COMMODORE PATTERSON.

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I consider, myself, I repeat, particularly fortunate to have made a cruise on board an American frigate. It is a chapter of observation in itself, which is worth much to any one. But, in addition to this, it was my good fortune to have happened upon a cruise directed by a mind full of taste and desire for knowledge, and a cruise which had for its principal objects improvement and information. Commodore

Patterson knew the ground well, and was familiar with the history and localities of the interesting countries visited by the ship; and every possible facility and encouragement was given by him to all to whom the subjects and places were new. An enlightened and enterprising traveller himself, he was the best of advisers and the best and kindest of guides. I take pleasure in recording almost unlimited obligations to him.

And so, to the gallant ship-to the "warlike world within "-to the decks I have so often promenaded, and the moonlight watches I have so often shared-to the groups of manly faces I have learned to know so well-to the drum-beat and the bugle-call, and the stirring music of the band-to the hammock in which I swung and slept so soundly and last and nearest my heart, to the gay and hospitable mess with whom for six happy months I have been a guest and a friend, whose feelings I have learned but to honour my country more, and whose society has become to me even a painful want-to all this catalogue of happiness, J am bidding a heavy-hearted farewell. Luck and Heaven's blessing to ship and company!

LETTER VI.
MILAN.

JOURNEY THROUGH ITALY-BOLOGNA -MALIBRAN-PARMA

NIGHTINGALES OF LOMBARDY-PIACENZA-AUSTRIAN SOLDIERS -THE SIMPLON-MILAN-RESEMBLANCE TO PARIS-THE CATHEDRAL-GUERCINO'S HAGAR-MILANESE EXCLUSIVENESS.

MAY 1834

On

My fifth journey over the Appenines-dull of course. the second evening we were at Bologna. The long colon

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nades pleased me less than before, with their crowds of foreign officers and ill-dressed inhabitants; and a placard for the opera, announcing Malibran's last night, relieved us of the prospect of a long evening of weariness. The divine music of La Norma, and a crowded and brilliant audience, enthusiastic in their applause, seemed to inspire this still incomparable creature even beyond her wont. She sang with a fulness, an abandonment, a passionate energy and sweetness that seemed to come from a soul rapt and possessed beyond control with the melody it had undertaken. They were never done calling her on the stage after the curtain had fallen. After six re-appearances, she came out once more to the foot-lights, and murmuring something inaudible from lips that showed strong agitation, she pressed her hands together, bowed till her long hair, falling over her shoulders, nearly touched her feet, and retired in tears. She is the siren of Europe for me!

I was happy to have no more to do with the Duke of Modena, than to eat a dinner in his capital. We did not "forget the picture," but my inquiries for it were as fruitless as before. I wonder whether the author of the "Pleasures of Memory" has the pleasure of remembering having seen the picture himself. "Tassoni's bucket, which is not the true one," is still shown in the Tower, and the keeper will kiss the cross upon his fingers, that Samuel Rogers has written a false line.

At Parma we ate parmesan, and saw the Correggio. The angel who holds the book up to the infant Saviour; the female laying her cheek to his feet; the countenance of the holy child himself, are creations that seem apart from all else in the schools of painting. They are like a group, not from life, but from heaven. They are superhuman, and, unlike other pictures of beauty, which stir the heart as if they resembled something one had loved or might have loved, these mount into the fancy like things transcending sympathy, and only within reach of an intellectual and elevated wonder. This is the picture that Sir Thomas Lawrence returned six times in one day to see. It is the only thing I saw to admire in the duchy of Maria Louisa. An Austrian regiment marched into the town as we left it, and an Italian at the gate told us that the Duchess had

disbanded her last troops of the country, and supplied their place with these yellow and black Croats and Illyrians. Italy is Austria now to the foot of the Appenines—if not to the top of Radicofani.

Lombardy is full of nightingales. They sing by day, however, (as not specified in poetry.) They are up quite as early as the lark, and the green hedges are alive with their gurgling and changeful music till twilight. Nothing can exceed the fertility of these endless plains. They are four or five hundred miles of uninterrupted garden. The same eternal level road; the same rows of elms and poplars on either side; the same long, slimy canals; the same square, vine-laced, perfectly green pastures and corn-fields; the same shaped houses; the same voiced beggars with the same sing-song whine, and the same villanous Austrians poring over your passports and asking to be paid for it, from the Alps to the Appenines. It is wearisome, spite of green leaves and nightingales. A bare rock or a good brigand-looking mountain would so refresh the eye!

