Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845.

THE GRAND GENERAL JUNCTION AND INDEFINITE EXTENSION RAILWAY RHAPSODY

By a Provisional Committee of Contributors

 
Though the farmer's hope may perish,
While in floods the harvest lies,
Speculation let us cherish,
Let the Railway market rise!
 
 
Honest trader, whosoever,
Sick with losses, sad with cares,
Quit your burden now or never,
Cut the shop and deal in shares.
 
 
Spendthrift – short of drink and dinners,
Half-pay captain, younger son,
Boldly throw while all are winners,
Laugh henceforth at debt and dun.
 
 
Come, ye saints, whose skill in cavilling,
Shock'd at skittles, cards, or dice,
Thinks, except for Sunday travelling,
Railway gaming is no vice.
 
 
Hither haste, each black-leg fellow,
Quit the turf or loaded bone;
Like your brother-black Othello,
Own your occupation's gone.
 
 
Tribes that live by depredation —
"Bulls" and "Bears," and birds of prey,
See the coming spoliation,
Scent the premiums far away.
 
 
"Stags!" your rapid forms revealing,
Show awhile your front so bright,
Then from your pursuers stealing,
Vanish sudden out of sight.
 
 
Leave all meaner things, my St John,
For the locomotive race;
Post your tin upon the engine,
Go ahead, and keep the pace.
 
 
At a Railway Monarch's splendour
Envious squires and nobles stare;
Even the Hebrew gewgaw vender
Turns sharebroker in despair.
 
 
Now no more the Ragfair dealer
Hints with horrid breath, "Old Clo';"
Putting forth another feeler,
"Any shares?" he whispers low.
 
 
Every paper's a prospectus,
Nostrums, news, are at an end;
"Easy shaving" don't affect us,
Silent even "The Silent Friend."
 
 
Morison resigns his bubbling,
Lazenby has lost his zest;
Widow Welch has ceased from troubling,
Weary Moses is at rest.
 
 
Every station, age, and gender,
Deep within the torrent dip;
Even our children, young and tender,
Play at games of nursery scrip.
 
 
Over meadows, moors, and mosses,
Quagmires black, and mountains grey,
Careless where or how it crosses,
Speculation finds the way.
 
 
Every valley is exalted,
Every mountain is made low;
Where we once were roughly jolted,
Light and lively now we go.
 
 
Speed along with fire and fury!
Hark! the whistle shrilly shrieks!
Speed – but mark! we don't insure ye
'Gainst the boiler's frolic freaks.
 
 
But before a trip is ventured,
This precaution prudence begs:
When you've seen your luggage enter'd,
Also book your arms and legs.
 
 
Ask not if yon luckless stoker,
Blown into the air, survive —
These are trifles, while the broker
Quotes our shares at Ninety-five.
 
 
Vainly points some bleeding spectre
To his mangled remnants; – still
Calmly answers each Director,
"Charge the damage to the bill."
 
 
All the perils which environ
(As the poet now would sing)
Him who meddles with hot iron,
Seem to us a pleasant thing.
 
 
Countless lines, from Lewes to Lerwick,
Cross like nets the country soon;
Soon a railway (Atmospheric,)
Speeds our progress to the moon.
 
 
Traversing yon space between us,
Soon the rapid trains will bring
Ores from Mars and fires from Venus,
Lots of lead from Saturn's Ring;
 
 
Belts from Jupiter's own factory,
Mercury from Maia's Son;
And when summers look refractory,
Bottled sunbeams from the sun.
 
 
If too soaring, too seraphic,
Seems to some that heavenward track,
T'other way there's much more traffic,
Though not many travel back.
 
 
What a gradient through Avernus!
What a curve will Hades take!
When with joy the Shades discern us,
How Hell's terminus will shake!
 
 
How the Pandemonium Junction,
With the Central will combine,
Rattling both without compunction
Down the Tartarus incline!
 
 
Phlegethon no more need fright us,
For we've bridged its fiery way;
And the steamer on Cocytus
Long ago has ceased to pay.
 
 
Charon – under sequestration —
Does the Stygian bark resign,
Glad to find a situation
As policeman to the line.
 
