common, even in July and August, to be well esteemed: for, if the
Truth must out, there were not eight blue skies in as many
midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when,
looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of
deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds and
haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his own climate.
The endless details of these rich Palaces: the walls of some of
them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great,
heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier:
with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up – a
huge marble platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred
lower windows, immense public staircases, thick marble pillars,
strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted
chambers: among which the eye wanders again, and again, and again,
as every palace is succeeded by another – the terrace gardens
between house and house, with green arches of the vine, and groves
of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty,
thirty, forty feet above the street – the painted halls,
mouldering, and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and
still shining out in beautiful colours and voluptuous designs,
where the walls are dry – the faded figures on the outsides of the
houses, holding wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and
downward, and standing in niches, and here and there looking
fainter and more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh
little Cupids, who on a more recently decorated portion of the
front, are stretching out what seems to be the semblance of a
blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial – the steep, steep, up-hill
streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all that),
with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways – the
magnificent and innumerable Churches; and the rapid passage from a
street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor,
steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked
children and whole worlds of dirty people – make up, altogether,
such a scene of wonder: so lively, and yet so dead: so noisy, and
yet so quiet: so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering: so wide
awake, and yet so fast asleep: that it is a sort of intoxication
to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. A
bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream,
and all the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality!
The different uses to which some of these Palaces are applied, all
at once, is characteristic. For instance, the English Banker (my
excellent and hospitable friend) has his office in a good-sized
Palazzo in the Strada Nuova. In the hall (every inch of which is
elaborately painted, but which is as dirty as a police-station in
London), a hook-nosed Saracen’s Head with an immense quantity of
black hair (there is a man attached to it) sells walking-sticks.
On the other side of the doorway, a lady with a showy handkerchief
for head-dress (wife to the Saracen’s Head, I believe) sells
articles of her own knitting; and sometimes flowers. A little
further in, two or three blind men occasionally beg. Sometimes,
they are visited by a man without legs, on a little go-cart, but
who has such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and such a respectable,
well-conditioned body, that he looks as if he had sunk into the
ground up to his middle, or had come, but partially, up a flight of
cellar-steps to speak to somebody. A little further in, a few men,
perhaps, lie asleep in the middle of the day; or they may be
chairmen waiting for their absent freight. If so, they have
brought their chairs in with them, and there THEY stand also. On
the left of the hall is a little room: a hatter’s shop. On the
first floor, is the English bank. On the first floor also, is a
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Dickens, Charles – Pictures From Italy
whole house, and a good large residence too. Heaven knows what
there may be above that; but when you are there, you have only just