Pictures From Italy | Page 3

it is.
We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a very long whip, and
drives his team, something like the Courier of Saint Petersburgh in the
circle at Astley's or Franconi's: only he sits his own horse instead of
standing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by these postilions, are
sometimes a century or two old; and are so ludicrously disproportionate
to the wearer's foot, that the spur, which is put where his own heel
comes, is generally halfway up the leg of the boots. The man often
comes out of the stable- yard, with his whip in his hand and his shoes
on, and brings out, in both hands, one boot at a time, which he plants
on the ground by the side of his horse, with great gravity, until
everything is ready. When it is--and oh Heaven! the noise they make
about it!-- he gets into the boots, shoes and all, or is hoisted into them
by a couple of friends; adjusts the rope harness, embossed by the
labours of innumerable pigeons in the stables; makes all the horses kick
and plunge; cracks his whip like a madman; shouts 'En route-- Hi!' and
away we go. He is sure to have a contest with his horse before we have
gone very far; and then he calls him a Thief, and a Brigand, and a Pig,
and what not; and beats him about the head as if he were made of
wood.
There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the country,
for the first two days. From a dreary plain, to an interminable avenue,
and from an interminable avenue to a dreary plain again. Plenty of
vines there are in the open fields, but of a short low kind, and not
trained in festoons, but about straight sticks. Beggars innumerable there
are, everywhere; but an extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer
children than I ever encountered. I don't believe we saw a hundred

children between Paris and Chalons. Queer old towns, draw-bridged
and walled: with odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as
if the wall had put a mask on, and were staring down into the moat;
other strange little towers, in gardens and fields, and down lanes, and in
farm-yards: all alone, and always round, with a peaked roof, and never
used for any purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all sorts; sometimes an
hotel de ville, sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house,
sometimes a chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and
watched over by extinguisher-topped turrets, and blink-eyed little
casements; are the standard objects, repeated over and over again.
Sometimes we pass a village inn, with a crumbling wall belonging to it,
and a perfect town of out- houses; and painted over the gateway,
'Stabling for Sixty Horses;' as indeed there might be stabling for sixty
score, were there any horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting
there, or anything stirring about the place but a dangling bush,
indicative of the wine inside: which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy
keeping with everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age,
though always so old as to be dropping to pieces. And all day long,
strange little narrow waggons, in strings of six or eight, bringing cheese
from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line, of one man,
or even boy--and he very often asleep in the foremost cart--come
jingling past: the horses drowsily ringing the bells upon their harness,
and looking as if they thought (no doubt they do) their great blue
woolly furniture, of immense weight and thickness, with a pair of
grotesque horns growing out of the collar, very much too warm for the
Midsummer weather.
Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day; with the dusty
outsides in blue frocks, like butchers; and the insides in white nightcaps;
and its cabriolet head on the roof, nodding and shaking, like an idiot's
head; and its Young-France passengers staring out of window, with
beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles awfully shading their
warlike eyes, and very big sticks clenched in their National grasp. Also
the Malle Poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing along at a
real good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady old Cures
come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty,
clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony

women dawdle about in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while
they feed, or digging and hoeing or doing field-work of a more
laborious kind, or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks--to
obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, in any
country, it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem, or picture, and