their country, that corrupt the wo- A school for the study of mechamen of Italy. Where the sexual nicks, containing models of mechapassion is uncontrolled by the dread nical inventions. This room conof disgrace or punishment, is it sur- tains a number of very old paintings prising its indulgence should be un--the earliest specimens of the art limited? Certainly not; and, there- -by Cimabue and others. A nong fore, those who ascribe the immorali- those, gold-leaf blazes in the skies ty of the Italians to a peculiar degree with imperishable splendour, to reof inherent vicious inclinations, present the glories of the "farjudge erroneously, they mistake darting Apollo." The paintings are the offspring of custom for that of much injured by time, but enough natural depravity Transport the is left to shew their striking resempeople of Great Britain into Ita- blance to those paintings, that you ly; supply their place with Italians; may have seen from the East Indies, let the laws and customs, and re- -the same minuteness and laboriligions of the two countries remain ous finishing, and the same want of the same; in a word, let the people spirit and grace. In a part of this change places in all respects, and room (separated from the rest of the we shall find that virtue and vice room by a temporary curtain) two are not the creatures of this or that climate, they are the creatures of education and legal restriction, take away these two means of human improvement, and look at the condition of the people thus left to themselves. *** * * ** young men were drawing from a large painting, intended for the Duomo at Leghorn; the subject of the painting was only finished in dead colouring. 4th, The President's room, containing some paintings and books. Among these paintings are the present Grand Duke of Fuscanv, and some of his ancestors; the unfortunate Queen of Etruria, and her little son, the King standing be A few days ago we had a thunder storm here with very brilliant lightning. On the evening of the 29th ult. a hard frost came on, and the weather has been very cold ever side her; a portrait of Galileo, and since. The tops of the neighbouring of a blacksmith monk, who holds in mountains are covered with snow. his hand, with great complacency, On the 27th ult. I visited what was a key, which he has just made.originally the Convent of Santa 5th, A school for musick and declaCaterina, (in the via Larga, near mation. There are several rooms San Marco,) and which was convert- in this department; one fitted up ed by the French into a school. It is like a little theatre; a school for now called the Luce dell' Antichita, counterpoint: a school for the vioand serves for the instruction of lin; and another for I know not young Italians in natural philoso- what, with two old miserable-lookphy, &c. The professors are paid by ing harpsichords and an organ. In Government, and, as I understand, a room off the library is a tree of do not receive fees from the students Italian sculptors, painters, archi who are not able to give the . It tects, engravers, and so forth. contains, 1st, a room, with chemical The two great theatres here, the apparatus. 2d, A library, of 12.000 Cocomero and the Pergola, are fillvolumes, chiefly in French and Ita-ed with bad actors and indifferent lian. In the midst of the library singers; they are really not worth is the room called the School of his tory and mythology; a statue of Dante is at the farther end of this 14th January. room, which contains also the busts I left Florence, at 12 o'clock of celebrated Italian authors. 3d, noon, on foot, to walk about five writing about. miles into the country, in order to tle for some time, and the water and see a manufactory of olive oil, esta- oil are drained off into another imblished by the late Senator Venturi, mediately below, and, after another near one of his country seats. The settling, to a third, and so on till it day was delightfully mild. It had reaches the last, in the form of occurred to the senator, that what is a thick, impure, oily substance.called La Sansa, that is, the skin, Hence it is put into a boiler, and, pulp, and bruised stone of the olive after being boiled, is strained thro that remain in the hair-cloth bags, hair-cloth bags, and, finally, put inafter the common mode of pressure to filtering vessels, whence it drops and extraction, and which used to slowly in the form of a coarser sort be burned as fuel, contained a con- of olive oil, fit for lamps and for siderable quantity of oil, that might other common uses. In this way be extracted by a more minute and there is a great quantity of oil saved. careful process; he, therefore, erect- which was formerly lost. In the ed a manufactory for this purpose, common way, the olives are gatherwhich has been copied by all the ed, mashed, and pressed in hairneighbouring gentry and nobility cloth bags, while, from time to time, who have olive farms. It consists boiling water is thrown npon the of a common vertical water-wheel, bags, to wash out the oil. The first (such as one of our water-mill pressure, and the first settling in the wheels,) acting upon a very simple tubs, produces the finest oil. The system of horizontal and vertical subsequent pressures and settlings cog-wheels, which again act upon produce the inferiour qualities in two perpendicular wooden cylio- gradation. The oil is skimmed off