up the long river valleys till from the crest he may see ā in
imagination if not in fact ā
' the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain,'
as well as ' the cucumbers and the melons, and the leeks and
the onions, and the garlick ' of this richer Egypt, and from
his lusting for these and other joys trade arose. That trade
fell at one time largely to the lot of Venice. Further, as is
well known, the trade of the East was chiefly in her hands
till the discovery of the sea-route to India, and it was that
trade especially which enriched her.
Among her disadvantages we have to note that the opposite
shore, once the resort of the pirates who harassed her trade,
consists for the most part of but a narrow strip of plain
ā sometimes non-existent ā beyond which rise mountains
not crossed by any natural trade route. The reopening of
the Mediterranean to the traffic of the East with the cutting
of the Suez Canal, might, one would suppose, have caused
Venice to regain her old splendour, but she is ill-fitted to
PLATE XXX
Gondolas oil the (iraiul Canal at \\'iiice. 'I'lic (uaiul Canal
is probalil.v the u\<\ in<>utli of the llri'iita.
TURIN 295
serve as a great modern port (note the position of the railway
station), and opposite her Ues Trieste, the natural outlet of
the centre and south-east of the continent. With this brief
description we may leave the Queen of the Sea, only adding
that the S-shaped Grand Canal is probably the remains of
the old mouth of the Brenta, which was turned away from the
city by the Venetians, because they wished to diminish the
risk of the silting up of the harbour.
We have left too Kttle space to say much of the other
cities of the plain. Turin, placed where the plain narrows,
between Mouferrato and the Alps, and commanding the
Mont Cenis route, is functionally a fortress. One should
notice its straight streets, crossing each other at right angles,
and the way the Castello forms the natural centre of the town.
It is thus primarily of strategic importance (note the road
to Genoa, cf. p. 213), though of recent years its manufactures
have become important. Verona, a most interesting town,
commands the southern entrance of the Brenner pass, much
as Munich may be said to command the northern. The two
towns ofier contrasts of great interest, and the Brenner route,
with a stop at Verona before Venice is visited, is probably
the most instructive way of entering Italy.
The hints given in this chapter in regard to the causes
determining the sites of towns may be of some help to the
tourist in his visits to the other towns of the Northern Plain,
which we cannot discuss here.
References. We shall not give here a list of books dealing with
North Italy. Their name is legion, and any Ubrarian or library cata-
logue will give a long list, beginning with Ruskin's Stones of Venice,
and ending with a picture book published j'esterday. As no attempt
has been made here to discuss questions of art, and as most of these
books deal primarily with this subject, it seems unnecessary to name
them here. The most authoritative account of the geography of Italy
ā unfortunately not very easy of access ā is to be found in Prof. Theo-
bald Fischer's Das Ualbinselland lialien, which forms part (vol. iii.
296 THE NORTH ITALIAN PLAIN
part 2, 2nd half) of Kirchhoff's monumental work called Unser
Wissen von der Erde, the special volume being part of Laenderkunde
von Europa. Most descriptions of Italy in books of reference are more
or less based upon this account. In the course of his reading the in-
dustrious traveller wiU not fail to plod through / Promessi Sposi, which
gives a good account of Milan, and some history of the Risorgimento
should also be included.
CHAPTER XXII
PROVENCE AND TRANSAPENNINE ITALY. THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE TOWN
' Qui n'a pas vu Avignon du temps des Papes, n'a rien vu. Pour
la gaiet6, la vie, I'animation, le train des fetes, jamais une ville pareille.
