The Lakes of Upper Italy

IV.

THERE is an education needed for the appreciation of nature as well as of art. Many people scorn this notion, and as there undoubtedly are some with so fine an innate perception and discrimination of the beautiful that they instinctively recognize it, anybody may believe himself to be one of those chosen few. But the rest of us know that without the native gift, which nothing can wholly replace, the eye and taste require experience and training to comprehend and analyze the beauties of the outer world. There was a time when I resented as hotly as most other Americans the idea that any scenery could surpass our own ; I knew that the Alps were higher than the Alleghanies, but, beyond that, I thought that where there are mountains, valleys, a lake, a waterfall, there must of necessity be a view of the utmost beauty, without regard to degree. It would be as rational to maintain that a human being is necessarily beautiful because possessed of eyes, nose, mouth, and chin ; almost everything depends upon the outline and the relative proportion and disposition of the features. The Italian landscape has a classic form and profile; its glowing complexion is due to the light, — that heavenly effulgence which can transfigure any scene. It is surprising what changes are wrought by a dark or rainy day, or even by the shifting of the wind. As summer waned we found that the Lake of Como does not always show a radiant visage.

“ Villa Serbelloni, August 15, 1883. This is the festa of the Assumption of the Virgin; and all day long there has been the greatest row of brass-bands, singing, shouting, firing of cannon and clanging of bells down in the town, and a straggling military procession up and down the roads on the hillsides. Some of our party went into Bellagio and reported it full of old soldiers with medals and shabby uniforms, and of villagers and peasants from the neighborhood, but that there are no costumes to be seen. The church-bells in these Italian country towns do not chime, but keep up an unmeaning chatter of a few notes, repeating them over and over as if they were counting their beads. Towards midnight the weather changed; I could not have believed the lake could look so threatening ; the water of the two bays was like blackened steel, the nearer mountains were ink-black, the further ones being hidden by heavy white clouds and ghostly mists. The very sky was black, torn here and there into rifts that let through a pale, troubled light upon the stormy scene; distant lightning glared among the clouds every few minutes and the thunder rolled from mountain to mountain.

“August 16. A stormy morning; not much thunder, but high wind and heavy rain. The lake is slate color and covered with vicious little white caps that spit and sputter and dash against the shore, flying off in spray. The landscape is metamorphosed ; its warm colors have given place to a prevailing light green, the cypresses are dull rather than dark, the wind-swept olives are gray, the hillsides hoary. Yet they look as soft as ever, as soft as the fields under a warm April rain at home.

“August 21. A fine, bright day, with a hot sun and stiff breeze. Took the first steamboat to the upper end of the lake, which I had not yet seen. The water through which we drove our way was a delicate shade of aquamarine, melting into ultramarine blue further off. As we advanced, the familiar mountains on either side took new shapes, different groups were formed, gorges opened into their recesses traced by the white thread of a waterfall, peaks and crests hitherto unseen appear and look over into the lake. The post-road to the Stelvio Pass, a great military work, makes the eastern margin a succession of sunny galleries and cavernous tunnels. The shores constantly bend into capes and headlands inclosing little bays, each having its own town with a musical. sonorous appellation, generally associated with some historical name or with one dear to letters. They all present the same features: white, pink, and buff houses, with archways below and balconies above, in irregular tiers, interspersed with long villa fronts and walls holding masses of dark polished verdure, golden fruit and prismatic bloom, like huge flower-baskets, the gray, Lombard church-tower crowning the whole ; many of these last have been disfigured by walling up the graceful, columned windows and piercing loop-holes. Most of the towns are old, dating from the twelfth century or earlier, and the more ancient part of them is the more remote from the water under the wing of the castle, which is to be seen in ruins on the first high ground. Each paese had its feudal lord, who was habitually at war with his next neighbors ; sometimes the entire lake was in terror of one tyrant like Gian Giacomo Medici or Medeghini, the castellan of Musso in the sixteenth century. His family was obscure, being distinct from the Florentine one, but intermarried with the Serbelloni and became powerful enough to give a Pope to the Holy See, under the name of Pius IV. Gian Giacomo took the position of an independent sovereign, coined his money, maintained his own army and flotilla, and waged war with the Swiss, the Milanese, and the Venetian Republic, for a number of years. After a disastrous naval engagement on the Bay of Lecco, in which he lost his youngest brother Gabriele, he made peace with the Duke of Milan, the great Sforza, abandoned the castle of Musso, which was demolished, and passed into the service of the Emperor Charles V.; but he remained to the last a type of the ferocious, unscrupulous condottiere of the Renaissance. There is a fine monument to him and his brother Gabriele, in the cathedral of Milan. On the crags above Musso there are some dilapidated battlements, only to be reached by a narrow path intersected by numerous deep ravines crossed by high-arched foot-bridges, easily defended or destroyed, the last vestiges of the Medeghini’s stronghold.

