"^^0^ <^''^ 4 O 0* !'^ ■w " .•>^^-. \/ .'Ife'v %.** .•^•.. \. ^^'% Vn»^,-- **''** ■••W" ,/"% '-W- -*' ../ A'-. \,.^ ;>'^^^-^^ \./ :»v "-^ ^°-^^ 4 o ■^'^<--. %/ ;f^--. V„.' .•^, -^^.Z rg ^^< .*^''^. ia-V ^^ ''nm^- "^^.^'' .^.^^r^:o %c,^^ : <> ^ ^ s • • H o %'^^%o^ "V<:^'\/'' ''V^"^^' Alps and Sanctuaries / y LX>coC \?os e^^lcs n^o^ r LOL^nt .w|^^/Aj , .; A,^ SocUyOC /ZOS ^fZy/nU.S DOS er'Ly6o6\ Alps and Sanctuaries Of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (Op. 6) By Samuel Butler Author of "Erewhon," "Life and Habit," "The Way of All Flesh," etc. New and Enlarged Edition^ with Author^ s Revisions and Index^ and an Introduction by R, A, Streatfeild %r,, AaM NEW YORK E PDUTTON ^ COMPANY 31 Wiest Twenty-Third Street 1913 Ji^ / 77^ ''"/ -^ ^ Introduction THE publication of a new and revised edition of *' Alps and Sanctuaries " at a much reduced price and in a handier and more portable form than the original will, I hope, draw general attention to a book which has been undeservedly neglected. " Alps and Sanctuaries " has hitherto been the Cinderella of the Butler family. While her sisters, both elder and younger, have been steadily winning their way to high places at the feast, she has sat unrecognised and unhonoured in the ashes. For this, of course, the high price of the book, which was originally issued at a guinea, was largely responsible, as well as its unmanageable size and cumbrousness. But Time has revenges in his w^allet for books as well as for men, and I cannot but believe that a new life is in store for one of the wisest, wittiest and tenderest of Butler's books. *'Alps and Sanctuaries" originally appeared at a time (1881) when the circle of Butler's readers had shrunk to very narrow dimensions. ^'Erewhon" (1872) had astonished and delighted the literary world, but "The Fair Haven" (1873) had alienated the sympathies of the orthodox, and "Life and Habit" (1877) and its successors "Evolution, Old and New" (1S79) ^^^ "Un- conscious Memory " (1880) had made him powerful and relentless enemies in the field of science. In 1881 Butler was, as he often termed himself, a literary pariah, and "Alps and Sanctuaries" was received for the most part with contemptuous silence or undisguised hostility. Now that Butler is a recognised classic, his twentieth-century readers may care to be reminded of the reception that was accorded to this — one of the most genial and least polemical of his works. Very few papers review^ed it at all, and in only four or five cases was it honoured with a notice more ^than a few lines long. ■ Strange as it may seem, Butler's best friends were the Roman Catholics. T/ie Weekly Register praised "Alps and Sanctuaries " almost unreservedly, and The Tablet became positively lyrical 5 I 6 Alps and Sanctuaries over it. The fact is that about this time Butler was dallying with visions of a 7'approche7nent between the Church of Rome and the "advanced wing of the Broad Church party," to which he always declared that he belonged. In the second edition of '* Evolution, Old and New," which was published in 1882, there is a remarkable chapter, entitled " Rome and Pantheism," in which Butler holds out an olive branch to the Vatican, and suggests that if Rome would make certain concessions with regard to the miraculous element of Christianity she might win the adherence of liberal-minded men, who are equally disgusted by the pretensions of scientists and the dissensions of Protestants. " Alps and Sanctuaries " contains nothing like a definite eireni- con, but it is pervaded by a genuine if somewhat vague sympathy for Roman institutions, which, emphasised as it is by some out- spoken criticism of Protestantism, will serve to explain the welcome that it received in Roman Catholic circles. Neverthe- less, one may venture to doubt whether Butler felt altogether at ease in the society of his new friends, and it was probably with rather mixed feelings that he read The Tablefs description of "Alps and Sanctuaries" as "a book that Wordsworth would have gloated over with delight." On the other hand, the compliment paid to his little discourse on the "wondrous efficacy of crosses and crossing," which the pious Tablet read in a devotional rather than a biological sense and characterised as " so very suggestive and moral that it might form part of a sermon," must have pleased him almost as much as The Rock's naif acceptance of " The Fair Haven " as a defence of