocchi."

"And I," said the Cardinal, "have only five."

"Then," said the Pope, "this may be regarded as a truly apostolic journey, with one franc seventy-five centimes between us."

The Pope was conveyed somewhat hastily to Savona, where he was well received, but kept under surveillance for nearly six years.

Savona was made the capital of the department of Montenotte by Napoleon. The see was founded in 680. From 1499 to 1528 it was entirely in the hands of the Delia Rovere and Riario families for five successions. In 1098 it was the see of the bishop Peter Grossulano, whose story is strange enough. Anselm, Archbishop of Milan, died at Constantinople on his return from a crusade early in October, noo. During his absence Grossulano had been constituted by him administrator of the archdiocese, of which Savona was a suffragan. When Grossulano heard of the death of Anselm, he proceeded to an election of a successor, and was himself chosen by the majority of the clergy and people. He at once mounted the archiepiscopal throne.

Milan had not long before passed through the furious and savage troubles of Ariald and Herlembald over the marriage of the clergy. There still remained in Milan the turbulent Liprand, dissatisfied that peace had settled down on the place. Possibly Grossulano was not sufficiently rigorous against married clergy, perhaps he had in some unknown way offended Liprand's vanity, for the latter at once ranged himself in opposition and sent to the Pope to entreat him to withhold the pall from the newly elected bishop. But Paschal would not listen to his remonstrances, and, acting on the advice of S. Bernard, abbot of Valumbrosa, he confirmed the election and sent the pall.

Angry at this, Liprand did his utmost to rouse the people against their archbishop, and became such a nuisance that Grossulano summoned a provincial council, and, addressing the people, said: "If any one has aught against me, let him proclaim it openly, otherwise he shall not be heard."

Thereupon Liprand gathered a crowd of the disaffected in his church of S. Paul, and in it denounced the archbishop as simonacal, and he appealed to the judgment of God against him. He would have a fire lighted and pass through it to establish his assertion. But the bishops assembled in council forbade the ordeal.

However, as he continued to be a source of evil in Milan, Grossulano told him that he must either pass through the flames or quit Milan, Liprand chose the first alternative, but arranged the matter so that there were two fires made at a convenient distance apart, and he marched between them unhurt. Two years later Liprand was summoned to Rome and sharply reprimanded; nevertheless, Milan continued to be torn by factions, Liprand and his followers refusing to receive the ministrations of Grossulano and his clergy.

At last the Archbishop departed for Jerusalem. During his absence Liprand became more abusive and uproarious, and managed to gather together a sufficient party to elect in the room of Grossulano an ignorant, uneducated man called Giordano, to be archbishop; and the three suffragans of Asti, Genoa, and Turin consecrated him. The bishop of Turin hurried to Rome to obtain the pall for Giordano. Paschal was in the midst of his strife with Henry V., and it was essential that he should have the support of the Archbishop of Milan. He could not be certain of Grossulano, whether he were anti-imperial or not; besides, he was absent. Giordano he hoped to use as a tool. Accordingly he sent the pall to him, but stipulated that he was not to be arrayed in it till he had sworn absolute submission to the Pope, and to refuse investiture from the Emperor.

For six months Giordano steadfastly refused to receive the pall on these terms, but his scruples vanished on the return of Grossulano, and he submitted unreservedly to the Pope, who summoned a council in the Lateran Palace, 1116, when a mock hearing of the case took place; Grossulano was dismissed to Savona, and Giordano was confirmed in his usurpation.

Savona was a margravate held by a junior branch of the great house of Monferrat The Emperor Otto I, raised Aleram, Count of Monferrat, to the dignity of margrave. Boniface, descended from a junior son, became Margrave of Saluzzo. He died in 1130, and his second son Enrico became Margrave of Savona. These margravates were much like sea-anemones; when divided up, each several parcel became an entire margravate complete in itself. In 1215 Savona was gripped by rapacious Genoa, and the last margravate died in 1233.

A pretty drive of an hour takes one up the valley to Santuario, a pilgrimage church with hospice, founded in 1536. The church, which is rich in marbles, contains a miraculous image of the Virgin, tricked out with velvet and jewels. She wears a diamond collar given by King Charles Albert, and a jewelled crown presented by Pope Pius VII. The chapter of S. Peter's claims the right to decide what miraculous images are to be honoured with crowns, but the crowns themselves are conferred by the popes. In 1632 a certain Count Alessandro Sforza, a fanatic from Piacenza, by his will left rents of a large estate to furnish gold and jewels for this purpose; as time went on, the property grew in value, and the crowns at the same time became more splendid. The honour is usually reserved for the Virgin, but occasionally the Bambino is remembered as well. Figures of Christ are, however, never deemed worthy of being crowned, except He be represented as a babe.

The story of this image is not particularly novel and interesting. It was found by a peasant where now stands a little circular chapel on the hill above the present sanctuary. He saw the Virgin in a vision, who bade him go to Savona and bid the people erect a church to enshrine her. He did as bidden, but the good folk in Savona would not believe him, thought him crazed, and locked him up. In the night the Virgin released him. After some further trouble, and some further miracles, the story was believed and the sanctuary was erected.