 
Thoughts of penance need not haunt us;
Who remains our sins to snub?
Pluto, Minos, Rhadamanthus,
All have joined the "Railway Club."
 
 
Fortune's gifts, then, catch and cherish;
Follow where her currents flow;
Sure to prosper – or to perish,
Follow, though to Styx we go!
 

SKETCHES OF ITALY – LUCCA

The records of travellers in the Livre des Etrangers at Modena, had prepared us to expect nothing tolerable at the night halts in our journey through the Apennines to our projected place of séjour during the great heats of summer, the Bagni di Lucca. At the mountain locandas, we were always prepared, not to say resigned, to encounter those various distresses which seem light evils at a distance – knowing that we could not starve as long as eggs and maccaroni were to be found, and even as to lodging we were too old travellers to flinch at trifles. The rural inn at Piave, which looked more inviting than the great one of the small place, was delighted to receive us, and gave us good trout, tolerable bread, and excellent honey: we were in the midst of a lovely country, we heard a limpid stream running within a few yards of our window; and what had we to fear? But night came, and with it more annoyances than one bargains for even in Italy. A floor of thin planks which had never fitted, and of which the joinings, which had never been of the kind called callidæ, were now widened by time, was all that parted our small bedroom from that of the horses. Through these, and also through large rat-holes, there came up copious ammoniacal smells, which our mucous membrane resented from the first; and well it had fared with us had this been all. We had never been so near horses at night, and had no idea they made such an incessant noise. One horse stabled and littered for the night were bad enough, but we had a whole stableful; and just as we were forgetting the fleas, and forgiving the mosquitos, and sleep led on by indigestion was heavy on our eyelids, a snort, loud as a lion's roar, made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort, from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (equo ne credite, Teucri!) – one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay, another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they coughed, which was often, the hoarse roncione shook the very tressels of our bed; in short, we never suffered such real nightmare before. We dreamt stethoscopes and racks. But morning came, and, with it, morning freshness and morning sound. The wood-pigeons are cooing, the green hills just opposite seem to have come closer up to our window to wish us good-day; so we throw open our little casement, to let out the gaseous compounds from bed and stable. How elegantly do the dew-bedded vines take hold of the poplars and elms, and hang their festoons of ripening fruit from branch to branch! But the sun begins to break a brilliant pencil of rays over the hill-top, nor will he take long to leave the screen and uncover himself; indeed, in less than a quarter of an hour, he will have stared us quite out of countenance, and, long before the hour of his advent shall have been completed, the birds, which till now have been all activity, will become torpid, the pigeons will have given over their cooing, and the sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better make haste, for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after overnight, and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one break-down or overturn since he first set off on his Macadamized way. In haste to escape from the heat of the plains of Tuscany, we were not sorry when we saw the douaniers of Pistoia, the last of its cities. This town is dulness, not epitomized, but extended over a considerable space; its streets are many, long, and, what is not usual in Italy, wide. There is no population stirring; the very piazza is without activity; and, if you leave it, you may walk a mile between very large houses, churches, convents, and palaces, without meeting any one. Pistoia, in short, is an improvement on Oxford in the long vacation – the place, however, has its ancient fame, has given birth to two or three distinguished literati, and figured in the civil wars. The fifteenth century records among others the name of Cini, whose epitaph we saw in the cathedral; and the author of the Riciardetto was, we believe, also one of its citizens. In its immediate vicinity fell Catiline. They say the Italian language is spoken here with great purity of accent, which is remarkable, as it is only twenty miles from the guttural and inharmonious speech of Florence. It was not our purpose to explore its decayed manufactures, if such there still exist at all, of fire-arms and organs; indeed, we know not if pistols and organ-pipes have any thing particular to do with it; so, after refreshment of the cattle, we passed on through a beautiful country at its most beautiful season, and thought we had seldom seen any thing more striking than the views from Serravalle, or those about Pescia and Monte Catino. The high, almost the highest Apennines were right a-head; and could we have