Protestant orthodoxy. "Alps and Sanctuaries" is essentially a holiday book, and no one ever enjoyed a holiday more keenly than Butler. " When a man is in his office," he used to say, " he should be exact and precise, but his holiday is his garden, and too much precision here is a mistake." He acted up to his words, and in " Alps and Sanctuaries" we see him in his most unbuttoned mood, giving the rein to his high spirits and letting his fantastic humour carry him whither it would. Butler always spent his holidays in Italy, a country which he had known and loved from his earliest child- hood, and for which the passing years only increased his affection. Few Englishmen have ever studied her people, her landscape and her art with deeper sympathy and understanding, and she never received a sincerer tribute than the book which Butler dedicated to his "second country" as "a thank-offering for the happiness she has afforded me." Introduction 7 Butler used to declare that he wrote his books so that he might have something to read in his old age, knowing what he liked much better than any one else could do. But though he cared little for contemporary popularity, no man valued intelligent appreciation more highly. He recorded in his " Note-books " with evident delight the remark made by a lady after reading "Alps and Sanctuaries " : ** You seem to hear him speaking/' adding, " I don't think I ever heard a criticism of my books which pleased me better." The story of another unsolicited testimonial 1 must give in his own words : ''One day in the autumn of 1886 I walked up to Piora from Airolo, returning the same day. At Piora I met a very nice quiet man whose name I presently discovered, and who, I have since learned, is a well-known and most liberal employer of labour somewhere in the north of England. He told me that he had been induced to visit Piora by a book which had made a great impression upon him. He could not recollect its title, but it had made a great impression upon him; nor yet could he recollect the author's name, but the book had made a great impression upon him ; he could not remember even what else there was in the book ; the only thing he knew was that it had made a great impression upon him. '* This is a good example of what is called a residuary impres- sion. Whether or no I told him that the book which had made such a great impression upon him was called ' Alps and Sanc- tuaries/ and that it had been written by the person he was addressing, I cannot tell. It w^ould have been very like me to have blurted it all out and given him to understand how fortunate he had been in meeting me. This would be so fatally like me that the chances are ten to one that I did it ; but 1 have, thank Heaven, no recollection of sin in this respect, and have rather a strong impression that, for once in my life, I smiled to myself and said nothing." Butler always remembered with satisfaction that '* Alps and Sanctuaries " gained him the friendship of Dr. Mandell Creighton. In her biography of her husband, Mrs. Creighton mentions that the Bishop had been reading ** Alps and Sanctuaries," which charmed him so much that he determined to visit some of the places described therein. On his return to England, Dr. Creighton wrote to Butler, telling him how much " Alps and Sanctuaries " had added to the pleasure of his trip, and begged him to come to Peterborough and pay him a visit. The story is 8 Alps and Sanctuaries told in Butler's " Note-books/' but I cannot resist the temptation to repeat it : " The first time that Dr. Creighton asked me to come down to Peterborough, I was a Uttle doubtful whether to go or not. As usual, I consulted my good clerk Alfred, who said : " * Let me have a look at his letter, sir.' " I gave him the letter, and he said : " * I see, sir, there is a crumb of tobacco in it ; I think you may go.' *' I went, and enjoyed myself very much. I should like to add that there are few men who have ever impressed me so pro- foundly and so favourably as Dr. Creighton. I have often seen him since, both at Peterborough and at Fulham, and like and admire him most cordially." " Alps and Sanctuaries " was published a few months before the opening of the St. Gothard tunnel in 1882. That event naturally made many and great changes in the Val Leventina, and we who know the valley only as a thoroughfare for shrieking smoking expresses, can scarcely realise its ancient peace in the