serves the austerity of the Tuscan school: she rises sometimes to its energy and movement, she is no where sparing of figures, and has produced much of the singular, the terrible, the impressive; but nothing that is truly excellent. All the subjects are taken from scripture, the legends, or Dante; but, in depicting the life of a patriarch or a saint, the artists have given us the dress, the furniture, and the humours of their own day." LUCCA. L'uliva, in qualche dolce piaggia aprica, LORENZO DE' MEDICI. ABOUT four miles north of Pisa, the Lucca road approaches the mountains whose marble quarries furnished the former city with the materials for its splendid edifices. At their foot stand the Baths of San Giuliano, once in considerable repute, but now less attractive than those of Lucca. After skirting the base of these mountains for a few miles, you come to the pretty village of Ripa Fratta-the Tuscan boundary-whose name "indicates how little the proudest embankments can resist the Serchio, when its floods are repelled by a south wind." LUCCA is seated in a rich and highly cultivated valley, watered by the above-mentioned river, and surrounded by a belt of lofty Apennines, which gradually sink down into "vine-clad hills, where the celebrated villas rise on such sites as court admiration from the city." In its broad ramparts, its stately palaces with their massive walls and barred windows, its historical statues, and monumental memorials of departed patriots, we may still trace the vestiges of its former prosperity, when, elate with the ad vantages of liberty and commerce, it had, like so many other petty Italian states, "a public soul too expansive for the body." The ramparts, useless as a defence, are now converted into a promenade planted with forest trees: hence it has been observed, not unaptly, that, to a spectator without the walls, the city wears the appearance of a fortified wood, with a watch-tower in the middle-that watch-tower being the cathedral itself. This structure is of the same date, and the same material, as that of Pisa. Its chief peculiarities are-the wide porch, consisting of three large semicircular arches, supported by piers with slender shafts and crowded with sculpture—and the round temple of the Santo Volto insulated in the nave. The other churches-decorated in a manner at once costly and fantastic, with variegated marbles, chequered or in stripes—are all of them, more or less, imitations of the Pisan cathedral, though on a small scale. Of the city itself, taken as a whole, it has been remarked by Chateauvieux, that "its crooked streets, pointed roofs, and irregular edifices, give it somewhat the air of a Flemish town." This little state, comprising a territory scarcely exceeding fifty-four square leagues, contains a population of about one hundred and forty-three thousand souls. It is, indeed, one of the best peopled, as well as one of the best cultivated districts in Italy; and, as regards the plain itself, may truly be said to exhibit "the economy and shew of a large kitchen garden." The hills are covered especially the latter, with vineyards and olive-groves, whose pale foliage meets the eye at every turn; the Lucca oil being considered superior even to that produced in the Florentine territory. Hence, notwithstanding the general poverty of the farmers-attributable in some measure, as we shall hereafter see, to the nature of the tenure by which they hold their lands-the advocates for small farms frequently adduce the Lucchese, and still more frequently the Lower Valdarno, where the peasantry are in easier circumstances, in support of their favourite system; triumphantly contrasting the smiling appearance of these two districts with the forlorn plains of the Campagna di Roma, where the farms are so enormously large. The Baths of Lucca-a delightful summer retreat— are situated in the heart of the Apennines, about twelve miles from the town. The road, after quitting the romantic valley of the Serchio, studded with convents, villas and villages, and remarkable for its three curious bridges, winds along the banks of a tributary stream, called the Lima. Passing a huge mass of overhanging rock, with a chapel hollowed out in its side, you enter a sequestered valley inclosed between high and fertile hills, and, following the course of the Lima, after a few miles, arrive at the baths. Never was watering-place more secluded. At the foot of the bridge which crosses the Lima is a little village, and on the hill above it are perched the Bagni Caldi; about a mile higher up the stream are the tepid baths, called Bagni della Villa, charmingly seated in an am phitheatre of hills. The surrounding scenery is highly pleasing and diversified―verdant meadows-" a brawling brook"-groves of oak and chestnut, clothing the tops of the highest hills—and, in the distance, the snowy summits and sparkling peaks of the towering Apennines. The waters here are of various degrees of heat to within four of the boiling point; and are said to be very salutary. According to Algarotti's account, the Lucchesi have shewn more tact than their Pisan neighbours in puffing and promoting the celebrity of their baths. "Secondo il libro di Cocchi," says he, "i bagni di Pisa sono una panacea. Meglio per avventura i Lucchesi, i quali asseriscono, per tale malattia esser buoni i lor bagni, ottimi per tale altra, per questa, quella, e quell' altra non se ne esser ancora provata la virtù. Un così fatto stile si acquista fede." |