taken the wings of the bird, or of the morning, and lighted on any of those peaks at no great distance, we should have looked directly down on to the Mediterranean, and almost into the gulf of La Spezzia; we should have seen the long Ligurian promontory in the distant horizon to the right, and have embraced Leghorn, Elba, Gorgona, and the coast as far as Piombino, in the opposite direction. An imperceptible ascent conducts from the town of Lucca towards its baths; and you may expect, in about three hours, to have accomplished its sixteen miles. The road follows the long windings and beautiful valleys of the Serchio, of which, harmless as it looks, we read on all the bridges records of its occasional violence, and of their repeated destruction. After a morning's ride, to which there are few equals even in Italy or Switzerland, we begin to get our books, and paper, and light luggage, out of the nets and pockets of the carriage – for there are the Bagni Caldi, about a mile before us. It is not our purpose to describe the humours of an Italian watering-place; but let it not be supposed that this retreat is the happy thought of our own restless population. The English have had nothing to do with bringing the baths of Lucca into notice or fashion, although they are at present among its principal inhabitants from June to September. Hither flock in summer the families who have established themselves in winter-quarters at Florence or Pisa; and here they soon get possession of all the cracked pianos, and strolling music-masters who come on speculation, and forthwith begin a series of screaming lessons, called singing, executed by English young women, studious of cheap accomplishments, to the infinite distress of all who pass by their open windows, at whatever hour! As the baths are frequented by the little court of Lucca, there is a residenza, a casino, and tables for play. There are two or three good hotels or tables-d'hôtes, and there is a shabby little coffee-house, and a handful of Balzacs and Paul de Kocks at one circulating library. There is one butcher and one baker at each of the villages, privileged dispensers of their respective commodities. There is a scarcity of poultry, of fresh butter, and vegetables; but there is abundance of maccaroni. There are two grocers, who both supply amateurs with English pickles, Harvey's sauce, Warren's blacking, Henry's magnesia, James's powder, and the other necessaries of life. The houses are generally let for the season, and the rent of the best is as high as £4 a-week. The furniture is old and bad, but tolerably clean. Ascend any of the hills, and you look down on roofs that have scarcely any chimneys. Whenever you ride or walk, you have a hill on the right and left of you, and a river making its way against the opposition of huge masses of stone, and angular impediments from the turns of the valley itself. On these hills, you have uniformly vines below; and when you get above the vines, you walk entirely among the chestnut-trees which constitute the real riches of the country. The best office, however, of the hills, is not the production of fruit-trees, but the screen they afford against the Italian sun. The early sunset here is worth all the wine of the territory, which is scarce and very bad. In the evenings of July and August, there is a turn-out of equipages that have figured on the Boulevards and in Hyde Park, which commonly make a halt opposite the little shabby coffee-house, to eat bad ices, and do the agreeable to each other – the rush-bottomed chairs at the door being occupied the while by a set of intelligent young men, with mustache, who smoke bad cigars, and cultivate as elsewhere the charm of each others' classical conversation. Montaigne was here in the 15th century, and Fallopius, he of the trumpets, came here to be cured of deafness – which is one of the infirmities which the Latin inscription declares to have yielded to the use of the waters. Lorenzo di Medici came to talk platonism and the fine arts at a place which will never know either any more; and, from a Latin letter extant, was summoned from the Bagni to the death-bed of his wife. Ladies have often been recommended to the baths to be cured of sterility; and, from what we have seen, we think there are far more unpromising places. Doctors, whose names only are known, but who were probably men of learning, have written on these salutary springs, and modern flippancy has at present forborne them. We have no Quack to patronize them; the "numen aquæ" is not violated in print at least by jobbing apothecaries; but there is Gentile di Foligno, and Ugolino di Monte Catino, and Savonarola, and Bandinelli (1483,) and Fallopio (1569,) and Ducini (1711,) who have written books, of which the object, as they are in Latin, is not assuredly what there is too much reason to believe it is, when such books are now presented to the world. Of the waters, (which, like those of Bath, contain minute portions of silex and oxide of iron,) the temperature differs at the different establishments – and there are three; 43° Reaumur is assigned as the highest, and 35° 24' to two others.

