consecrated to cheerful enjoyment

October 10th 1858


This morning too we went to the cathedral, and sat long, listening to the music of the organ and voices, and witnessing rites and ceremonies, which are far older than even the ancient edifice where they were exhibited. A good many people were present sitting, kneeling, or walking about a freedom that contrasts very agreeably with the grim formalities of English churches, and our own meeting-houses. Many persons were in their best attire; but others came in, with unabashed simplicity, in their old garments of labour, sun-burnt women from their toil among the vines and olives. One old peasant I noticed with his withered shanks in breeches and blue yarn stockings. The people of whatever class are wonderfully tolerant of heretics, never manifesting any displeasure or annoyance, though they must see that we are drawn thither by curiosity alone, and merely pry while they pray. I heartily wish the priests were better men, and that human nature, divinely influenced, could be depended upon for a constant supply and succession of good and pure ministers, their religion has so many admirable points. And then it is a sad pity that this noble and beautiful cathedral should be a mere fossil shell, out of which the life has died long ago. But for many a year yet to come, the tapers will burn before the high altar, the host will be elevated, the incense diffuse its fragrance, the confessionals be open to receive the penitents. I saw a father entering with two little bits of boys, just big enough to toddle along, holding his hand on either side. The father dipt his fingers into the marble font of holy water which, on its pedestals, was two or three times as high as those small Christians and wetted a hand of each, and taught them how to cross themselves. When they come to be men it will be impossible to convince those children that there is no efficacy in holy water, without plucking up all religious faith and sentiment by the roots. Generally, I suspect, when people throw off the faith they were born in, the best soil of their hearts is apt to cling to its roots.

Raised several feet above the pavement, against every clustered pillar along the nave of the cathedral, is placed a statue of Gothic sculpture. In various places are sitting statues of popes of Sienese nativity, all of whom, I believe, have a hand raised in the act of blessing. Shrines and chapels, set in grand, heavy frames of pillared architecture, stand all along the aisles and transepts, and these seem in many in stances to have been built and enriched by noble families, whose arms are sculptured on the pedestals of the pillars, sometimes with a cardinal's hat above to denote the rank of one of its members. How much pride, love, and reverence in the lapse of ages must have clung to the sharp points of all this sculpture and architecture! The cathedral is a religion in itself something worth dying for to those who have an hereditary interest in it. In the pavement, yesterday, I noticed the gravestone of a person who fell six centuries ago in the battle of Monte Aperto, and was buried here by public decree as a meed of valour.

This afternoon I took a walk out of one of the city gates, and found the country about Siena as beautiful in this direction as in all others. I came to a little stream flowing over into a pebbly bed, and collecting itself into pools, with a scanty rivulet between. Its glen was deep, and was crossed by a bridge of several lofty and narrow arches like those of a Roman aqueduct. It is a modern structure, however. Farther on, as I wound round along the base of a hill which fell down upon the road by precipitous cliffs of brown earth, I saw a grey, ruined wall on the summit, surrounded with cypress trees. This tree is very frequent about Siena, and the scenery is made soft and beautiful by a variety of other trees and shrubbery, without which these hills and gorges would have scarcely a charm. The road was thronged with country people, mostly women and children, who had been spending the feast-day in Siena; and parties of boys were chasing one another through the fields, pretty much as boys do in New England of a Sunday, but the Sienese lads had not the sense of Sabbath-breaking like our boys. Sunday with these people is like any other feast-day, and consecrated to cheerful enjoyment. So much religious observance, as regards outward forms, is diffused through the whole week that they have no need to intensify the Sabbath except by making it gladden the other days.

Returning through the same gate by which I had come out, I ascended into the city by a long and steep street, which was paved with bricks set edge-wise. This pavement is common in many of the streets, which, being too steep for horses and carriages, are meant only to sustain the lighter tread of mules and asses. The more level streets are paved with broad, smooth flag-stones, like those of Florence, a fashion which I heartily regret to change for the little penitential blocks of Rome. The walls of Siena in their present state, and so far as I have seen them, are chiefly brick; but there are intermingled fragments of ancient stonework, and I wonder why the latter does not prevail more largely. The Romans, however and Siena had Roman characteristics always liked to build of brick, a taste that has made their ruins (now that the marble slabs are torn off)much less grand than they ought to have been. I am grateful to the old Sienese for having used stone so largely in their domestic architecture, and thereby rendered their city so grimly picturesque, with its black palaces frowning upon one another from arched windows, across narrow streets, to the height of six stories, like opposite ranks of tall men looking sternly into one another's eyes.