“ A terrible amount of blood has been spilled into these laughing ripples ; for ages there were incessant encounters on the unstable battle-field, in which the Swiss, Spaniards, French, Germans, and Italians fought for supremacy or liberty. They were worse centuries for the wretched inhabitants of the shore than the days of the Goths and Vandals. As times grew milder, the villages crept down nearer to the water, until now the most important portion is on the wharves, where palaces amid the gardens of Armida serve as suburbs to an arcaded street of fruit-stalls and small shops of bright wares, and a broad, sunny promenade edged by a double row of clipped locust trees, a line of boats like floating tents drawn up at its base. Near some of them there is a beach or spit of sand brought down from the mountain gullies by a torrent which is dry all summer ; some have small breakwaters harboring a merchantnavy of skiffs and sloops to carry lumber to Como and Lecco, Bellano has large iron-works and wears a busy little air of trade and commerce, so that the inhabitants, of whom there are three thousand, proudly call it the Manchester of Lake Como. But repose and passive enjoyment are the ordinary expression of these townlets and of those who dwell in them ; even the hard-taxed, over-worked, under-fed peasants have a calm, dreamy gaze when their toil-worn visages are at rest, which breaks into a brilliant smile at a friendly question or a cordial ’ thank you.’

“ As the steamboat approaches the upper end of the lake, the villas are notably fewer and the gardens less luxuriant ; the flowers that hang over the walls are coarser and hardier ; no more pleasure boats are to be seen moored to the shore ; the vegetation of the slopes is not so meridional as of those on the Bay of Como, and lacks the richness and softness which clothes those as with a vesture of moss ; the colors are colder, light green and dull purple, like the Scotch hills. The towns keep up the interest, Rezzonico is a mere handful of scattered houses with a ruined castle in their midst, but has a grave, self-contained air as if still mindful of having given a head to Christendom. On the outskirts of Gravedona there is a striking group of sacred buildings standing apart, without the walls, in ecclesiastical retirement, on a grassy level screened from the lake by a row of locust trees. One of them is a fine twelfth century baptistery, in courses of black and white marble dimmed by time to quiet tones of gray ; the arms of the nave and transept, which are very short, end in semicircular apses, and there is a central decagonal tower of alternately broad and narrow sides rising three stories from the roof, — the upper one being much higher than the others and with larger windows, — crowned by a pillared gallery and a bulb-shaped cupola ; it is Romanesque, but in some details differs from all other specimens of that style which I have seen. It is altogether an imposing edifice, of which any large Italian town might boast, yet it seems to be forgotten even by the insignificant village at its elbow. In the same group there is a much older and simpler church, claiming Queen Theodelinda as its foundress, in which there are some early Christian inscriptions, more ancient than the church itself. Beyond a sort of cloister round which these buildings stand, less skilled hands have raised a mortuary chapel, rudely painted with death’s-heads, one wearing a papal tiara, another an imperial crown, a third a warrior’s helmet, and so on through several phases of mortal greatness, above a grated opening which displays a ghastly collection of skulls and hones. The place is silent and isolated. Gravedona was not always so unimportant as now, and has played its part in history; it was the capital of a republic which made war and peace with the Lombard League; its troops assaulted the rear-guard of Barbarossa’s army, capturing banners and booty, among other spoil, the imperial crown which was deposited in the baptistery, — a feat that so enraged the great emperor that he wished to exclude the town from the conditions of the peace of Constance. As late as the middle of the sixteenth century it was still a place of note ; for there is said to have been some talk of transferring the seat of the Council of Trent hither, to hold its sessions in Cardinal Gallio’s villa. This is now known as the Palazzo del Pero, from the name of its present owners ; it stands on a rock forming a natural terrace, with a high and stately stairway to the water’s edge, and it is the finest private residence on the lake, a princely mansion ; there are four corner towers, each terminating in a graceful loggia, and a massive main building, divided by a three story portico with a triple arch resting on handsome yellow marble pillars, and a Venetian balcony. I was informed that the “famiglia del Pero é richissima,” yet the house-linen was drying on the sculptured balustrades, and the fire-wood was being chopped under the arch of the principal entrance. It was altogether unexpected to find so much worth seeing at a place of which I had never heard, a place of but fifteen or sixteen hundred inhabitants, where a stranger seldom goes ashore ; and besides this, Gravedona has a decided pictorial character of its own. Its population still separates into the old quarters of the riva and the castello, and there are touches of provincial elegance discernible about the latter, while at the landing, white houses garlanded with nasturtium vines from window to window and story to story, and huge sunflowers staring over the walls into the water, look as if modern æstheticism had taken root there.