C'6taient, du matin au soir, des processions, des pelerinages, les rues
jonch6es de fleurs, tapiss6es dc hautes lices, des arrivages de cardinaux
par le Rhone, bannieres au vent, galeres pavoisecs, les soldats du Pape
qui chantaient du latin sur les places, les cr^celles des freres queteurs ;
puis, du haut en bas des maisons qui se pressaient en bourdonnant
autour du grand palais papal, comme des abeilles autour de leur ruche,
c'6tait encore le tic-tac des metiers a dentelles, le va-et-vient des
navettes tissant Tor des chasubles, les petits marteaux des ciseleurs do
burettes, les tables d'harmonie qu'on ajustait chcz les luthiers, les
cantiques des ourdisseuses ; par la-dessus le bruit des cloches, et >ou-
jours quelques tambourins qu-on entendait ronfler, la-bas, du cot^ du
pont. . . . Ah ! I'heureux temps ! I'heureuse ville ! '
The great plain of the Po which we considered in the last
chapter is said by Professor Fischer to hnk peninsular and
therefore Mediterranean Italy to Europe proper. Spain
is cut off from continental Europe not only by the chain of
the Pyrenees, but also by the fact that behind the barrier
lies a relatively infertile plateau land. Spain proper lies
far to the south, and the long domination of the Moors
emphasises its apartness from the rest of Europe, the fact
that in climate, products and civilisation it is Mediterranean
ā one might almost say North African. In Italy the vast,
fertile Northern plain has exerted throughout historical time
an attraction upon the peoples of Central Europe which has
ā¢J'J7
298 PROVENCE AND TRANSAPENNINE ITALY
enabled them to overcome the difficulties of the passage,
has ā in a broad sense ā germanised the north of Italy, and
thus prevented that country from presenting the remoteness
of the Iberian peninsula.
Indeed were it not that Central Europe is linked to Mediter-
ranean Italy by the passes of the Alps and the Apennines,
and by that wide furrow through which the Saone and Rhone
flow, there would be much to be said for the exclusion of the
great peninsulas of the Mediterranean from Europe in the
strict sense. Greece influenced Italy profoundly, and this
influence was sent northwards by the routes we have men-
tioned ā it is to this fact that we owe the double civilisation
of Mid-Europe. In Chapter i. we excluded Eastern Europe
from our conception of the continent, not only because of
its different physical characters, but also because of its aloof-
ness in fact. We include the Mediterranean lands in our
narrowed conception of Europe, not that the differences in
this case are less ā they are certainly as great ā but because
the two regions have continually reacted and interacted
upon one another. Across the lofty Alpine passes, through
the great furrow of the Rhone, there has been a ceaseless
interchange of products, of ideals, of influences. Italy, the
central member of the group of three Mediterranean penin-
sulas, has been, on account of her position, the mediator
between two types of civiUsation, the northern and the
southern. The swallows which fly now north and now
south, along the Hne of the vanished Tyrrhenian land, sym-
bolise the movement of human ideals.
We have akeady in Chapter xix. spoken of the Riviera,
having taken it as a region apart, because the towns and
villages which the term connotes for most people are in
great part pleasure resorts and nothing more, are not natural
outgrowths of their surroundings. The French Riviera
includes a small part of Provence, but Provence as a whole
difiers markedly from the sheltered ' hothouse ' coastal
HILL-TOP TOWT^S 299
strip, and is strongly Mediterranean, if not Italian, in feeling.
Indeed it is not too much to say that those who find themselves
unable to visit Transapennine Italy may capture more of its
atmosphere ā actual and mental ā in some of the old towns
of Provence than in the plains of Lombardy or Venetia.
It is for this reason that we include a brief consideration
of Provence in this chapter.
What are the special features of these Mediterranean
lands ? No doubt very varied answers could be given to
this question, but, geographically speaking, the flowering
of the individual town, if one may put the matter so, is
perhaps the most striking feature. In Provence and in the
Mediterranean region generally there is a sharp alternation
of mountain and plain, the latter being usually small. There
is a correspondingly sharp contrast between the rude life of
the mountaineer and the intensely civilised Ufe of the towns-
man, and as the plains are narrow and isolated, and yet often
highly productive, and the town-making instinct very highly
developed, the individual settlement acquires a perfection
rare elsewhere. It is not only that, in earher days, art
flourished in those separate cities, relatively small though
they were, as it does not flourish in our great centres ; the
city itself was a more complete organism than its northern
representatives. It was not only market-town and seat of
manufacture, of commerce, of learning, of administration ;
in many parts of Italy, by a curious paradox, the agriculturist
is a townsman. If one journeys through the heart of penin-
sular Italy, say from Florence to Rome, one of the most
striking features of the journey is the presence of innumerable
little towns on the hilltops, separated by spaces all but
devoid of habitations. The inhabitants of these hill -towns
are often largely engaged in cultivating the land, and it is
characteristic of much of Italy that not only the sohtary
habitation but even the small village is rare. In Scotland
and the north of England one not uncommonly finds the
300 PROVENCE AND TRANSAPENNINE ITALY
village reduced as it were to its functional minimum. It
may consist of church, school, blacksmith's shop, vicarage
or manse, with perhaps a squire or laird's house and a few
cottages. Sometimes it is reduced even below this. In
Italy, on the other hand, whenever what the French
geographers call an ' agglomeration ' exists, it tends to be
relatively large.