Beside the image is a little marble figure representing the countryman who started the cult. Beneath the feet of the Virgin issues a spring of water that is supposed to cure all diseases, but is so intensely cold as to be more likely to do harm than good.

At Varazzi, near Savona, was born the famous Jacques de Voragine, about the year 1230. Nothing is known of the social position of his parents. In one of his writings he speaks of the eclipse of 1239, and says that he was still a child when it occurred. He became a dominican in 1244, and in 1292 was elected to the bishopric of Genoa. He laboured hard to effect a truce between the Ghibelline and Guelf factions, which for two whole months converted the streets of the capital of Liguria into a field of battle. He succeeded. But the peace was soon broken again. The story goes of him that, being present in S. Peter's along with Boniface VI II. on Ash Wednesday, during the ceremonies, the pontiff, supposing him to belong to the imperial party, dashed the ashes in his face, shouting, " Remember, thou Ghibelline, that thou and thy Ghibellines will be reduced to dust." Jacques is chiefly known through his Legenda Aurea, a collection of the most outrageous, but also the most romantic fables of the saints; a work that had an enormous sale in the Middle Ages, and was copied again and again, and read everywhere, and, incredible as it may seem, was believed as gospel. He died 1298.

At Albizzola Superiore is the palace of the Delia Rovere family, Giuliano, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV., as a boy was wont to carry the farm produce from his father's farm to Savona, either by boat or mule, however rough the season might be, and, if he did not sell in the market, was unmercifully thrashed by his father on his return. But when his uncle became Pope, all this was altered. He entered the ecclesiastical profession, became a cardinal, and finally Pope, as already told. The palace was built out of the plunder of the Church.

Mme. de Genlis visited the Delia Rovere palace at Albizzola. She says:—

"The gardens are vast, but tasteless. I remarked there one thing very singular—there were none of the charming flowers one sees growing naturally in the fields; only oranges were there, and box; this latter cultivated with the utmost care, in the most superb vases that decorate the terraces. This villainous box, planted in splendid vases, occupies its position solely because it is more rare and costly a plant than myrtles, jessamines, and oleanders."

She has given us an account of her journey to Albenga, over rocks, the mountain road being so steep and so dangerous that descents had to be made on foot. "I may almost say that we arrived barefooted, for the stones during three days had so worn and pierced our shoes, that the soles were nearly gone." And beyond Savona she says

"the journey is most dangerous, but at the same time most interesting. The horror of the precipices made me walk three-quarters of the way, over stones and cutting rocks. I arrived at Genoa with my feet swollen and full of blisters, but otherwise in rude health."

How the journey from Marseilles to Genoa has changed since Mme. de Genlis took that road with the Duchesse de Chartres a few years before the outbreak of the Revolution, may be judged by some further instances.

When the party left Antibes for Nice, they went by sea, because of the badness of the road; and were obliged to be accompanied by a felucca with a whole regiment on board, to protect them against corsairs.

At Ospidaletta

"we were forced to halt and spend the night, one of the most frightful places that hospitality ever provided. We slept three in one room, and we made up a sort of bed for Mme. the Duchess of Chartres with mule cloths-and leaves. In one room were two great heaps of corn, and the master of the house assured us that we should sleep well if we buried ourselves in the grain. The gentlemen gave us their cloaks to cover the corn. One had to go to bed in the most extraordinary attitude in fact, almost upright. We passed the night in continual interruptions, caused by slidings down and by the upset of masses of corn. With joy we saw the day dawn; and as we had slept in our clothes, our toilettes did not occupy us long."

The whole of the Riviera from Nice to Genoa—indeed, the whole of Provence—is studded with ruined castles and palaces: of these, only the most mean, that house of cards, Monaco, remains intact. They tell us of a time when the great families lived in lordly state, under the absolutism of the French crown or the despotism of the Genoese Republic. In Genoa itself the families inscribed on the Golden Book, and alone having the right to sit in council and direct the affairs of state, and mismanage and oppress the Ligurian coast and Corsica, did not exceed one hundred and seventy. But in Liguria there were at least four hundred and fifty noble families decorated with titles, possessing vast estates, commanderies, and hereditary wealth, who were excluded from all share in the government.

All have gone under, not in the wars for the Milanese, but in the Revolution; and these ruined castles and palaces are their tombstones. Who can doubt that it is well that so it should have been. In the words of Macaulay:—

"The volcano has spent its rage. The wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgotten. The landmarks which were swept away have been replaced. The ruined edifices have been repaired. The lava has covered with a rich incrustation the fields which it once devastated, and, after having turned a beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has again turned the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The marks of its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are beneath our feet. In some directions the deluge of fire still continues to spread. Yet experience surely entitles us to believe that this explosion will fertilise the soil which it has devastated. Already, in those parts which have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure dwellings have begun to appear amidst the waste."

The palaces of the Lascaris, the Grimaldis, the Durazzos, the Delia Roveres, the Dorias, are in ruins, but in their places rise hotels de Paris, de l'Univers, the Metropole; and the bands of bravos entertained by the nobles are replaced by Italian and Swiss waiters.

"The more we read the history of past ages, the more we observe the signs of our own times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up by a good hope for the future destinies of the human race."

1. "Tre sue famigliari e care anzelle, lussuria, simonia, e crudeltade" (Opere, Flor., 1843, p. 882).