At Piacenza, one of those admirable German bands was playing in the public square, while a small corps of picked men were manœuvred. Even an Italian, I should think, though he knew and felt it was the music of his oppressors, might have been pleased to listen. And pleased they seemed to be for there were hundreds of dark-haired and wellmade men, with faces and forms for heroes, standing and keeping time to the well-played instruments, as peacefully as if there were no such thing as liberty, and no meaning in the foreign uniforms crowding them from their own pavement. And there were the women of Piacenza, nodding from the balconies to the white moustachios and padded coats strutting below, and you would never dream Italy thought herself wronged, watching the exchange of courtesies between her dark-eyed daughters and these fair-haired coxcombs.

We crossed the Po, and entered Austria's nominal dominions. They rummaged our baggage as if they smelt republicanism somewhere; and after showing a strong disposition to retain a volume of very bad poetry as suspicious, and detaining us two long hours, they had the modesty to ask to be paid for letting us off lightly. When we declined

it, the chef threatened us a precious searching "the next time." How willingly I would submit to the annoyance to have that next time assured to me! Every step I take toward the bounds of Italy pulls so upon my heart!

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As most travellers come into Italy over the Simplon, Milan makes generally the first enthusiastic chapter in their books. I have reversed the order myself, and have a better right to praise it from comparison. For exterior, there is certainly no city in Italy comparable to it. The streets are broad and noble; the buildings magnificent; the pavement quite the best in Europe; and the Milanese (all of whom I presume I have seen, for it is Sunday, and the streets swarm with them) are better dressed, and look "better to do in the world" than the Tuscans, who are gayer and more Italian, and the Romans, who are graver and vastly handsomer, Milan is quite like Paris. The showy and mirrorlined cafés; the elegant shops; the variety of strange people and costumes, and a new gallery lately opened in imitation of the glass-roofed passages of the French capital, make one almost feel that the next turn will bring him upon the Boulevards.

The famous cathedral, nearly completed by Napoleon, is a sort of Aladdin creation, too delicate and beautiful for the open air. The filmy traceries of Gothic fretwork; the needle-like minarets; the hundreds of beautiful statues with which it is studded; the intricate, graceful, and bewildering architecture of every window and turret, and the frost-like frailness and delicacy of the whole mass, make an effect altogether upon the eye that must stand high on the list of new sensations. It is a vast structure withal; but a middling easterly breeze, one would think, in looking at it, would lift it from its base, and bear it over the Atlantic like the meshes of a cobweb. Neither interior nor exterior impresses you with the feeling of awe common to other large churches. The sun struggles through the immense windows of painted glass, staining every pillar and carved cornice with the richest hues; and wherever the eye wanders, it grows giddy with the wilderness of architecture. The people on their knees are like paintings in the strong artificial light; the checkered pavement seems

trembling with a quivering radiance; the altar is far and indistinct, and the lamps burning over the tomb of Saint Carlo shine out from the centre like gems glistening in the midst of some enchanted hall. This reads very like rhapsody, but it is the way the place impressed me. It is like a great dream. Its excessive beauty scarce seems constant while the eye rests upon it.

The Brera is a noble palace, occupied by the public galleries of statuary and painting. I felt on leaving Florence that I could give pictures a very long holiday. To live on them, as one does in Italy, is like dining from morn till night. The famous Guercino is at Milan, however,—the "Hagar," which Byron talks of so enthusiastically, and I once more surrendered myself to a cicerone. The picture catches your eye on your first entrance. There is that harmony and effect in the colour that mark a master-piece, even in a passing glance. Abraham stands in the centre of the group, a fine, prophet-like "green old man," with a mild decision in his eye, from which there is evidently no appeal. Sarah has turned her back, and you can just read in the half-profile glance of her face that there is a little pity mingled in her hard-hearted approval of her rival's banishment. But Hagar-who can describe the world of meaning in her face? The closed lips have in them a calm incredulousness, contradicted with wonderful nature in the flushed and troubled forehead, and the eyes red with long weeping. The gourd of water is hung over her shoulder, her hand is turning her sorrowful boy from the door, and she has looked back once more, with a large tear coursing down her cheek, to read in the face of her master if she is indeed driven forth for ever. It is the instant before pride and despair close over her heart. You see in the picture that the next moment is the crisis of her life. Her gaze straining upon the old man's lips, and you wait breathlessly to see her draw up her bending form, and depart in proud sorrow for the wilderness. It is a piece of powerful and passionate poetry. It affects you like nothing but a reality. The eyes get warm, and the heart beats quick; and as you walk away you feel as if a load of oppressive sympathy was lifting from your heart.

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I have seen little else in Milan, except Austrian soldiers,