We were stranded at this pleasant place of endurable ennui for three long months, during which there was no going out from nine to five p. m. Our society afforded little resource, our reading less. When the weather permitted – that is, in the delicious, incomparable month of October – we made little excursions to Barga, Ponte Nero, &c. &c., and always returned delighted; nor were our walks of shorter distance unproductive of interest. The Lucchese are the most industrious people in the world, and their agriculture made us, pro tempore, amateurs of rural economy. We will not bore the reader with Georgics such as ours; but if he will accept, in place of picture galleries and churches, the "quid faciat lætas segetes" of this far from miserable population, we will cheerfully take him with us in our walks.

Agriculture Round Lucca

The bearded wheat, or triticum, not the siligo, or common wheat of our English culture, was the plant which, whenever the attributes of Ceres were to be represented on ancient coins, was selected for that purpose; but the Lucchese territory, where the Cerealia in general abound, offers few specimens of either kind. These productions seem afraid of their ears in the neighbourhood of the Great Turk, who is the great tyrant here, and, together with the rice, monopolizes three-fourths of all the land devoted to the culture of grain; the millet (miglio,) the panixa (panico,) Indian wheat (sagena,) together with the lupins, and a variety of peas, beans, and lentiles, occupy the remainder. "The Great Turk is a great eater, is he not?" "Yes," replied the peasant who cultivated him, "mangia come Cristiano," – he eats like a Christian all he can get out of the ground; only, the more he gets the better he looks for it – which is not always the case with Christians." There are two kinds of Gran Turco, or maize; that sown in May is of rather better quality than the other, and produces on an average 10 lbs. more per sack in weight than that which is sown afterwards in June. In order to secure a good crop, it is necessary that the ground should be well manured with lupins, which are either grown for this single purpose the year before, and left to rot, or boiled to prevent their germination, and then scattered over the field. The Grand Turk commonly carries but one head on his shoulders, but occasionally we have remarked two or more on the same stem. In the year 1817, the sack (160 lbs.) fetched fifty-eight pauls; while wheat was seventy-eight, and even the chestnut flour sold at fifty; so that, even in the Lucchese territory, they have their approach to famine in bad years.

Sagena

Pliny mentions the Sagena, under the name of Saracenic millet, as a thing which came from India, and was first brought into Italy in his own time. Herodotus speaks of its cultivation by the Babylonians. The Saracens used it in the fourteenth century for making bread, as do the Lucchese to this day; it is, however, lightly esteemed, and not used at all when other corn abounds, but thrown into the hencoop to fatten poultry. It is a beautiful thing to see the high jungle of this most elastic plant bending to the breeze, and displaying, as it moves, its beaded top, looking at a distance like so many flowers; but, when seen nearer, exhibiting racemes (on highly polished stems) of small pedunculated berries, in mitre-looking capsules. When the seed has been shaken from the plant, the tops are brought together, and form those excellent besoms which, throughout southern Europe, supply the place of birch-broom, than which they are more elastic, not so brittle, and much cleaner. The ultimate fibrils of this plant are sometimes sold in little bundles for the purpose of being slit, and receiving the small Neapolitan firework called gera foletti, which scintillates like a fire-fly. Other kinds of millet and pannick are also grown here; care being taken to plant them far from the vine and mulberry, as they make considerable demands on the soil. Rice is said to have constituted the sole aliment of the republicans of early Rome, and it is still largely cultivated in many parts of Italy. In the low-land about Viareggio, it monopolizes the ground almost as much as the Grand Turk in the more interior parts of the country.

Lupins

Lupins are largely cultivated, both for their own intrinsic value, and to induce the growth of other plants. "We are bitter," say the Lupins in an Italian work on agriculture; "but we enrich the earth which lacks other manure, and by our bitterness kill those insects which, if not destroyed, would destroy our successors in the soil. You owe much, O husbandmen! to us Lupins."