“ We had reached the head of the lake, — its real head has been cut off by the muddy deposits of the river Adda, and is called the Lago Mezzola or Lago di Riva. The shores are low ; inland, the mountain wall rises ragged, forbidding, streaked and patched with snow. The steamboat goes no further than Colico, an ill name and a poor place, but happy in being the point at which travelers from the Splugen and Stelvio passes reach the lake of Como. It goes to sleep between the hours of morning and evening arrival, with which the steamboat corresponds; I seemed to have it to myself, and the carriage drivers fought as to who should charge most for taking me to see the ruined fortress of Fuentes, and Azzo Visconti’s bridge. The road is wide, dusty, glaring, a sort of causeway bordered by water-willows and large poplars, which look plebeian in the land of the cypress ; fields of maize and mulberry plantations lie on each hand for a mile or two; then a wide, noisome swamp spreads out to the right, while on the left a ridge of rock rises suddenly from the narrow plain, and along its whole length the remains of the great stronghold may be traced, here a barbican, there the base of a tower, further on some crumbling battlements. The road crosses the Adda, which comes suddenly into sight, its olive waters flowing swiftly and smoothly past the ridge, under the brows of the fort, into a pleasant valley fenced by mountains on both sides. Some of the arches of the new bridge, built only last year, rest on the piers of that which the best of the Visconti erected early in the fourteenth century, to give his people a way over the swamp, and the Adda a way out to the lake. Here I turned back, but was overtaken by a long cloud of dust, through which the diligences from the Stelvio came rattling and jingling into Colico to catch the last boat. The beauty of the voyage increased every instant as we descended the lake; the sunset poured over the scenery like elixir of gold. As I sat on the deck near the usual party of noisy Germans, — whose satchels were stuffed with edelweiss, forget-me-nots, alpenroses, and lunch-parcels in greasy newspaper, and who behaved themselves as if they had chartered the steamboat and as if nobody else had any business to be there, — I reflected for the first time on the size of Lake Como. It is forty miles long, and nowhere visible — except from a considerable height — for more than a third of its length; its average width must be under four miles. These statistics were suggested by the conversation of a well-dressed young English couple, light-haired and handsome, though burnt as red as brick, who sat near me and thus commented on the scene before them : ‘I like our lakes better, they ’re so nice and small, you know.’ ‘Yes, so jolly for boating, don’t you know.’ ”

In enumerating the resources of the Villa Serbelloni, it would be ungrateful to omit the gay little town of Bellagio, with its arcaded water-street, into which we made descents to buy fruit, from heaping baskets of melons, plums, pears, figs, and grapes, or native manufactures, — olive-wood tables, portfolios, paper-knives, boxes of every size and use, raw silk blankets of gorgeous colors, and handsome coarse linen-lace which dark-eyed girls wove on cushions at their doorways. As the lake season approached, the innocent rascals who had cheated us so genially of a few francs were supplanted by a tribe of real villains from the cities, jewelers with pretty coral and lava rubbish from Naples, and bricabrac dealers more depraved than those of Paris or Amsterdam, who brought some of us to the verge of ruin. At length there came a cloudless morning in September, when I got up early and took the eight o’clock boat for Lecco, and the halcyon days were done.

