The Diary of an Ennuyée | Page 9

for the people to dance and assemble in, when the weather was unfavourable. The man concluded some very animated and sensible remarks on the late events, by adding expressively, that though many had been benefited by the change, there was to him and all others of his class as much difference between the late reign and the present, as between l'or et le fer.
The silver shrine of St. Carlo Borromeo, with all its dazzling waste of magnificence, struck me with a feeling of melancholy and indignation. The gems and gold which lend such a horrible splendour to corruption; the skeleton head, grinning ghastly under its invaluable coronet; the skeleton hand supporting a crozier glittering with diamonds, appeared so frightful, so senseless a mockery of the excellent, simple-minded, and benevolent being they were intended to honour, that I could but wonder, and escape from the sight as quickly as possible. The Duomo is on the whole more remarkable for the splendour of the material, than the good taste with which it is employed: the statues which adorn it inside and out, are sufficient of themselves to form a very respectable congregation: they are four thousand in number.
9th, Tuesday.--We gave the morning to the churches, and the evening to the Ambrosian library. The day was, on the whole, more fatiguing than edifying or amusing. I remarked whatever was remarkable, admired all that is usually admired, but brought away few impressions of novelty or pleasure. The objects which principally struck my capricious and fastidious fancy, were precisely those which passed unnoticed by every one else, and are not worth recording. In the first church we visited, I saw a young girl respectably and even elegantly dressed, in the beautiful costume of the Milanese, who was kneeling on the pavement before a crucifix, weeping bitterly, and at the same time fanning herself most vehemently with a large green fan. Another church (St. Alessandro, I think) was oddly decorated for a Christian temple. A statue of Venus stood on one side of the porch, a statue of Hercules on the other. The two divinities, whose attributes could not be mistaken, had been converted from heathenism into two very respectable saints. I forget their christian names. Nor is this the most amusing metamorphosis I have seen here. The transformation of two heathen divinities into saints, is matched by the apotheosis of two modern sovereigns into pagan deities. On the frieze of the salle, adjoining the amphitheatre, there is a head of Napoleon, which, by the addition of a beard, has been converted into a Jupiter; and on the opposite side, a head of Josephine, which, being already beautiful and dignified, has required no alteration, except in name, to become a creditable Minerva.
10th.--At the Brera, now called the "Palace of the Arts and Sciences," we spent some delightful hours. There is a numerous collection of pictures by Titian, Guido, Albano, Schidone, the three Carraccis, Tintoretto, Giorgione, etc. Some old paintings in fresco, by Luini and others of his age, were especially pointed out to us, which had been cut from the walls of churches now destroyed. They are preserved here, I presume, as curiosities, and specimens of the progress of the arts, for they possess no other merit--none, at least, that I could discover. Here is the "Marriage of the Virgin," by Raffaelle, of which I had often heard. It disappointed me at the first glance, but charmed me at the second, and enchanted me at the third. The unobtrusive grace and simplicity of Raffaelle do not immediately strike an eye so unpractised, and a taste so unformed as mine still is: for though I have seen the best pictures in England, we have there no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the two divinest masters of the Italian art, Raffaelle and Correggio. There are not, I conceive, half a dozen of either in all the collections together, and those we do possess, are far from being among their best efforts. But Raffaelle must not make me forget the Hagar in the Brera: the affecting--the inimitable Hagar! what agony, what upbraiding, what love, what helpless desolation of heart in that countenance! I may well remember the deep pathos of this picture; for the face of Hagar has haunted me sleeping and waking ever since I beheld it. Marvellous power of art! that mere inanimate forms, and colours compounded of gross materials, should thus live--thus speak--thus stand a soul-felt presence before us, and from the senseless board or canvas, breathe into our hearts a feeling, beyond what the most impassioned eloquence could ever inspire--beyond what mere words can ever render.
Last night and the preceding we spent at the Scala. The opera was stupid, and Madame Bellochi, who is the present primadonna, appeared to me harsh and ungraceful, when compared