ders, which are turned slowly round the surface of the water in the tubs. on their centres, each in the middle So much for the oil manufactories. of a large circular vat. To the one I thought it worth particular notice, of these cylinders, in the first vat, as it has not been described (at is closely joined a large mill-stone, in a vertical position; to the other a kind of large iron rake, with the teeth upwards, stretching horizonThe Campanile, (or Belfry) just tally along the bottom of the second beside the Duomo of the famous vat, from one side to the other. - Cathedral of Florence, designed by Into the first vat is thrown the sansa Brunelleschi, in the thirteenth cenas it comes out of the hair-cloth tury, is a curious square tower of bags of the common manufacturers, considerable height, and rich workand cold water is added to it, and it is manship. It is coated with marble mashed by the pressure and friction and looks very like the work of one, of the stone for a certain time. A of the inlaid boxes that you somesluice communicating with the se- times see. By the by, talking of cond vat is then opened, and the marble, a celebrated English travelmash runs from the one into the ler says, somewhere or other, that other. In the second vat more the Ponte della Trinità of Florence water is added to the mash, and it is built of marble. It is built of is for some time stirred about by the common stone, and has no marble rake. These vats are in the upper about it, excepting the four statues part of the building. After some time a sluice in the second vat is opened, and the mash falls into the first of a series of five receptacles of stone. Here it is allowed to set least so far as I know) by any traveller in Italy. * at its extremities, and two or three pieces of marble, forming two central ornaments above the middle arch, and a small tablet or two at the ends. 19th February. occasion some serious accident, and Yesterday I visited the Medicean there fore it is to be painted." The anChapel, remarkable for the beauti- cient design was, to cover the whole ful incrustation of pietra dura, with inside with pietra dura; but the which its walls are decorated. Pi- Grand Duke has something else to lasters of Egyptian granite shoot up think of, and cannot, or will not, as high as the perpendicular walls finish the chapel as the Medici inreach: jasper. Sicilian agate, and tended. Thus you see the salvathe pietra dura, which is found in tion of the dome, and of the skulls the neighbourhood of Volterra, and of the catholicks, serves as an apoelsewhere; and, in short, a profu- logy (and perhaps a good one) for sion of hard and beautiful stones, discontinuing the incrustation of susceptible of a fine and brilliant pietra dura. In the sacristy of polish, please the eye in the interiour this chapel are some of the celebraof this building, and surprise us ted works of Michael Angelo; of when we reflect upon the incredible these sculptures I shall not speak labour necessary to cut and give particularly, being no connoisseur lustre to these stones, and to form in that art, and of course not able them into the elegant shapes in to enter into all the merits of the which they appear upon the walls. celebrated artist's design and exeThe coats of arms belonging to Flo- cution. The groups are unfinished, rence, and to other towns in Tusca- some of the figures only beginning ny, are inlaid upon the walls in to assume the contours of the huagate, jasper, lapis lazuli, coral, &c. man form, and to start into life. &c. in a beautiful manner, and all in They are all marked with the their appropriate colours. These shadowy tints of time, and some are displayed regularly along the of them (such as the figure of Night) lower part of the walls, in oblong smoothed into a disagreeable greasy compartments, of about two feet hy glitter of polish by handling, or eighteen inches. But, alas! alas! other friction. I looked upon them begun under the golden auspices of with sentiments of great respect, the Medici, this chapel is unfinish- although without that rapture which ed! The encrustations are carried a learned eye might have taught me as high as the base of the dome, but to feel, and which so many ridiculous all above is bare and rugged stones travellers pretend to feel, without and lime, and forms a most disa- knowing the true nature of the greeable contrast with the splendour things about wnich they rave. Such and richness of the various coloured a profound knowledge of the actual walls below. I looked up to the appearances of the human body in dome, and asked the old Italian different states of action and repose, who shewed the chapel why it was and also so many other things are not yet finished ? "Ah diamine! necessary to enable one to judge it will soon be finished according to fairly and rationally of these sculpthat design which you see there," tures, that it is mere folly and pointing to a wooden model exhibit- childishness to pretend to criticise ing a section of the chapel, painted them minutely without having well as it is to be,) "but the Grand Duke studied the art which produced is afraid that the weight of the pietra them. Indeed the same observadura might destroy the dome, and tion applies to all the fine arts. [88] FRAGMENTA. BEING THOUGHTS, OBSERVATIONS, REFLECTIONS, AND CRITICISN WITH ANECDOTES AND CHARACTERS ANCIENT AND MODERN. From the