“ The glamour and dewy sparkle of the first hours after sunrise still lingered on land and water, as I looked my last at the shores and villages, mountains, promontories, and cascades which I knew so well, By the time we were fairly under way in the bay of Lecco, they seemed already to belong to the past, for I was on a new cruise. It is not comparable to the twin branch, and is very different from it. There are no villas, and few towns or villages or even ruined castles and church-towers. Nature is left to herself ; the mountains rise from the water’s edge unbroken by terraces and vineyards, and for the most part wooded to the summit, haunches and shoulders of rock occasionally forcing themselves through the foliage. Over Olcio, a solitary bare peak raises its gray head above a hundred close crowding breasts of rock, like a cosmic Diana of Ephesus. Maudello, the prettiest town on this bay, stands on the point of a cape which so narrows the lake that from a little distance above or below, it seems to end here. At Mandello a handsome young woman holding a little girl by the hand, both prettily dressed, came running out of a narrow street as the steamboat bell was ringing for departure. She was followed by six or seven shabby figures of both sexes and all ages carrying traveling bags, shawls, parasols, bandboxes, and paper bundles. As these were passed to the boat-porters on deck, the farewells, embraces, adjurations, warnings, and benedictions were going on, while a stream of children, friends, and servants continued to pour bareheaded out of the street to join in the ‘ addio.’ With many good-by gestures, she put her foot on the plank, when ’ Mamma mia!’ was heard in a shrill, infantine scream, and a curly-pate aged four or live rushed from the street, holding up her arms for another kiss ; the mother turned back, and there was a long hug. ’ Avanti ! Avanti ! ‘ (Come on ! ) shouted the captain. The lady had reached the deck, when there was another cry, and out of the same street hobbled an untidy, unkempt old woman, the cook to all appearance; at sight of her, the fair passenger sprang back to land, fell into her arms, and only tore herself away as the captain Stamped and ordered the plank to be pulled up. The lady and child stood waving their hands in reply to a flutter of handkerchiefs that looked like a week’s wash, until we had rounded the point and were lost to sight ; they then placidly settled themselves among their parcels and chatted about their journey ; they were going for twenty-four hours to Milan, which is two hours distant. The Italians, like all other Europeans among whom I have been, never take a trunk when they can avoid it, to escape paying the charge on luggage; the quantity of hand-baggage they carry is inconceivable to Americans ; the valises are often as large as a middle-sized trunk, and they are put into railway carriages to the utter discomfort of the inmates.

“ Beyond Maudello the mountains fall back from the shore and range themselves in an imposing amphitheatre of ash-colored crags, the ridge split and chipped into innumerable small fissures and strange dents. The lake rounds and widens towards the lower end, and evidences of a larger industry are seen on the banks than anywhere else except at Bellano. The base of the hills is scooped out by chalk quarries ; along the water are great limekilns with castellated fronts ; there are huge stacks of fagots for the furnaces, thatched with fine twigs, making brown masses of considerable effect in the landscape. Lecco, the last town on the eastern branch of the lake, is a busy place with iron works and smoking chimneys. Across the low, embowered coast is seen an inland region of mountains, so various in height, form, color, and distance, that they suggest a novel and charming field of unexplored loveliness. Lecco itself has neither interest nor attraction; among its closely overhanging chalk cliffs it is the hottest place on the lake, and the railway station is the hottest place in the town. A little way out of Lecco there is a small lake called the Lago d’ Olgiate, which is only a tag-end of Lake Como cut off by the Adda again, which in this place also had to be bridged by Azzo Visconti; his ten arches remain to testify that he did good in his day. The river, issuing from the lake of Olgiate, winds and bends gently through a wide vale of grassy, shady reaches, laving the herbage of the low meadow-capes.”

My comrades and I had parted some time before I forsook the Lake of Como, and I do not know what their state of mind was after leaving the enchantress; for my part I confess that for some days I wandered about as disconsolate and sick and sore at heart as one who has lost his love. I endeavored to distract my thoughts in the company of the old Lombard painters, and thus made acquaintance with the towns of Bergamo and Brescia, going even as far as Verona, which was familiar ground. The last name is not to be coupled with any other, but stands alone, like Rome, Florence, Venice, or Naples, though her ancient and lofty beauty is fast disappearing under insensate restorations. The other two are excessively striking and picturesque, with an undiluted flavor of the past. They are sturdy remnants of the Middle Ages; each has a central piazza where the mediævalism is concentrated, on or near which stand the cathedral, the castle, and the townhall ; here the town still wears an air of being her own mistress, as of yore. There is a great deal to tell of them, and of their rich little picture-galleries and churches, full of masterpieces by Lorenzo Lotto, Solari, Moroni, and Moretto; but they are not to be disposed of in a parenthesis. This I will add, however, that at the hotels of both places you may be lawfully robbed in the good old-fashioned way, as in the days of the “ grand tour,” without receiving any equivalent for your money.