days of w^hich Butler wrote. But apart from the incursion of the railway, Butler's beloved valleys have changed but little since *'Alps and Sanctuaries" was written. A few more roads have been made, and a few more hotels have been built. Butler's prediction to the effect that the next great change in locomotion in the Ticinese valleys *^ would have something to do with electricity" — a prediction which in 1881 w^as by no means so obvious as a tw^entieth-century reader might suppose — has been strikingly fulfilled. Electric railways now run up the Val Blenio from Biasca to Acquarossa, half-way to Olivone; up the Val Mesocco from BeUinzona to Mesocco, and from Locarno up the Val Maggia to Bignasco. Ere long they will doubtless penetrate the higher recesses of the valleys. Many of the " nice people " mentioned in " Alps and Sanctuaries " have passed away. Signor Dazio no longer reigns in Fusio ; his hotel is in other hands, *' and from the sign is gone Sibylla's name." Signor Guglielmoni has long since fallen a victim to the rigours of the Alpine w^inter, which Butler so feelingly describes. At S. Michele, how^ever, there are still some monks who remember Butler and a copy of " Alps and Sanctuaries," given by him to the Sanctuary, is one of their most cherished possessions. The lapse of thirty years has left S. Michele unaltered^ so far as I could see a few years ago, save for the arm-chairs made out of clipped box-trees. These Introduction 9 have fallen grievously from their high estate as depicted on p. 103^ and are now deplorably thin and ragged. I think that Butler must at one time have intended to bring out a new edition of *'Alps and Sanctuaries" — the so-called second edition published in 1882 by Mr. David Bogue being merely a re-issue of the original sheets with a new title-page — since he took the trouble to compile an elaborate and highly characteristic index, the manuscript of which is bound up in a copy of the so-called second edition now in my possession. This idea he seems to have abandoned, and he did not revise the text of the book, beyond correcting two or three misprints. He continued, however, to accumulate material for a possible sequel, and at his death he left a large mass of rough notes recording impressions of many holiday expeditions to various parts of Italy, in particular to his favourite Lombard and Ticinese valleys. Mr. Festing Jones and I have examined these notes with great care, and from them Mr. Jones, who was, I need hardly say, Butler's constant com- panion both at home and abroad, and his collaborator in the original " Alps and Sanctuaries," has constructed one entirely new chapter, " Fusio Revisited," and made considerable additions to Chapter X. I have, in addition, borrowed two passages, relating respectively to Bellinzona (p. 198) and Varese (p. 257) from Butler's recently published " Note-books," and Mr. Jones has kindly allowed me to take the note on Medea Colleone and her passero solita7'io (p. 23) from his ** Diary of a Journey through North Italy and Sicily." I have revised the original text of the book, into which some trifling errors had crept, and have completed the index by adding references to the new matter. I have also ventured to consign to an appendix the original Chapter IX, " Re- forms instituted at S. Michele in the year 1478," which contains a summary of certain documents relating to the Sanctuary. These are valuable to scholars and students, but are not likely to interest the ordinary reader, and I am following the suggestion of a friend in transplanting the chapter bodily to the end of the book. The illustrations, all save six which the reader will easily distinguish, are printed from the original Dawson-Process blocks, which are interesting examples of early photo-engraving work. Mr. Fifield's determination to make the present edition handy and portable has unfortunately compelled him to abandon Mr. Charles Gogin's design for the original cover, which requires a larger volume than would in the present case be convenient. Readers who propose to carry the book from S. Ambrogio up to lo Alps and Sanctuaries the Sanctuary of S. Michele will, I am sure, acquiesce in the sacrifice. My last words must be an expression of cordial thanks to Mr. Festing Jones, whose help and counsel have been invaluable to me in preparing the book for republication. May, 191 3. R. A. Streatfeild. Author's Preface to First Edition I SHOULD