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PISA.

quasi fatale alle umane cose non durar lungamente in un medesimo stato; e dopo la maggior elevazione dover fra non molto aspettarsi la decadenza.-LANZI.

I LEFT Genoa for Pisa in a felucca, and arrived at Leghorn about the middle of the following day. This thriving town is said to contain upwards of sixty thousand inhabitants. Of these, a sixth part, and those the wealthiest, are Jews. The streets, which are clean and paved with large flag stones, are crowded with people of all nations, exhibiting a singular diversity of costume; for here may be seen, mingled in gay confusion, the Turk, the Armenian, and the Greek; the inhabitants of the Mediterranean isles, and those of the Barbary coast.

Leghorn has the advantage of a secure harbour*, and

* The pier commands a magnificent view-the Monte Nero, which no Italian vessel sails by without saluting Our Lady of that name— the whole extent of coast from the Gulf of Genoa to the Point of Piombino-the little island of Gorgona, famed for its anchoviesthe light-house built by our Queen Anne, on a dangerous shoal not far from it—and the isles of Elba and Corsica, the places of Buonaparte's birth and exile.

a lazaretto, said to be the best in Europe. The quay is decorated with a statue of Ferdinand of Medicis, with four bronze figures kneeling round the pedestal, some say to personify the four quarters of the globe; others, to represent certain Turkish slaves who had attempted to steal a Tuscan galley, and were executed by order of that prince. With the exception of these statues, and the repositories of sculptured alabaster in the Via Grande, Leghorn has little to boast of in the way of art.

The Protestant burying-ground, or Campo Inglese, as it is sometimes called, from the number of our countrymen interred there, is a plot of ground without the walls, protected by an iron railing, and surrounded by cypresses after the oriental manner. It is chiefly interesting as the burial-place of Smollet.

From Leghorn to Pisa, our road lay across an extensive plain, bounded on the south-east by the chain of the Monte Nero, the favourite retreat of the wealthier Leghorn merchants during the heats of summer.

The situation of Pisa is eminently beautiful. To the north it has the Apennines, to the south a fertile and extensive plain; while the Arno, here a navigable stream, flows through the heart of the town, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The quays on each side of the river are lined with stately edifices, and connected by three bridges, the middle one of which is built of marble. In its passage through the town the river describes a slight curve, and this is thought to add so much to the beauty of the effect, that the Lung' Arno of Pisa (the common

appellation of the quays) is usually preferred before that of Florence.

PISA, while the capital of a republic, could boast a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants; but no sooner did it fall under the hated domination of Florence, than its population gradually dwindled away, and it now musters scarcely more than a tenth part of that number. Its former splendour, however, is still discernible in the deserted mansions that line its depopulated streets, as well as in the towers- -once the distinctive mark and the defence of its nobles-which may still be traced in the walls of modernized houses. But the noblest monument of its magnificence is confined to one sacred corner, near the outskirts of the town: there stand clustered together all the wonders of Pisa-the Cathedral-the Baptistery -the Leaning Tower-and the Campo Santo; "all built of the same marble, all varieties of the same architecture, all venerable with years, and fortunate both in their society and their solitude*."

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The Cathedral, a work of the eleventh century, was built by a Greek. It stands on a platform, to which ascend by a flight of five marble steps. The sides are divided into three stories, the front into five: the general decoration of the exterior consists of round arches resting on single columns or pilasters; and the whole is surmounted by a cupola. But notwithstanding the cupola, and the absence of pointed arches, clustered pillars, and

ribs and tracery in the ceiling-the distinctive features of Gothic architecture-it is still called Gothic by the Italians. To shew the fitness of the appellation, they instance certain irregularities in the front and sides-in the former, the want of sufficient roundness in some of the arches under the angle of the roof; which, however, is accounted for by their situation-in the latter, a few large arches, inclosing two or three smaller ones; a combination not unfrequent in Gothic and Saxon works. In both cases, however, the arches are round, or as nearly so as their situation would admit; in both cases they rest on columns or pilasters of the Greek order. As another mark of the Gothic, they point to the figures of men and animals introduced in the capitals of some of the columns; but such ornaments, though common enough in Gothic churches, are of too old a date in those of Greece and Italy to be fairly attributable to a Gothic origin.

The plan and elevation are basilical; the interior consisting of a nave and double aisles, with choir and transepts rounded like the tribune. These five aisles are formed by insulated pillars of oriental granite, taken from ancient temples, a circumstance which may partly account for the design, since materials, borrowed from such a source, would naturally lead back to something like the style for which they were first intended. "It is," says Forsyth, "a style too impure to be Greek, yet still more remote from the Gothic, and rather approaches the Saxon, a style which may here be called the Lombard, as it appeared in Italy first under the Lombard princes,

a style which includes whatever was grand or beautiful in the works of the middle ages, and this was perhaps the noblest of them all."

As an idle decoration columns are seldom beautiful, but here they are not only necessary, supporting as they do the roof, but ornamental too, varying their combinations at every step, and by their colour heightening the effect of that "dim religious light" so pleasing in the eye of an Englishman, consecrated as it is to him by its associations.

The decorations of the interior are curious rather than beautiful. The admired marble pulpit is supported by a female figure of gross design and indifferent execution, in the act of suckling two children. The side altars are less rich, and therefore more beautiful than usual. One of these exhibits a singular group-an Adam and Eve standing under the fatal tree, which is loaded with the forbidden fruit: the serpent, to whom the sculptor has given a human head, is entwined round its trunk. In this church the sacred and the profane are strangely jumbled together. Bacchanals and Meleager's hunt figure on the walls, and heads of satyrs on a cardinal's tomb. Even the St. Potitus is said to be but a new christened statue of Mars.

The bronze gates of this cathedral have been eulogised somewhat beyond their desert. "I will only mention," says Algarotti, "the so much lauded gates of the Duomo, which some go so far as to prefer before those of the Baptistery at Florence. They are principally from