Three or four years ago I enjoyed an opportunity, such as very rarely falls to the lot of strangers, of becoming acquainted with the inner life and customs of a part of the Italian peninsula comparatively little visited,—untrodden ground, in fact, to the majority of English tourists. An invitation from my uncle, an English merchant at Ancona, the principal seaport of the Roman States on the Adriatic, to spend a few months there with his family, was gladly accepted. My experiences of Italy as yet consisted only of a gay winter in Florence, and the Holy Week at Rome; and I was still young and enthusiastic enough to hail with delight any proposal which tended to increase my acquaintance with the country that had so much enchanted me. It was therefore with a light heart I found myself, one lovely autumnal morning, the fourth in a _vettura_, having been confided to the care of an English family who were going to Ancona, in order to embark from thence for the Levant.
I had never travelled in a vettura before, and I thought the lumbering, crazy old vehicle, with its high, narrow step, small windows, hard seats, and peculiar smell of mouldering straw, quite novel and refreshing; and the four lean horses, with their gay tufts of scarlet worsted and bells, the _vetturino_ or driver himself, with his pipe and blouse and low-crowned hat, seemingly devoid of all human sympathy save for a mongrel quadruped, which alternately formed the apex of the pyramid of boxes and carpet-bags upon the roof, or limped dolorously in the rear—all promised me an inexhaustible store of amusement, even for the four days which the journey was to employ.
Soon after leaving Florence the road begins to ascend; and before twenty miles were over we found ourselves in the defiles of a magnificent mountain-pass, and in a temperature of exceeding coldness. That night we stopped at an inn amongst the Apennines, and it would be difficult to convey an idea of the contrast its rude inhabitants and miserable accommodation afforded to the luxury of Florence, which lay behind us. The people of the house spoke in some uncouth dialect it was impossible to understand—the Romagnolo patois, I was afterwards told—and looked so savage and repelling, that one involuntarily recalled all the stories of robbery and assassination with which the neighbouring country had been so rife a few months before. They all, old as well as young, stared at us as if we had been wild beasts; and from the time we arrived till supper could be got ready, and the rough hostess prevailed on to make our beds, there was an incessant coming and going of spectators. They gave us some soup, which, to our English palates, appeared nothing but warm water with a little coarse vermicelli in it, followed by the miserable fowl of which the broth had been made, with its head on, and inefficiently plucked; and then an omelet—the last being an invaluable accessory to such repasts. It was bitterly cold, and we asked for a fire; a large bundle of fagots was brought and lighted in a huge chimney, almost roomy enough to contain settles, like those of olden time. The flame soon kindled cheerily, and cast a bright glow over the squalid room, with its filthy, unwashed brick floor; an open cupboard, containing the available crockery of the establishment; six rush-bottomed chairs, so dirty that we were fain to cover them with our handkerchiefs; and placed upon the shelf, that served as a mantel-piece, two broken figures in coloured plaster of Paris, representing a valorous Greek leering rapturously at a rubicund Zuleika opposite.