Gentleman's Magazine, for May 1818. WOMEN. THE ladies May Jove confound me, if my mind sex. a He makes Virgil, far from shewing the least respect to the female sex, has treated them (even according to his panegyrist Dryden) in an unjust unmanly style. He has falsified both the era and the character of It appears from Seneca, that the Dido, in order to render her odious ancient Egyptains, in the disposi- and contemptible. tion which they allotted to the gen- Queen Amata turbulent and tipders of their nouns, paid and the Princess Lavinia unsingular ing and delicate compliment to the fair dutiful and unbelieving. Dryden In the four elements, be- adds, " that she looks a little flickginning with water; they appoint- ing after Turnus." His goddesses ed the ocean, as a rough boisterous are no better than his mortals: existence, to the male sex, but Juno is always in a passion; and streams and fountains they left to surely (as Dryden observes) Venus the more gentle females. As to is too impudently presuming in exearth, they made rocks and stones pecting that her husband should male, but arable and meadow lands make armour for his wife's bastard. female. Air they divided thus: to Camilla is the only female of the masculine gender, rough winds whom the poet begins to speak well, and hurricanes of every kind; to but soon dashes down her character, the female, the sky and the zephyrs. by calling her, "Aspera and HorFire, when of a consuming nature, they made male, but artificial and • It will hardly be believed, by the harmless flames they consigned to unclassical reader, that the fault for the feminine class. Not so the Ro- which the good lady begs pardon in mans. They made a most awk- these humble strains, ward, and, in some instances, pеси- "I was wrong, my Chremes! I own liarly ridiculous, distribution of it; I am convinced of it;" genders. Indeed, even the poets was neither more nor less, than the sav. of that celebrated nation seem to ing her child from being murdered, as have been little disposed to shew HER husband and ITs father had ordered. renda Virgo;" which, like Bojar- successor of Jesus Christ. As a do's "Catta, fiera, cruda, dispiet- specimen of his work. the following tata," applied to Marfisa, conveys extract will probably be thought a meaning as distant from any sufficient. He speaks to his brethren thing amiable as words can paint. as to the proper conduct to be ob served concerning women :--" Let us neither eat, nor drink, nor inhabit, nor have any thing in common with them. If we are benighted at As to Horace, it would puzzle any one to find one woman of cha racter* spoken of in any part of his poems. His ladies are all Chloes, Lydes, Lydias, and Cynaras: their a distance from home, and are invitcharacters appear to have been ed by any of our friends, let us, equally light, and most of them if possible, lodge with a single man. seem to have added the worship of But at any rate, let us admit no woBacchus to that of Cupid. He man into our company, but let man treats them accordingly, and re- officiate only with man. If it hapcommends it to one of them to take pens that there are only women in care lest her keeper, in a fit of jea- the place, let us convene them lousy, should spoil her fashionable together, and, after having addresscap. ed to them an edifying discourse, brought us a lamp an other necessaries, to leave us to ourselves." One tolerably modest woman, in- let us request the oldest and most deed, Neobule, he seems to have reserved to give us a lodging where known: but his idea of her delicacy there is no woman, and after having does not prevent him from condoling with her on the severity of her uncle, who will neither permit her to entertain a lover, nor to wash away her cares with rosy wine. Another recluse mysogynist, J. Raulin, a monk of Cluni, who died in 1514, and who left behind him Juvenal need not to be mention- four volumes of Sermons, expresses ed; he avows himself scarcely to himself thus, in his third discourse: have even heard of a modest woman. Si quæritur quare angelus mulisince the golden age. eribus et non viris arcanum resur The prose writers of the Augus rectionis committit prædicandum. tan era seem to have favoured the Potest dici hoc, duplici de causa sex no more than the poets; and factum. Primo quia mulieres bonam Seneca's account of the ladies of his habent linguam et vix sciunt retinere time is at least as bitter as the sixth secreta sed ea cito revelant, Unde satire of Juvenal. cum quæreretur à quodam philosoThere was published at Leyden pho, quare linguam loquacem magis (about the year 1754) a Syriac habent quam viri?-respondit, hoc, translation, with a Latin version, ideo esse quia homo, ex limo factus of two epistles, said to be written est, mulier ossi, scilicet, costa by St. Clement of Rome, the dis- Adæ si quis autem commoverit ciple of St. Peter the Apostle, but saccum plenum limo non inde sonamuch more probably the production bit si vero saccum plenum ossibus of some bigotted monk of the early tunc varium et grandem sonum ages, than of an almost immediate emittet." * The compliment paid to Livia, the wife of Augustus, excepted, whom he calls. "Unico, gaudens mulier marito :" A third writer, who might have found better employment for his muse, attempts also to sneer at the fair-sex, for their exercise of the most pleasant of all talents, that of conversation. |