The road from Brescia to Bergamo skirts the Lago d’ Isco, which is praised in proportion to the difficulty of getting at it. The approach is uninteresting, the country for miles round Brescia being level, the hills distant; the only diversion is to watch the peasants, with their scythes and sickles, mowing and reaping, and the white oxen waiting under the aspens for their loads. The road at length turns a sharp corner into the mountains, and comes in sight of the lake lying among them under ward of several great embattled ruins. They are repelling mountains, either spotted with scanty vegetation, or bare and stony as newly mended turnpike roads. The further ones were of a dull opaque blue without lights or shadows, owing to the covered gray sky. On a sunny day the little lake may be one smile, but on the afternoon of which I write it looked morose and boding, and as if it deserved its ill-fame for danger to boats. On one side, the mountains come steeply down to the water; on the other, the land is flat and marshy, intersected by ditches, which were redeemed by being covered with water-lilies. Altogether Lago d’ Iseo did not seem worth the trouble of coming out of one’s way to see. There are such lakes lying about in every direction throughout upper Italy — lonely mountain meres, or strung together like crystal beads by the silver thread of a small river; the traveler does not turn aside a single hour between the Alps and the Apennines to see them, though he would journey hundreds of miles to gladden his eyes upon them in different latitudes.

There is one clear, round pond not bigger than a palace fountain, clean cut in the turf of a private estate between Brescia and Verona, which deserves notice, because, if my topography served me, it lies within the limits of the battle-field of Solferino ; it is in sight of the swooping bronze eagle perched upon the monumental pillar that rises above the vine-bound mulberry trees to commemorate that bloody day. I saw it on my way to the last and largest of the lakes of upper Italy, the majestic Lago di Garda, of which, —

“ Per mille fonti credo, e più, si bagna,” — says Dante, and which Catullus made his own forever by a rapturous little poem. I had once caught sight of its sinning plane and fantastic mountains, from the railroad on going to Venice, and had carried away an indelible impression of magnitude and mystery from that single glimpse. The interest it had waked was deepened by recognizing the same unwonted shapes and colors in the background of Leonardo da Vinci’s pictures, — in the Monna Lisa and Vierge aux Rochers. The desire to see more of them survived twelve years of absence and stimulated me to disregard various inconveniences attendant on the expedition.

