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"Mantua, 11th of May.
"We are now in classic ground; and I have kissed the earth that produced Virgil, and have admired those fertile plains that he has so finely celebrated.
"You are tired, and so am I, with the descriptions of countries; and therefore shall only say, that [266]nothing can be more singularly beautiful than the plains of Lombardy, nor more beggarly and miserable than this town."
"Cremona, 12th of May.
"Alas, poor Italy!
"The taxes are here exorbitant beyond all bounds. We lie to-morrow at Milan."
"Turin, June 16th, 1748.
"I wrote you about three weeks ago. This is brought into England by Mr. Bathurst, a nephew of Lord Bathurst, who intended to serve a campaign in our family. We know nothing as yet of the time of our return. But I believe we shall make the tour of Italy and France before we come home. 'Tis thought the general will be sent as public minister to settle Don Philip; so that we shall have seen a great variety of Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, and French courts in this jaunt.
"I say nothing of Milan, or Turin, or Piedmont: because I shall have time enough to entertain you with accounts of all these. Though you may be little diverted with this long epistle, you ought at least to thank me for the pains I have taken in composing it. I have not yet got my baggage."
Far different was the pomp and circumstance in which the writer of this narrative performed his [267]journey, from the condition in which Goldsmith, four years afterwards, pursued nearly the same route to—
And Hume's motions seem to have partaken of the pomp and regularity of his official station; for, even in these familiar letters to his brother, he is all along the secretary of legation; or when he descends from that height, it is but to mount the chair of the scholar and philosopher. There are no escapades. We never hear that he has taken it in his head to diverge from the regular route to see an old castle or a waterfall. Yet he went with an eye for scenery. The Alpine passes excited his admiration, and his description of the banks of the Rhine will be recognised at this day as very accurate—with one material exception. He says nothing of the feudal fortresses perched like the nests of birds of prey, to which their moral resemblance was at least as close as their physical; and thus one of the greatest historians of his age, passes through a country without appearing to have noticed in their true character, this series of prominent marks of a remarkable chapter in the history of Europe. He speaks of them simply as "palaces"—a word not designative of the character of the buildings, or in any way evincing that their historical position had occurred to his mind. But it must be admitted, that later tourists on the Rhine have amply made up for his silence on these matters.
He does not condescend to mention any one of the fine specimens of Gothic architecture which he must have seen—not even that vast and beautiful fragment the cathedral of Cologne. One wonders whether or not he was at the trouble of inquiring, what was [268]that huge mass which he must have seen towering over the city; and if, straying within its gates, and looking on Albert Durer's painted windows, he had curiosity enough to inspect the reliquary of the tomb of the three kings, containing gems so ancient, that they are conjectured to be older than Christianity, and to have been the ornaments of some Pagan shrine, transferred to and historically associated with the pure creed which displaced the barbarous rites of Paganism. This might have at least formed a curious topic for his Natural History of Religion. But on this as on many other subjects, he would sympathize with La Bruyere when he speaks of "L'ordre Gothique, que la barbarie avoit introduit pour les palais et pour les temples;" and his thorough neglect of both the baronial and ecclesiastical architecture of the middle ages, is characteristic of a mind which could find nothing worthy of admiration, in the time which elapsed between the extinction of ancient classical literature, and the rise of the arts and sciences in modern Europe.
But upon scarcely any subject does Hume converse as a brother travelling into foreign lands might be supposed to address a brother residing at home, and cultivating his ancestral acres. We should expect to find him observing that this river is like the Tweed, or unlike it—larger or smaller; or comparing some range of hills with the Cheviots: but he is general and undomestic in all his remarks, save the one observation that the Rhine is as broad as from his brother's house to the opposite side of the river.
Until he comes to the land of Virgil, where he shows real enthusiasm, the chief object of his interest and observation appears to have been the warlike operations in the midst of which he found himself. [269]The mission must have been attended with the ordinary dangers of a military enterprise. It was undertaken at a time when all Europe was at war, and though decisive battles were not taking place, petty conflicts and surprises were of perpetual occurrence until the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, a few months afterwards, restored repose to the exhausted nations. Yet we find no symptoms of anxiety in the mind of the philosophical actor of the military character. His tone is generally that of a private traveller in a peaceful country, rather than that of a member of an expedition armed for defence, and likely to be called on to defend itself. When he mentions warlike operations, he adopts the tone of a historical critic, and never that of a person who may find his personal safety or comfort compromised by them.
Though he seems to have set out with the too general notion that military affairs are the main object of attention to the man who is desirous of distinction in historical literature, we find already dawning on him the historian's nobler duty as a delineator of the state of society, and an inquirer into the causes of the happiness or misery of the people. And his observations are made with a wide and generous benevolence, strikingly at contrast with those prevailing doctrines of his day, which sought, in the success and happiness of one country, the elements of the misery of another, and made the good fortune of our neighbours a source of lamentation, as indicating calamity to ourselves. His unaffected declaration of pleasure, in finding the Germans so happy and comfortable a people, marks a heart full of genuine kindness and benevolence, and will more than atone for the want of a disposition to range [270]through alpine scenery, or a taste to appreciate the beauties of Gothic architecture.
