Studies of Travel: ItalyFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Italy
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Italy -- Description and travel
But St. Michael on the slope of Tifata did carry us back in thought to
a church of St. Peter seen some months before under a widely different
state of outward things. We then made a somewhat difficult journey to a
great and solitary Tuscan basilica in time of snow. The outward aspect
of nature had certainly changed a good deal between the bleak day in
January when it was found a hard task to follow the way from Pisa to
the basilica of the prince of the Apostles _in Grado_ and the sunny day
in May when the same travellers found their way without difficulties of
any kind to the basilica of the prince of the archangels _in Formis_.
And there certainly can be no likeness of position, even if both were
seen in January or both in May, between the basilica standing low in
the flats by the mouth of Arno and the basilica which nestles against
the mountains which form a wall to the rich plain of Vulturnus. But
in seeing any one of these great churches, left, not ruined, like
our Cistercian abbeys, but still living on a kind of life in places
forsaken or nearly so, something always brings up the memory of some
other of its fellows. Aquileia is perhaps the greatest case of all; but
Aquileia, with its special position in the history of the world, stands
by itself. If Aquileia itself is dead, it has lived on a wonderful
after-life in the shape of its Venetian colony. We go to see Aquileia,
because it is Aquileia; but even a well-informed traveller may know
nothing of _San Pietro in Grado_ and _Sant' Angelo in Formis_, till
either his guide-book or some earlier visitor points them out to him
as places which he ought not to pass by. Aquileia again has other
things to show besides the great basilica and its surroundings. St.
Apollinaris _in Classe_ is as nearly forsaken as a church that is still
kept up can be; but the basilica of Classis does not stand by itself;
it forms part of the wonders of Ravenna, as St. Paul without-the-Walls
forms part of the wonders of Rome. St. Peter _in Grado_ might be looked
on as standing in the same relation to Pisa; but it hardly enters
into our general conception of Pisa, as the church of Classis--papal
havoc hinders us from adding the church of Cæsarea--certainly enters
into our general conception of Ravenna. S. Angelo _in Formis_ at all
events does not enter into our general conception of old Capua, because
there is not enough of old Capua left to form any general conception
of it at all. The church and the small surrounding village do form
a kind of distant _arx_ to the greater collection of houses which
surrounds the amphitheatre; but among the nearer objects which catch
the eye from the height, the most prominent is not old Capua with its
amphitheatre, but new Capua, Casilinum that once was, with its towers
and cupolas, mediæval and modern. We look on many things from the
terrace in front of the portico of the archangel, but that which among
artificial objects chiefly draws the eye towards it, is not the elder
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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