The fact has of course a considerable effect upon the
traveller's movements in Italy. Very many of those villages
or towns contain magnificent works of art, and it is possible
to journey slowly through the country, from one centre to
the next, gorging oneself as it were with beauty ā primarily,
however, the beauties of art. But even were the beauties
of nature greater than, as a rule, they are, it would be difl&cult
to study them in detail, for that solitary wandering on foot
from hill to valley and valley to hill, which seems so eminently
natural to the less socialised northerners, is regarded here
as an inexplicable phenomenon ā the rucksack is not a passport
in Italy.
The causes of the urbanisation of Mediterranean lands
are no doubt multiple, and have not perhaps been yet fully
analysed. Partly no doubt the people cluster on the hill-
tops because of the danger of malaria on the plains below, the
steep slopes above diminishing the number of pools in which
mosquitoes might breed. Safety from robbers is no doubt
also a factor, and pohtical causes in the past have counted
for something. We have also to remember that as the
crops are mostly valuable in proportion to bulk, and demand
a corresponding amount of labour, less land is necessary
than when cheaper crops are grown. In other words, a
relatively small tract of land round a village will support
its population if that land is devoted to vines, ohves, mul-
berries for silk, and so forth, as compared with the amount
required to grow potatoes or turnips, and thus the villager
who is an agriculturist need not travel a great distance to
OLD TOm^S AND NEW 301
his work. It is possible also that race and tradition count
for something. In any case the tourist, who is probably a
native of a modern type of town, should not fail to notice
that since the ItaUans ā after long centuries of practice ā
have, or had once, practically solved the problem of adapting
their towns to human needs, they have no foolish illusions
about the superiority of country hfe. Our towns are for
the most part arranged with insufficient regard for human
needs except the most material ones, and the consequence
is that we most of us cherish the fond delusion that it is
our dearest wish to retire into the country and Uve the
simple life, and that it is a sign of degeneracy for country
folk to wish to enjoy the conveniences and decencies to
be found in the towns. In point of fact the ordinary towns-
man's desire to five in the country is precisely on all fours
with his desire to eat oatcake or Bauerbrod, a subject which
we discussed on p. 137.
Next to the development of the town, the most striking
feature of Provence and Mediterranean Italy is perhaps the
cUmate and associated vegetation. This subject we have
already discussed, but perhaps we should note in addition
that it is the clearness of the air, the bright sunlight, the
recurrent drought, which give rise to those colour effects
so dear to the artist's soul, which were also so keen a stimulus
to the great artists of the past. Life in towns where free
social intercourse was possible ; the fact that those towns
were natural centres into which many influences drained,
constant intercourse being possible across and along a great
sea which bordered similar and yet contrasting countries ā
these were among the conditions which made it possible for
the mediaeval Italians to enrich humanity with so many
priceless treasures.
But a caution should be added. In spite of all its marvels,
Italy proper probably almost always comes to the unsophisti-
cated tourist with a shock of disappointment, and for this
302 PROVENCE AND TRANSAPENNINE ITALY
reason also it is well to visit Provence before the longer
journey is taken. Expectation in this case is not generally-
raised to so high a pitch and therefore the shock is less, and
one learns what to expect among the hill-towns.
There is in Grant Allen's book called The Woman Who Did,
a few words of description of an Enghsh girl's sensations
on a first view of Perugia which must represent the feelings of
many another, whose careful reading has not prepared her
for that sudden sinking of heart which the first Itahan town
seen at close quarters is apt to produce ā for Perugia is no
worse than the other towns, and is better than some.
