From Lucca we crossed the Appenines, by a road seldom travelled, performing the hundred miles to Modena in three days. We suffered, as all must who leave the high roads in continental countries, more privations than the novelty was worth. The mountain scenery was fine, of course, but I think less so than that on the passes between Florence and Bologna, the account of which I wrote a few weeks since. We were too happy to get to Modena.
Modena lies in the vast campagna lying between the Appenines and the Adriatic--an immense plain looking like the sea as far as the eye can stretch from north to south. The view of it from the mountains in descending is magnificent beyond description. The capital of the little duchy lay in the midst of us, like a speck on a green carpet, and smaller towns and rivers varied its else unbroken surface of vineyards and fields. We reached the gates just as a fine sunset was reddening the ramparts and towers, and giving up our passports to the soldier on guard, rattled into the hotel.
The town is full of Austrian troops, and in our walk to the ducal palace we met scarce any one else. The streets look gloomy and neglected, and the people singularly dispirited and poor. This petty Duke of Modena is a man of about fifty, and said to be the greatest tyrant, after Don Miguel, in the world. The prisons are full of suspected traitors; one hundred and thirty of the best families of the duchy are banished for liberal opinions; three hundred and over are now under arrest (among them a considerable number of ladies); and many of the Modenese nobility are now serving in the galleys for conspiracy. He has been shot at eighteen times. The last man who attempted it, as I stated in a former letter, was executed the morning I passed through Modena on my return from Venice. With all this he is a fine soldier, and his capital looks in all respects like a garrison in the first style of discipline. He is just now absent at a chateau three miles in the country.
The palace is a union of splendor and meanness within. The endless succession of state apartments are gorgeously draped and ornamented, but the entrance halls and intermediate passages are furnished with an economy you would scarce find exceeded in the "worst inn's worst room." Modena is Corregio's birthplace, and it was from a Duke of Modena that he received the bag of copper coin which occasioned his death. It was, I think, the meagre reward of his celebrated "Night," and he broke a blood-vessel in carrying it to his house. The Duke has sold this picture, as well as every other sufficiently celebrated to bring a princely price. His gallery is a heap of trash, with but here and there a redeeming thing. Among others, there is a portrait of a boy, I think by Rembrandt, very intellectual and lofty, yet with all the youthfulness of fourteen; and a copy of "Giorgione's mistress," the "love in life" of the Manfrini palace, so admired by Lord Byron. There is also a remarkably fine crucifixion, I forget by whom.