In Marseilles they make half the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaises only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel, just as they have acquired an uncertain notion of clean shirts and the peculiarities of the gorilla and other curious matters. This reminds me of poor Blucher's note to the landlord in Paris: PARIS, le 7 Juillet. Monsieur le Landlord-- Sir: Pourquoi don't you mettez some savon in your bedchambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it? La nuit passée you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec grace when I had none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a necessary de la vie to anybody but a Frenchman, et je I'aurai hors de cet hôtel or make trouble. You hear me. Allons. BLUCHER. I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it was so mixed up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it; but Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it and average the rest.
Blucher's French is bad enough, but it is not much worse than the English one finds in advertisements all over Italy every day. For instance, observe the printed card of the hotel we shall probably stop at on the shores of Lake Como: NOTISH This hotel which the best it is in Italy and most superb, is handsome locate on the best situation of the lake, with the most splendid view near the Villas Melzy, to the King of Belgian, and Serbelloni. This hotel have recently enlarge, do offer all commodities on moderate price, at the strangers gentlemen who whish spend the seasons on the Lake Como. How is that for a specimen? In the hotel is a handsome little chapel where an English clergyman is employed to preach to such of the guests of the house as hail from England and America, and this fact is also set forth in barbarous English in the same advertisement. Wouldn't you have supposed that the adventurous linguist who framed the card would have known enough to submit it to that clergyman before he sent it to the printer?
Here in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the mournful wreck of, the most celebrated painting in the world--"The Last Supper,"by Leonardo da Vinci. We are not infallible judges of pictures, but of course we went there to see this wonderful painting, once so beautiful, always so worshipped by masters in art, and forever to be famous in song and story. And the first thing that occurred was the infliction on us of a placard fairly reeking with wretched English. Take a morsel of it: Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the left hand side at the spectator) uncertain and doubtful about what he thinks to have heard, and upon which he wants to be assured by himself at Christ and by no others. Good, isn't it? And then Peter is described as "argumenting in a threatening and angrily condition at Judas Iscariot."This paragraph recalls the picture. "The Last Supper" is painted on the dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church in ancient times, I suppose. It is battered and scarred in every direction, and stained and discolored by time, and Napoleon's horses kicked the legs off most the disciples when they (the horses, not the disciples) were stabled there more than half a century ago.
I recognized the old picture in a moment--the Saviour with bowed head seated at the center of a long, rough table with scattering fruits and dishes upon it, and six disciples on either side in their long robes, talking to each other--the picture from which all engravings and all copies have been made for three centuries. Perhaps no living man has ever known an attempt to paint the Lord's Supper differently. The world seems to have become settled in the belief, long ago, that it is not possible for human genius to outdo this creation of da Vinci's. I suppose painters will go on copying it as long as any of the original is left visible to the eye.
There were a dozen easels in the room, and as many artists transferring the great picture to their canvases. Fifty proofs of steel engravings and lithographs were scattered around, too. And as usual, I could not help noticing how superior the copies were to the original, that is, to my inexperienced eye. Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michelangelo, a Carracci, or a da Vinci (and we see them every day), you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now.
This picture is about thirty feet long and ten or twelve high, I should think, and the figures are at least life-size. It is one of the largest paintings in Europe.
The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances are scaled and marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead blur upon the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes are certain.
People come here from all parts of the world and glorify this masterpiece.
They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture:
"Oh, wonderful!"
"Such expression!"
"Such grace of attitude!"
"Such dignity!"
"Such faultless drawing!"
"Such matchless coloring!"
"Such feeling!"
"What delicacy of touch!"
"What sublimity of conception!"
"A vision! A vision!"
I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest--their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity toward any of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself upon me: How can they see what is not visible? What would you think of a man who looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra and said: "What matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!" What would you think of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset and said: "What sublimity!