The exact causes of that shock of disappointment are
not easy to put into words which will not arouse prejudice,
on one side or the other. Those of our towns which are
growing are mostly of recent origin, and, fundamentally, have
been constructed to supply the maximum amount of labour
for the factories with the minimum of initial outlay. They
are mostly congested or contain congested areas, and have
arisen with great rapidity ; all these statements being of
course especially true of the coal towns. These facts necessi-
tate an efficient water supply, usually brought from a distance,
an adequate system of drainage, and to such subjects, as well
as to pohcing, cleaning, the construction of schools, hospitals,
workhouses and so forth, the attention of administrative
bodies is chiefly directed. Within certain hmits and at a
certain level most of our towns are efficiently managed.
This kind of efficiency is for the most part absent in the towns
of Mediterranean Italy, and the northern tourist, who is
shocked by obvious dehnquencies, tends to condemn the
inhabitants wholesale as shiftless, idle, dirty, and so forth.
Closer inspection will, however, show that the town does
often provide very adequately for needs of whose existence
our municipahties are just beginning to be aware. The
traveller who is unutterably scandaUsed by the condition
of a hill-town street should remember that art means leisure.
CHARACTERS OF ITALIAN TOWNS 303
and that we may suppose that the great art of the past
represents in a sense time saved which further north would
have been spent in scavenging, not an inspiring occupation
at best. The question whether it is better to have a dirty-
street and a marvellous church, or a spotless street and hideous
pubhc buildings is one which each individual must settle
for himself, but before condemning the Itahans wholesale
as idlers, as many British tourists do, one should remember
that a long latent period is necessary for the production of
works of art, and what looks like idleness may really be
germination.
Those who rank cleanliness higher than art should return
home through Germany, and note how the people there pay
for their really admirably kept towns in the frequent artless
barbarity of their monuments, where the conceptions of a
child or a savage are presented with the help of all the resources
of civiUsation. In their towns the Itahans sometimes succeed
in expressing the highest human emotions in almost perfect
form, while the obviously very expensive monuments which
decorate beautiful sites in Germany seem designed, like the
war paint of primitive peoples, to frighten a possible enemy.
Even more depressing, however, than the actual Denkmal
is the thought that it represents a base ideal become imaged
flesh, an ideal which corroded the heart of a people.
But it is difficult to be fair to both parties, and there are
moments when 'efficiency,' even of the most blatant type,
seems to have its uses ; as, for instance, when one finds within
an Italian church a notice setting forth the bishop's permis-
sion to the faithful to abstain from fasting because of the
prevalence of infectious disease {i.e. cholera ?), and outside on
the steps of the same church in the blazing summer sun clear
evidence that the town's system of sanitation ā if indeed
such exists ā is totally inadequate to its needs. Again,
however, one has to note on the other side that there are
villages and hamlets in Scotland as innocent of any form of
304 PROVENCE AND TRANSAPENNINE ITALY
sanitation as any Italian or Proven9al town, and that the
Scot, of whose virtues it is the custom to speak so highly, in
his native village often shows that utter shiftlessness of which
the Italian is so bitterly accused.
Perhaps on the whole the safest way is first to avoid, so
far as possible, making sweeping racial deductions on the
basis of a traveller's brief observations, and, further, to
extend one's observations over as many regions as possible.
There is no surer method of acquiring wide tolerance, and
one must not forget that life would lose half its savour if
our neighbours had not vices which make our virtues shine
the brighter.
With this introduction let us note some of the structural
features which have been of importance in connection with
the history of Transapennine Italy.
The first point of interest is the reason why the balance
of power has always through historical time lain to the west
rather than to the east. We have already seen that the
east coast, from about Rimini northwards, is low, flat, swampy,
and its harbours continually liable to silting-up, owing to
the fact that the long rivers, w^hich carry much water, have
mountain tributaries, loaded with copious debris, which is
thrown down where the main stream enters the sea. From
the vicinity of Rimini southwards the coast rises steeply
from the shore, and for long tracts is harbourless ā Brindisi
and Taranto being the only important ports.