perhaps apologise for publishing a work which professes to deal with the sanctuaries of Piedmont, and saying so little about the most important of them all — the Sacro Monte of Varallo. My excuse must be, that I found it impossible to deal with Varallo without making my book too long. Varallo requires a work to itself; I must, therefore, hope to return to it on another occasion. For the convenience of avoiding explanations, I have treated the events of several summers as though they belonged to only one. This can be of no importance to the reader, but as the work is chronologically inexact, I had better perhaps say so. The illustrations by Mr. H. F. Jones are on pages 95, 211, 225, 238, 254, 260. The frontispiece and the illustrations on the title- page and on pages 261, 262 are by Mr. Charles Gogin. There are two drawings on pages 136, 137 by an Italian gentleman whose name I have unfortunately lost, and whose permission to insert them I have, therefore, been unable to obtain, and one on page 138 by Signor Gaetano Meo. The rest are mine, except that all the figures in my drawings are in every case by Mr. Charles Gogin, unless when they are merely copied from frescoes or other sources. ^ The two larger views of Oropa are chiefly taken from photographs. The rest are all of them from studies taken upon the spot. I must acknowledge the great obligations I am under to Mr. H. F. Jones as regards the letterpress no less than the illustrations ; I might almost say that the book is nearly as much his as mine, while it is only through the care which he and another friend have exercised in the revision of my pages that I am able to let them appear with some approach to confidence. November^ 1 88 1. II Table of Contents Introduction, by R. A. Streatfeild Author's Preface to First Edition List of Illustrations CHAPTER I. Introduction II. Faido ..... III. Primadengo, Calpiognia, Dalpe, Cornone, and Prato . . . • • • 33 IV. Rossura, Calonico . . ... 49 V. Calonico {continued) and Giornico . • • 59 VI. PlORA . . . . . . 'Jl VII. S. Michele and the Monte Pirchiriano . . 86 VIII. S. Michele (continued) . . . . 92 IX. The North Italian Priesthood . . . 106 X. S. Ambrogio and Neighbourhood . . .113 XI. Lanzo . . . ... 131 XII. Considerations on the Decline of Italian Art 141 XIII. VlU, FUCINE, AND S. IGNAZIO XIV. Sanctuary of Oropa XV. Oropa {continued) . . . . XVI. Graglia ..... XVII. SOAZZA AND THE VaLLEY OF MeSOCCO XVIII. Mesocco, S. Bernardino, and S. Maria in Calanca . . . . XIX. The Mendrisiotto . . . . 13 PAGE 5 II 15 17 22 160 169 175 188 198 207 228 4 Alps and Sanctuaries CHAPTER PAG^ XX. Sanctuary on Monte Bisbino 237 XXI. A Day at the Cantine . 243 XXII. Sacro Monte, Varese 249 XXIII. Angera and Arona . 258 XXIV. Locarno ..... 268 XXV. Fusio . . . . . 277 XXVI. Fusio Revisited . . . . . 287 Appendix A. Wednesbury Cocking . 305 Appendix B. Reforms instituted at S. Michelf IN the year 1478 . ... 309 Author's Index .... 326 List of Illustrations Mortuary Chapel at Soazza (Etching) Sta. Maria della Neve Prato from near Dazio TiciNESE Barley-stacks Campo Santo at Calpiognia Primadengo Dalpe Prato, and Valley of St. Gothard Prato Church Porch, No. i Prato Church Porch, No. 2 RossuRA Church RossuRA Church Porch RossuRA Church Porch in 1879 Tengia, No. I . Tengia, No. 2 . . . Calonico Church, No. i Calonico Church, No. 2 Main Doorway, S. Nicolao Interior of Old Church, Giornico Chapel of S. Carlo, Piora S. MiCHELE from near Bussoleno S. Michele S. Michele from S. Pietro S. Michele, near view S. Michele, from Path to Avigliana Main Entrance to the Sanctuary Steps Leading to the Church, No. i Steps Leading to the Church, No. 2 Garden at the Sanctuary of S. Michele Inn at S. Ambrogio S. GiORio — Comba di Susa Casina di Banda Votive Picture Medi/eval Tower at Lanzo Piazza at Lanzo 15 Frontispiece Title-page PAGE 26 29 30 35 37 43 45 48 49 50 53 56 57 64 65 73 74 81 86 86 93 95 95 96 98 100 103 113 115 119 121 132 133 i6 Alps and Sanctuaries Study by an Italian Amateur, No. i Study by an Italian Amateur, No. 2 Study by a Self-taught Italian Paradiso ! Paradiso ! By an Italian Schoolboy AvoGADRo's View of S. Michele Funeral of Tom Moody S. Ignazio, near Lanzo Fresco near Ceres ViiJ Church FuciNE, near Viu FAgADE OF THE SANCTUARY OF OROPA Inner Court of Sanctuary of Oropa Chapels at Oropa Chapel of S. Carlo at Graglia Sanctuary of Graglia SoAZZA Church Castle of Mesocco S. Cristoforo Fresco