Hemp

Invaluable plant – pride of intelligent agriculture – that tendest thine own fibre – and strength to him that rightly cultivates thee – and constitutest the greatest element of mechanical power! What does not England – the world itself – owe to that growth which we now contemplate! Armies are encamped within thy walls – thou towest forth the ship of discovery on her venturous way, and carriest man and his merchandise to the Equator and to the Pole! Vain were the auspicious breeze unless it blew upon thy opening sails; and what were the sheet-anchor, but for that cable of thine which connects it with the ship. Vegetable iron! incomparable hemp! Extemporaneous memory can scarcely follow thy services. Talk of the battering-ram – but what propelled it forward? The shot, whizzing in the teeth of adverse winds, carries thy coil to snatch the sailor from the rock where he stands helpless and beyond aid from all the powers or productions of man and nature but thine! Thy ladder, and thine alone, can rescue from the house on fire! Look at the fisheries all over the world – the herrings of Scotland and the cod of the Baltic might defy us but for thee. What were wells and windlasses without thee? useless as corkscrews to empty bottles. Thou art the strong arm of the pulley and the crane. Gravitation itself, that universal tyrant, had bound all things to the earth but for thy opposition. The scaffolds were thine from which grew the Colosseum, and the Pyramids have arisen in thine arms. The kite of science, which went cruising among thunder-clouds to bring down to a modern Prometheus the spark which ignites the storm, was held by fibres of thine. The diver and the miner cling to thee for safety, and they that hunt the wild-bird's egg on the sea-shaken cliff, as they swing over the frightful abyss. With the lasso the bold Matador, like the Retiarius of the ancient arena, makes the cast that is for life. Then the fine arts! – Carrara sends her block for the Laocoon by aid of thine; and what were all the galleries in Europe but a collection of gilt frames, but for thy backing and support. By thy subserviency alone (for what were panel or laminated copper for such gigantic works?) did Raffaelle bequeath so many legacies of his immortal genius. It is the strength of thy fibres that is the strength of the loaded supper-tables of Paul Veronese; and the velvets, the furs, the satins of Titian and Vandyke, are quilted upon thee. Nor disdainest thou to render to man, who bruises thee to try thy virtue, a thousand humbler services. Thou preservest our horses from flies, our fruit from birds; and who has not felt how thou cheerest the weary length of continental travelling, by the crack of thy whipcord at the approach of a new relay?

Here our friend Anamnesis seemed fatigued, as if he thought he had spun a sufficiently long yarn on the subject; so we prevailed on him to prosecute the walk, as evening was beginning to close in – not, indeed, without apprehension that he would make a stand at several other interesting plants on which it might suit him to prelect!

Hemp, when cut, is left to dry for a week; it is then immersed for an other week in water; after which it is flayed of its skin – a process which is conducted either by the hand, leaving the stem in this case entire; or by subjecting the whole plant to a bruising process, conducted by a machine.

Besides the above-mentioned grain, the ground produces plenty of vegetables, but of an inferior quality, as are all Italian fruits, and most of the leguminous productions also, from want of care. Even as to flowers, you would find it difficult to make up a bouquet, unless of ferns, which here abound. The only cultivated flower, except a few dahlias and sunflowers, are the yellow petals of the lucchini, a kind of vegetable marrow, which creeps and creeps till its twisted tendrils and broad leaves occupy, by continual encroachment, the whole field where they germinate. Besides the fruit of this plant, which we begin to be supplied with about August, its young leaf and stalk are boiled like kail for common greens; and its yellow flower, a little later, makes a frittura, which is in request. Fruits are plentiful, and some of them good; but, for the greater part, of a very inferior quality. Strawberries, and particularly raspberries, (lampóni,) are found throughout the season; which, commencing with these, and a scanty supply of currants and gooseberries, (the latter very poor indeed, and the first quite inferior to our own,) brings us fine figs of many species and in vast quantities. Apples and pears have their kinds, and many distinctive names, but are without flavour. The great supply of the raspberry and small Alpine strawberry is about midsummer The next-door-hood of all the Scotch families is now fragrant, "on all lawful days," with the odour of boiling down fruit for jams and marmalades for winter consumption. As autumn comes on, heaps of watermelons, piled like cannon-balls under the chestnut-trees, display their promising purple flesh, and look cooling and desirable, but are not to be attempted twice under penalty of gastric inconvenience. Plums and nuts abound, and are followed by a second course of hard, unripe, and tasteless nectarines and peaches. The season is closing fast, for the prickly pods of the ripening chestnut now begin to gape, and the indifferent grapes of the district attain their imperfect maturity, and are gathered for the wine-press. September is in its last week, and in less than another month we must all migrate somewhere for the winter. The baths, on the 15th of October, are quite empty.