“ September 7. One of the many drawbacks to seeing the Lago di Garda is the inconvenient hour at which the steamboat starts from either end ; another is the discomfort of the boat, a big, business-like vessel, ugly and dirty, without upper deck or saloon ; the passengers for pleasure are crowded aft, the fore-part being reserved for peasants and produce. I got on board at four p. M., at Dezenzano, a stopping-place on the railroad from Milan to Venice, about half-way between Brescia and Verona, the station, however, being at least a quarter of an hour’s drive from the town and wharf. It is a steep, picturesque, dirty old place, with a citadel upon its croup. The quay had a lazy, Levantine air, with men in Turkish trousers and fezzes, or bare legs and head-kerchiefs, lounging among the bales. The fishing-boats on this lake carry the saffron-colored, red-barred sails of the Adriatic. We steamed and snorted through the translucent waves, hugging the land for some time. The splendor, the soft transparency of the afternoon, surpassed anything I had ever seen even in Italy. The colors of the water were extraordinary, — the deepest blue, like the dark iris or flag-flower, belted at intervals with bands of clear azure, like the sky in April or the light blue lotus, the whole surface glittering like the petals of those flowers. The lake is very wide at this end, the low shores bending in a great sweep which ends right and left in the peninsula of Sermione and the cliffs of Manerbo ; between these outworks can be seen strange mountain shapes, distorted, crowded together, torn apart, and of a blue that is neither of sea nor sky, dissolving into dreamland. Going up the lake, the steamboat touches only at towns on the western side, which is low and grassy, with plenty of trees, until the rocks of Manerbo start up suddenly with a fine front of yellow crag. They form a tableland, once hallowed by a temple to Minerva, and rounding inland open a deep bay, at the head of which is the first landing, the brown little vinewreathed town of Salò bathing its feet in the water. The next stopping-place is the island of Garda, or Isola dei Frati as it is called, from a Franciscan convent founded there in the thirteenth century by St. Francis himself, on the ruins of a temple of Jupiter. It is now quite given over to this world, and transformed into a villa, which rises with leafy and blooming gardens from the lake edge, though the buildings on the top keep some of that inalienable air of contemplation which establishments formerly religious never entirely lose. Immediately beyond the island the lake narrows ; the mountains on each side rear themselves to a great height, mole-colored on the west, mingled with chromeyellow deepening to orange so vivid that its warmth is felt from the depths of the gorges, while those on the east are silver-gray like the Monte Grigna. Their forms are very singular and striking, — abrupt detached cubes and spikes like those in Leonardo’s backgrounds. There is no luxuriance of growth, natural or cultivated, the vegetation is scarce and sparse ; there seem to be almost no villas, and but few towns ; there is none of the captivating amenity of Lake Como, or the stately graciousness of Lago Maggiore ; the character of this scenery is grand, wild, and softly savage. A great blemish upon it is a contrivance for protecting the orange and lemon trees, — rows upon rows of flat, white pillars from six to ten feet high supporting skeleton roofs, the whole being boarded up in winter when it must he still more ugly; it is bad enough in summer, — acres of them in ten or a dozen tiers, looking like the bleaching ground of some great woollen mill. Limone is totally marred by them; the houses stand prettily round a cove, and rise against an amphitheatre of rock, but they are lost in continuous circles of white posts nearly a mile long and scaling the cliff for at least a hundred feet; they look like innumerable whitewashed palings, and as the steamboat passes them they criss-cross with the most annoying rapidity.

“ The sun went down, changing the jagged silvery combs to imperial purple against the pellucid sky. Even then the orange hues burned in the dark ravines out of which slipped the infrequent cascades — the prettiest of them glides into the lake at a place with the sensitive name of Tremosine. The twilight blended the colors and massed the outlines ; by and by a young moon shed a pale glimmer on the spectral eastern cliffs, and a bright path upon the water. Before us the mountains looked heavy and threatening, behind us they closed like a gateway. The scene was more in keeping with historical memories than sentimental fancies ; the imagination suffered no violence at the recollection of the martial exploits which had been performed there. The last canto of that romantic epic of the Lombard dominion, in which the melodious cadence of a woman’s name is so often heard, opens with the captivity of the beautiful and saintly Adelaide, the widow of Lothair, sovereign of northern Italy, who had been thrown into a dungeon on the lake of Garda by Berenger, the usurper and suspected murderer of her youthful husband. He had tried By every persecution to force her into a marriage with his son Adalbert, and this rigorous imprisonment was a last resort. Otho the Great dashed across the Alps to her rescue, set her free, married her, and marched upon the royal city of Pavia, which opened its gates to him, and crowned him King of Lombardy. Five hundred years later, Sorbolo of Candia laid a wager with the famous free-lance Gattamelata, then in the service of Venice, that he would bring a fleet over the Alps and launch it in these waters ; he won it, two thousand oxen dragging the heavy galleys and galleons upon tumbrels. Two naval engagements with the Milanese ensued, in one of which Venice was defeated, in the other victorious, April, 1440. There has been plenty of fighting hereabouts since then, but modern warfare is more prosaic in its ventures.

“ The boat reached Riva, at the head of the lake, at half-past eight o’clock. To my dismay, my first step on landing was into a low, ill-lighted room, foggy with tobacco smoke, where men in black and yellow uniforms were apparently rifling the travelers’ luggage, and the German language smote upon my ears. It was the Austrian custom-house, and I had unintentionally come out of Italy. Nobody had told me that Riva was not in Italy, if they had I would not have come ; I was in a rage; but then I had asked nobody, I had not been deceived : it was an impotent situation. The next shock was the irredeemable character of the Grand Hôtel Impérial du Soleil d’Or. My room opened on a dark wooden balcony above a long, narrow court smelling like a stable-yard. I protested; they assured me that it was one of the best in the house, and asked tne what I wanted. ‘ Licht, luft ’ (light, air), I replied. They shook their heads, and I heard them walking up and down the balcony, which was a thoroughfare, for hours, making reflections upon me. ‘What more could man wish for? A magnificent chamber, prachtvoll, herrlich.’ I discovered by degrees that the walls were hideously painted with fruit and flowers, and that the pillow-case and the sheets were trimmed with cotton lace.