Not only is the coast harbourless and difficult of access,
it has the further disadvantage that a coastal plain is some-
times absent and when present never wide. Further, since
the rivers are short, rapid, and run in parallel disconnected
valleys, access to the interior is difficult, and that interior
when reached contains no important plains. Again, as aheady
explained, the opposite coastline has but few products to
offer. In consequence traffic up the Adriatic has for the
most part been directed to the ports of the Po plain, and
COASTLINES OF ITALY 305
so to that plain and to the Transalpine countries, not to
peninsular Italy.
As contrasted with the Adriatic coastline, the western
part of the peninsula has many advantages. Here the
mountains for the most part stand further back from the
coast, and what were once depressions between the mountains
and the sea have been filled up by the products of volcanic
eruptions, e.g. at Naples and around Rome, or by the debris
carried by rivers, as in the lower basin of the Arno. Further,
at this side the rivers are of more complicated structure, the
short parallel streams of the east being replaced by branching
systems, watering and opening up wide plains, notably those
of the Arno and the Tiber. It is these plains which bear
many of the most important towns of peninsular Italy, for
example, Rome, Florence, and so forth. Not only are these
plains in many cases floored with fertile soil, but this part of
peninsular Italy faces the rain-bearing winds, and has a heavier
precipitation, and on the whole a better cUmate than the
east. Finally, on this side better ports occur, a subject
which demands some consideration.
The west coast of Italy generally shows much variation
in structure. In Calabria the mountains rise more or less
directly from the sea, and good ports do not exist. Further
north, in the Gulf of Salerno, and still more in that of Naples,
the straight coasthne of Calabria is replaced by a region of
bays, into which no large rivers open, so that the danger of
the silting up of harbours is shght. Here in classical times
were the great ports, as well as the towns founded by Greek
colonists and strongly influenced by Greek culture, with the
result that here, as on the east coast of Sicily, we have often
wonderful reUcs of earlier civihsations. The presence of
Sicily also, which again has good harbours, promoted free
communication by water at a time when civihsation was
water-borne, and in consequence all down these coasts we have
monuments indicating the importance of vanished towns,
u
306 PROVENCE AND TRANSAPENNINE ITALY
towns sometimes, like that of Psestum, represented now only
by their temples.
As we pass northwards of the Gulf of Gseta the conditions
become less favourable. Here the peninsula is wider, the
rivers longer, of greater volume and more densely loaded
with silt. In consequence, though the low coasthne is
generally favourable to commerce, all through historical
time the danger of silting up has been present, and, as in the
northern Adriatic, many ports have decayed or disappeared.
But this is not the whole of the difficulty. As on the east
coast the silting up has meant the formation of ' dead ' lagoons,
cut of! from the influence of the sea, forming nurseries for
miUions of mosquitoes which, soon infected with malaria
germs, become agents for the transmission of fever. Leghorn,
now an important port, has been rendered healthy only at
great expenditure, and the melancholy of Pisa is to be ascribed
not only to the fact that, as at Ravenna, the sea has been
steadily retreating through historical time, but also (again
like Ravenna) to the fever ' bred in her marshes.'
Beyond the mouth of the Magra, in the vicinity of Spezia,
we come again to a coast where mountains rise steeply from
the sea, where silting up and fever disappear, and we thus
pass into the region of the Riviera already described
(Chapter xix.).
As we again travel westwards beyond the coastUne of the
Riviera, the mountains retreat and we come to the swampy
flats in the vicinity of the Rhone, with the possibility of
easy access to the interior. Here, again, therefore appear
the splendid monuments of an earlier age, and in Aries and
Nimes and the adjacent region we find again some of the
beauties to be found round the Gulfs of Salerno and Naples
and in Sicily.
Broadly speaking, we may say that the original civihsation
along this coast was sea-borne, and its relics are to be found
chiefly where convenient harbours exist ; where access to
I'LATK WXI
Tlic Anio at Floieiice in suininfi' tinu', showing the marginal
pools in wliich the mos()uitoe.s breed ; tliis swainpv ground
was formerlv much more extensive.
FLORENCE 307
the interior is relatively easy ; where fertile patches attract
settlement ; where the absence of swamps and of malaria
make for healthy conditions, though some of the swamps
are of relatively recent origin.
But while the monuments of classical times are to be
sought largely, though not exclusively, within easy access of
the sea, the splendours of mediaeval and Renaissance art are
to be sought in peninsular Italy mostly in the towns which