Ravenna

I write these lines on a cold Swiss mountain-top, shut in by an
intense white mist from any glimpse of the underworld of lovely
Italy; but as I jotted down the other day in the ancient capital
of Honorius and Theodoric the few notes of which they are
composed, I let the original date stand for local colour's sake.
Its mere look, as I transcribe it, emits a grateful glow in the
midst of the Alpine rawness, and gives a depressed imagination
something tangible to grasp while awaiting the return of fine
weather. For Ravenna was glowing, less than a week since, as I
edged along the narrow strip of shadow binding one side of the
empty, white streets. After a long, chill spring the summer this
year descended upon Italy with a sudden jump and an ominous hot
breath. I stole away from Florence in the night, and even on top
of the Apennines, under the dull starlight and in the rushing
train, one could but sit and pant perspiringly.

At Bologna I found a festa, or rather two festas, a civil and a
religious, going on in mutual mistrust and disparagement. The
civil, that of the Statuto, was the one fully national Italian
holiday as by law established--the day that signalises everywhere
over the land at once its achieved and hard-won unification; the
religious was a jubilee of certain local churches. The latter is
observed by the Bolognese parishes in couples, and comes round
for each couple but once in ten years--an arrangement by which
the faithful at large insure themselves a liberal recurrence of
expensive processions. It was n't my business to distinguish the
sheep from the goats, the pious from the profane, the prayers
from the scoffers; it was enough that, melting together under the
scorching sun, they filled the admirably solid city with a flood
of spectacular life. The combination at one point was really
dramatic. While a long procession of priests and young virgins
in white veils, bearing tapers, marshalled itself in one of the
streets, a review of the King's troops went forward outside the
town. On its return a large detachment of cavalry passed across
the space where the incense was burning, the pictured banners
swaying and the litany being droned, and checked the advance of
the little ecclesiastical troop. The long vista of the street,
between the porticoes, was festooned with garlands and scarlet
and tinsel; the robes and crosses and canopies of the priests,
the clouds of perfumed smoke and the white veils of the maidens,
were resolved by the hot bright air into a gorgeous medley of
colour, across which the mounted soldiers rattled and flashed as
if it had been a conquering army trampling on an embassy of
propitiation. It was, to tell the truth, the first time an'
Italian festa had really