at Mesocco— March Fresco at Mesocco — April Fresco at Mesocco — May Fresco at Mesocco — August Approach to Sta. Maria Sta. Maria, Approach to Church Front View of Sta. Maria Top of Monte Bisbino Veduta DEL Monte Bisbino Table on Monte Bisbino Chapel of S. Nicolao Sommazzo Sacro Monte of Varese Sacro Monte of Varese, nearer view Terrace at the Sacro Monte, Varese Sacro Monte from above Castle of Angera Castle of Angera, from S. Quirico Terrace at Castle of Angera, No. i Terrace at Castle of Angera, No. 2 Room in which S. Carlo Borromeo was Sacro Monte, Locarno, No. i . Sacro Monte, Locarno, No. 2 . Cloister at Sacro Monte, Locarno Fusio from the Cemetery Street View in Fusio Born Alps and Sanctuaries Chapter I Introduction MOST men will readily admit that the two poets who have the greatest hold over Englishmen are Handel and Shakespeare — for it is as a poet, a sympathiser with and renderer of all estates and conditions whether of men or things, rather than as a mere musician, that Handel reigns supreme. There have been many who have known as much English as Shakespeare, and so, doubtless, there have been no fewer who have known as much music as Handel : perhaps Bach, probably Haydn, certainly Mozart ; as likely as not, many a known and unknown musician now living ; but the poet is not known by knowledge alone — not by gnosis only — but also, and in greater part, by the agape which makes him wish to steal men's hearts, and prompts him so to apply his knowledge that he shall succeed. There has been no one to touch Handel as an observer of all that was observable, a lover of all that was loveable, a hater of all that was hateable, and, therefore, as a poet. Shakespeare loved not wisely but too well. Handel loved as well as Shakespeare, but more wisely. He is as much above Shakespeare as Shakespeare is above all others, B 17 1 8 Alps and Sanctuaries 1 lonedp except Handel himself ; he is no less lofty, impassionec tender, and full alike of fire and love of play ; he is no less universal in the range of his sympathies, no less a master of expression and illustration than STiakespeare, and at the same time he is of robuster, stronger fibre, more easy, less introspective. Englishmen are of so mixed a race, so inventive, and so given to migration, that for many generations to come they are bound to be at times puzzled, and therefore introspective ; if they get their freedom at all they get it as Shakespeare ''with a great sum,'' whereas Handel was '' free born/' Shake- speare sometimes errs and grievously, he is as one of his own best men *' moulded out of faults," who '' for the most become much more the better, for being a little bad ; " Handel, if he puts forth his strength at all, is unerring : he gains the maximum of effect with the minimum of effort. As Mozart said of him, '' he beats us all in effect, when he chooses he strikes like a thunder- bolt." Shakespeare's strength is perfected in weakness; Handel is the serenity and unself-consciousness of health itself. '' There," said Beethoven on his deathbed, pointing to the works of Handel, '' there — is truth." These, however, are details, the main point that will be admitted is that the average Englishman is more attracted by Handel and Shakespeare than by any other two men who have been long enough dead for us to have formed a fairly permanent verdict concerning them. We not only believe them to have been the best men familiarly known here in England, but we see foreign nations join us for the most part in assigning to them the highest place as renderers of emotion. It is always a pleasure to me to reflect that the coun- tries dearest to these two master spirits are those which are also dearest to myself, I mean England and Italy. Introduction 19 Both of them hved mainly here in London, but both of them turned mainly to Italy when realising their dreams. Handel's music is the embodiment of all the best Italian music of his time and before him, assimilated and repro- duced with the enlargements and additions suggested by his own genius. He studied in Italy ; his subjects for many years were almost exclusively from Italian sources ; the very language of his thoughts was Italian, and to the end of his life he would have composed nothing but Italian operas, if the English public would have supported him. His spirit flew to Italy, but his home was London. So also Shakespeare turned to Italy more than to any other country