1851.] President irresponsible. 213 become his own Prime Minister by declaring him responsible. 'It declares him responsible for attempts to subvert the Constitution. A responsibility which he would have incurred whether it had been expressed or not. 'Of his five immediate predecessors three were banished and one was beheaded. But the better opinion is, that by the Constitution, as it now stands, he is not responsible for the general policy of his Government. The Constitution directs a law to be framed determining the cases, other than the specified one of an attack on the prerogatives of the Assembly, in which the President and his Ministers are to incur personal responsibility. No such law has yet been passed. When passed it cannot be retro-active. He cannot, therefore, at present, incur any responsibility, except in the specified case of his interfering with the prerogatives of the Assembly. The Assembly without doubt ought to obey the Constitution, and to pass a law defining ministerial responsibility and directing its punishment. But if they extended it to the President, and declared him impeachable for general mal-administration, or for unwise administration, I think that their law in those respects would be unconstitutional and void.' Thursday, February 6.—We went-three of us as usual on donkeys and two on foot-to the Cape of Sorrento, a singularly beautiful walk, running round the cliff. The whole cape is covered with Roman remains; some of them are supposed to have been baths, others belong to a Temple of Neptune. In the evening the papers arrived containing the list of the new French Ministry. It consists of a set of clerks, not members of the Assembly, but taken from the public offices. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, for instance, is M. Brennier, a clerk in the Foreign Office, charged with its Finance, whose business it was to audit the accounts of the French Ministers in foreign Courts-intelligent, but a man who probably never read a despatch in his life. Not one of them except Royer, who is a lawyer, has any practice in public speaking. The Constitution gives them the right to be present in the Assembly and to speak-a right, which of course they must submit to use, and of course the exhibition will be deplorable. This is an attempt to carry into practice the theory of the separation of the executive and legislative functions. If the people submit to it—and Tocqueville is not sure that they will not-Parliamentary Government is at an end. Friday, February 7, 1851.-Tocqueville, Ampère, and I, with an ass carrying our baggage, walked over the mountains to Scaricatori, a little landing-place on the Bay of Salerno, about six miles from Sorrento. It took us two hours, the last two miles being a steep rough staircase which the ass would not descend. Thence we took a boat with. four rowers, which carried us in two hours and a half to Amalfi, passing close under a range 1851.] Martello Towers. 215 of mountains from 3,000 to 4,000 feet high, ending precipitously in deep water. Every rocky promontory was crowned with one of the picturesque towers erected by Charles V. as a protection against the Barbary corsairs. They were called Martello Towers because they gave the alarm by a bell struck with a hammer-martello. Our boatmen rowed standing like the Venetians, an exercise which brings all the limbs into play, and gives them fine erect figures. Living in a warmer climate than that of Venice, they do not cramp their muscles by clothes. While we were lunching on the beach at Scaricatori a boatman stood opposite to us, leaning on the high prow of his boat, who was one of the handsomest men that I ever saw. He had no clothes except waist, and linen drawers a linen shirt, open almost to the going half way down the thigh. But though this is the 7th of February, he seemed to want no more. There was a strong land wind, so we hugged the shore, often passing between a steep headland and an insulated rock. Wherever the ground between the mountain tops and the sea is sufficiently inclined to give a foundation for houses, it is dotted over with large villages, or rather towns, in which the houses rise like steps, tier above tier, and to which the only access is by mule-paths, or from the sea by little coves cut out by the mountain torrents into the precipice. The most considerable of these towns is Amalfi, once containing, together with Scala, Atrani, and Ravello, which are its suburbs, separated from it only by the sharp promontories which the mountain thrusts out into the sea, 500,000 inhabitants. Scala now contains the ruins of 130 churches. At that time, that is to say, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Republic of Amalfi was one of the first, perhaps the first naval power in the world. It laid down the bases of Maritime Law; it founded the order of the Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, which afterwards became the order of Malta; it preserved for Europe the Pandects; it claims to have invented the compass. Now its squalid houses line the shore for about a mile, and run up the two deep gorges, each containing a torrent, which are divided by the mountainous promontory, on the top of which are the vast ruins of the Castle of Pontone. We went up the second gorge which divides Scala from Atrani and Ravello, and then climbed to the plateau on which stands the Cathedral of Ravello. It contains two pulpits with fine arabesque mosaics. In this cathedral Pope Adrian IV. in the twelfth century celebrated mass in the presence of 600 Ravello nobles of whom thirty-six were knights of the order of St. John. I doubt whether there are now 600 families in all Ravello. Near the cathedral are the remains of a castellated palace, with a cloister in two stories of Moorish pillars and arches: probably the work of a Saracen garrison, with which Roger of Sicily occupied the town in the beginning of the twelfth century. 1851.] Amalfi. 217 We slept at La Luna in Amalfi, an ancient convent converted into an inn; the cloister, the arcades of which rest on more than 100 dwarf pillars, is still perfect. We had good beds and clean rooms and tolerable food. Three tallow candles were given to us: when they burned low we asked for more, but none were in the house, and the shops being shut, none were to be bought. So we went to bed for want of light at ten. No fireplaces, but the rooms, looking south over the sea, were warm. Amalfi is a charming winter residence, but must be stifling in the summer. Saturday, February 8.-We visited before breakfast the cathedral. Before it is a broad portico, of which the arches rest on columns of different orders and proportions, evidently taken, as are the architraves over the doors, from ancient temples. Within are some good arabesques in mosaic, and some fine columns stolen like those without. The inhabitants are the most shameless beggars that I have ever seen even in Italy. Old men and women and children are beggars everywhere south of the Alps, but in Amalfi, tall, stout, well-dressed young men ran from their work to implore qualche cosa. We walked up the Amalfi gorge, till the path terminated in a paper-mill. Every projecting plateau is covered with ruins; some said to be Roman, which I doubt, but many belong to the eighth or ninth centuries. Half way up the mountain the house of Masaniello was pointed out to us. |