“ September 8. The fault of the Soleil d’Or, which is not without a quaintness and style of its own, is an absence of the elements of comfort in the arrangements, and of a notion of them in the mind of the administration; so that it was useless and hopeless to complain. Therefore the best thing was to escape as soon as possible. The only steamboat starts at five A. M. ; that being gone past recall, I cast about me, and discovered that there is a station on the Brenner railroad but two hours’ drive away, where I could take a train and be shortly in Verona. The diligence had started too, hours before, at eight o’clock; so I made my own arrangements, and then breakfasted pleasantly enough under a vine-trellis on the little terrace garden of the hotel, which is like a morsel of Venice, so close above the water that the picturesque, swarthy boatmen stand up in their boats and look over the parapet to offer their services. The lake is almost closed at this end ; through the rocky portal there is one distant glimpse of a faint blue coast, and then a wide expanse of deep blue water, sparkling like a summer sea. The mountains beetle over Riva ; they look as if they were toppling down upon it. The strangeness of their forms is oppressive; one mass is like a flight of enormous steps to a vast, primordial throne, raised in the beginning of time over this forgotten corner of chaos. The aspect of the town is absolutely mediæval still ; a huge, square tower of the thirteenth century rises straight up from the pavement, with the traffic of to-day at its foot; a still older one, in ruins, keeps guard on the rocks directly over the town. In the fourteenth century Riva belonged to the Veronese, who built the fine Palazzo del Pretorio with an arcade to the lake; but in the following age it fell into the hands of the Venetians, who gave it the Palazzo Municipale. The place is well protected against present emergencies ; the highroad passes through the modern fortifications of San Niccolò before it is clear of the town, and a couple of miles further out, through the gateway of another fortress, high on the hillside, under a cliff hearing the warlike remains of the castle of Nago, like a skeleton in armor.

“ As the road ascends, a wider view of the lake comes into sight; its pure, deep hue discolored to a poisonous green just off shore before every town. Northward the grass-green Sarca breaks its way through a maze of rocks, fragments of mountain lying on each side of its course as if the impetuous torrent had swept them aside. The vale of the Sarca is literally one great market-garden and orchard ; every foot of it is under cultivation, sheltered and warmed by the surrounding cliffs as if it were a hot-bed, and irrigated by the river. Olive trees grow from every crevice of the rock; great, gaunt trunks, twisted and rent, covered with a profusion of hoary, glaucous foliage and smooth, unripe fruit. The fertility stops short below the mountains’ knees, contrasting sharply with the sterility above them. The scenery is harsh and desolate. Half way to Mori, the railway station, we passed a gloomy, marshy pool, the lake of Loppio, and soon afterwards descended into lower land through which the Adige takes its way. The castellated ruins on every commanding point show how fiercely beset this border-land was in the Middle Ages.

