quotes contemporary authority; but we may accept the account of Muratori as the more probable of the two, especially as Bonini loves a miracle, and is always disposed to dispense with natural causes.* At the castle of St. Angelo there used to be a slab fixed against a lofty wall marking the height to which the inundation of 1530 rose, and bearing this inscription : If " MEMORIÆ INUSITATE AUCTUS TIBERIS AMNIS AD HOC SIGNUM QUO ROMA SERENO TEMPORE FACTA EST VIII. IDUS OCTOBRIS MDXXX. CLEMENTE VII. PONT. MAX. ANNO VII. PRÆF. POSUIT.t sereno tempore" means merely that the day on which the flood occurred was fine and calm, the circumstances, so far from being miraculous, is what we might expect, and what I have usually observed. When a long spell of wet weather culminates in a great fall of rain, the following day is generally fine and calm, and as the flood occasioned by the rain takes from twenty-four to thirty hours to descend the Tiber to Rome, it will most frequently happen that the day is calm and sunshiny, when the river is at its height. If the words mean that for several days there had been little or no rain at Rome, the fact * In Ranke's History of the Popes there is no mention of this inundation. The pedantic Germans seem to think that History should be confined to war and diplomacy, and that the works of God and the great phenomena of Nature are unworthy of notice, even though the life of the potentate, whose history they are writing, may have been endangered by storm or flood. Livy, Tacitus, Dion Cassius and others, had a juster idea of the province of History, and they always have a chapter devoted to storms, floods, and other remarkable phenomena in the Natural World. Why this slab was removed it is impossible to conjecture. The indifference of the Romans to everything but Art may, perhaps, have rendered them careless about the preservation of a monument of a great phenomenon of Nature. was wonderful, if it was a fact; but as there can be no effect without a cause, and miracles are rejected in the present day, we must seek for some other explanation of the phenomenon. The popular notion of the river being dammed up by a sirocco wind is inapplicable in this case; for none of the writers who describe the flood make any mention of gales, and on the eighth of October there could have been no great accumulation of snow on the Apennines. We should be driven, therefore, to the conclusion, if we adopt the account of Bonini, that for one or more days there had been violent storms among the Apennines. Bonini, indeed, tells us that "no inundations had been observed by which the catastrophe could have been foreseen; but the unscientific are always inaccurate observers, -for how to observe,' is itself a science-and the superstitious prefer to call in the aid of supernatural agencies. Doubtless, a meteorologist would have discerned in the clouds which lowered over the Apennines, and the thunder which growled in the distance, unmistakeable indications of violent tempests which were discharging themselves over the valleys drained by the principal tributaries of the Tiber." INUNDATION OF 1557. "The Tiber, which is wont to emulate the glories of distinguished men, and itself retains something of the Roman pride, did not fail in the year 1557 and fourteenth of September, to appear not only as the triumphant master, but as the tyrant of Rome." Such are the words in which Bonini introduces a short account of the great inundation of 1557. "Yet may we not rather, he continues, look upon the river as the righteous avenger of so holy a pontiff on his ungrateful people." He then goes on to describe the exertions of Paul IV. to relieve the public distress, how by his voice, and by his example, he animated his subordinates, and made them fly through every region of the City to furnish provisions in abundance to all that were in need.* But the calamities brought upon the City by the war with Spain, in which the Pope had rashly engaged; the unsparing severity with which he enforced his reforms, and, above all, the restoration of the inquisition with all its cruelties, had so alienated the affections of his subjects, that after his death the people rose, and in their fury mutilated his statue, attacked the inquisition, and illtreated the officials, and finally tore down every memorial of him, among others, the tablets which he had caused to be affixed in memory of the flood. This inundation is remarkable, not only because it is the highest but one of which we have any measurement, but * Paul IV. may have deserved all the praise which is bestowed upon him for his conduct on this occasion; but Bononi's account both of men and things must be received with great distrust. He was inclined by his taste and disposition to use high-flown language, and to draw upon his imagination for his facts; and he was constrained by his official position to make flattering mention of all the Popes in turn. As they pass in review before him in connexion with the inundations which occurred in their pontificates, each is dismissed with more or less of praise. Even Alexander VI. is in his eyes an exemplary Pontiff. If he spoke from his heart, the other Popes must have appeared to him like angels of light. because it occurred at a season, September fifteenth, when the snows had disappeared from all but a few isolated peaks of the Apennines; showing how groundless is the popular notion that the floods of the Tiber are caused exclusively by the melting of the snows. Copious details may be found in the work of Bacci, who lived at the time, and who wrote a description of the flood itself, and of the atmospheric conditions by which it was preceded. According to this writer, the spring of 1557 was serene with northerly winds, and the summer dry. But in the month of May a peculiar condition of atmosphere began to prevail. A haze brooded over the landscape, and the air appeared to be loaded with humid and unwholesome vapours. Numbers were attacked with fevers, which either carried them off at once, or left them in a state of prostration which made them easy victims to other complaints. This state of things continued until the middle of September, when the humid vapours appeared to be precipitated in the form of rains of unusual violence, which, commencing in Sicily and the southeast of France, extended themselves over the whole of Italy. The rain descended in sheets from the clouds, so that every little rivulet became an impetuous torrent and an agent of destruction. All Ravenna was submerged by the torrent of the Montone, and the castle of la Strada was laid in ruins by a small stream which passes close beside it. But the Arno and the Tiber, being the two largest rivers, rose to the greatest height, and caused the most wide-spread destruction. At Florence it was calculated that, without taking into account the damage done in the environs, the loss sustained within the precincts of the town by the carrying away of bridges, the downfall of houses, and the spoiling of articles of merchandise and food, was equal to the expense of building another City. The Tiber laid waste the country almost from its source, sweeping away bridges and mills, and everything which it encountered in its course, and increasing in height and fury, as each successive tributary discharged its swollen torrent into the surging mass. The Nera poured down a flood which rivalled in volume that of the Tiber itself, and when the two rivers met, the Campagna presented the appearance of a raging sea, which bore down upon Rome and threatened to sweep it bodily away. Luckily it was broad daylight before the river overflowed its banks, and the note of alarm had already been sounded, so that a considerable portion of the moveable property was saved. But the time for removal was short; the Tiber rushed with great force into the streets, and in the course of a few hours the whole of Rome, with the exception of the hills, was navigable for boats. Nor did the water cease to rise until it had covered the site of the Piazza di Spagna, and washed the spot where now commences the steps of the ascent to the Trinità dei Monti.* "A fearful and a piteous spectacle it was-to use the words of the writer-to behold so great a city submerged as in a sea, and everything floating about in confusion; articles of clothing, eatables, merchandise, and entire herds of cattle; without speaking of diverse accidents to individuals, of whom some, caught unexpectedly by the waters, took refuge in trees, others found themselves seated in a wretched little building in the country, in imminent danger of being buried by its downfall, or of perishing by hunger; while others attempted to save themselves through the windows in boats, or waited for some one to present them with a loaf of bread on the point of a pike. Many also there must have been, of whose fate nothing certain is known, who were buried under ruins, or drowned, or perished in various ways." This inundation was not only the highest recorded, with one exception, but lasted the longest, the City being under water for the space of four days, From the amount of suffering caused by the late flood we may conceive the misery which must have been occasioned among the poorer classes by an inundation which rose as much above the inundation of 1870 as that was above an ordinary flood into the Ripetta. We have seen that Paul used every exertion to lighten the calamity which had fallen The flight of steps ascending to the Trinità dei Monti was the work of Sixtus V. |