“ Verona, September 10. Morning cool and bright, refreshed by last night’s thunder-storm. I set off for the peninsula of Sermione and Catullus’ Villa. The country about Verona has nothing to show but flat fertility; at intervals the long back of a basilica at right angles to its tall tower rises above the low tree-tops under the clear hot sky. The glacis and bomb-proofs of modern forts cut the horizon in every direction. Left the railroad at Dezenzano, took a one-horse carriage, and drove through a Virgilian landscape ; the lake, at first seen at a distance through the mulberry orchards, drew nearer and nearer on both sides, until the fields ceased and the road entered a neck of land deeply fringed by tall, waving grass with a plumy gray flower. After about a mile of this, I was confronted by the fine ramparts of Castelnuovo, a feudal pile of battlemented walls and crenelated towers, with a noble gateway, through which everybody must pass who goes to Sermione, over a moat filled by the lake. The town consists of a dozen or two dilapidated houses, and the paved road soon expires in a sandy cart-track, where my driver, in spite of appearances, said that wheels could go no further, for my way lay through the famous Quadrilateral. This I afterwards found to be not strictly true ; but knowing no better at the moment, I got out and began to follow a narrow, rather steep foot-path through a beautiful olive grove, accompanied by eight ragged urchins of from six to twelve years old, who had come nobody could say whence, how, or when. The biggest, who had a clean, intelligent face, I took as a guide, and gave him my lunch-basket and books to carry. The rest I dismissed, first amicably, then with threats, finally with a show of sticks and stones, but in vain ; they stuck to me with silent pertinacity, falling to the rear when I frowned and bade them begone, dodging and disappearing when I brandished my cudgel, but ever returning to the pursuit. At last I gave it up, deciding that they were too small to murder me, even in such numbers, whereas they might be some protection in the extreme solitude, for by that time I had reached a lonely plateau covered with short grass and wild thyme and lovely shimmering olive trees. The fallen masonry of an old church lies among the aromatic herbs, one tower alone remaining upright; further on are the subterranean chambers of a Roman house, and at the very front of the headland, looking up the lake, the ivied arches and piers of an ancient palace with fragments of reticulated brick-work and mosaic pavement. The promontory breaks off in a fine cliff several hundred feet above the lake, which beats upon the slabs at its base with the sound of a gentle surf. It was breezy and sunny ; the blue sheet sparkled, spreading further and further among the mountains, which took a hundred rich changes from the shadows of the clouds on their silvery, leaden, and tawny crags and purple depths of distance. It is a happy, heathen spot, ruled by the spirit of the classic muse and antique myth; no wonder a Christian church fell into decay there.

“ I sat down under an olive tree, and favorite scraps of poetry and thoughts of absent friends hovered about me like a joyous company. As I ate my lunch of fruit, bread, and red wine, my small body-guard seated themselves in a line along a furrow, like a flock of birds, to wait for the crumbs. Presently Bertoldi, the little guide, rose and went so rashly over the edge of the precipice that I called out to him to be careful; whereupon the others jumped up and rushed over it as though they would all have run violently down like certain swine; instead of that, they capered from point to point and ledge to ledge like kids ; until, seeing that I showed no fears for their safety, they came back and lay in a row on their stomachs and elbows, with their heels in the air, not a yard from my toes. I sprang to my feet in mock fury ; up they sprang too, and in half a minute were lodged in the branches of the olive tree. There they began swinging, climbing, and dropping from limb to limb like apes, with which exercises they diverted themselves till I was ready to visit the underground chambers, or the grottoes of Catullus as they are called. The monkeys scrambled and slid to the ground, scampered off, and vanished, as if they had been exorcised.

“ Bertoldi alone remained, and I followed him obediently as he directed,— ’ Piano? ’ Andante,’‘ Si ferma,’ (‘Stop here,’) —descending the broken passage, until we reached a cavern-like room of good dimensions, with openings in the wall into two others. Lo! there were my tormentors kneeling, crouching, or hanging, each with a lighted candle-end to illuminate the darkness and show the extent of the vaults, with their hare feet, slouched hats, dark eyes and white teeth, looking like diminutive banditti in a Salvator Rosa study of light and shadow. This was the secret of their persistency, and this was their little industry, poor children, yet they did not one of them ask for a penny.

“ I found a perfect subject for a picture among the palace-ruins: a great bit of brick wall, tufted with fine grass and slightly robed in ivy, with a gaping, broken arch in which grew a big gnarled and twisted olive tree with an argentine haze of leaves, just veiling the intense radiance of the lake, the opposite line of shore, and Minerva’s Rocks. I tried to sketch it, but it was too beautiful for me; the boys peeped over my shoulders in clusters, whispering ‘ Bello ! Bello !’ before I had drawn a stroke, false flatterers, and making it impossible for me even to try. So I shut the sketchbook and they lifted sweet, true, childish voices, and warbled very harmoniously in three parts, tenor, alto, and soprano; until carried away by my applause, they took to yelling and shouting in the discordant way to which Italians are addicted when they sing. When my time was up, they escorted me back to the carriage and then disappeared as they had come.”

My pilgrimage through the Lakes of Lombardy ended with this classic morning, and I turned northward, asking myself, like Virgil, how I should tell of their treasures:—