for his subjects. Roughly, he wrote nineteen Italian, or what to him were virtually Italian plays, to twelve English, one Scotch, one Danish, three French, and two early British. But who does not turn to Italy who has the chance of doing so ? What, indeed, do we not owe to that most lovely and loveable country ? Take up a Bank of England note and the Italian language will be found still lingering upon it. It is signed '' for Bank of England and Comp^.'' [Compagnia), not '' Comp^.'' Our laws are Roman in their origin. Our music, as we have seen, and our painting comes from Italy. Our very religion till a few hundred years ago found its headquarters, not in London nor in Canterbury, but in Rome. What, in fact, is there which has not filtered through Italy, even though it arose else- where ? On the other hand, there are infinite attractions in London. I have seen many foreign cities, but I know none so commodious, or, let me add, so beautiful. I know of nothing in any foreign city equal to the view down Fleet Street, walking along the north side from the corner of Fetter Lane. It is often said that this has been spoiled by the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway 2 Alps and Sanctuaries bridge over Ludgate Hill ; I think, however, the effect is more imposing now than it was before the bridge was built. Time has already softened it ; it does not obtrude itself ; it adds greatly to the sense of size, and makes us doubly aware of the movement of life, the colossal circula- tion to which London owes so much of its impressiveness. We gain more by this than we lose by the infraction of some pedant's canon about the artistically correct inter- section of right lines. Vast as is the world below the bridge, there is a vaster still on high, and when trains are passing, the steam from the engine will throw the dome of St. Paul's into the clouds, and make it seem as though there were a commingling of earth and some far-off mysterious palace in dreamland. I am not very fond of Milton, but I admit that he does at times put me in mind of Fleet Street. While on the subject of Fleet Street, I would put in a word in favour of the much-abused griffin. The whole monument is one of the handsomest in London. As for its being an obstruction, I have discoursed with a large number of omnibus conductors on the subject, and am satisfied that the obstruction is imaginary. When, again, I think of Waterloo Bridge, and the huge wide-opened jaws of those two Behemoths, the Cannon Street and Charing Cross railway stations, I am not sure that the prospect here is not even finer than in Fleet Street. See how they belch forth puffing trains as the breath of their nostrils, gorging and disgorging incessantly those human atoms whose movement is the life of the city. How like it all is to some great bodily mechanism of which the people are the blood. And then, above all, see the ineffable St. Paul's. I was once on Waterloo Bridge after a heavy thunderstorm in summer. A thick darkness was upon the river and the Introduction 2 1 buildings upon the north side, but just below I could see the water hurrying onward as in an abyss, dark, gloomy, and mysterious. On a level with the eye there was an absolute blank, but above, the sky was clear, and out of the gloom the dome and towers of St. Paul's rose up sharply, looking higher than they actually were, and as though they rested upon space. Then as for the neighbourhood within, we will say, a radius of thirty miles. It is one of the main businesses of my life to explore this district. I have walked several thousands of miles in doing so, and I mark where I have been in red upon the Ordnance map, so that I may see at a glance what parts I know least well, and direct my attention to them as soon as possible. For ten months in the year I continue my walks in the home counties, every week adding some new village or farmhouse to my list of things worth seeing ; and no matter where else I may have been, I find a charm in the villages of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, which in its way I know not where to rival. I have ventured to say the above, because during the remainder of my book I shall be occupied almost exclu- sively with Italy, and wish to make it clear that my Italian rambles are taken not because I prefer Italy to England, but as by way of parergon, or by-work, as every man should have both his profession and his hobby. I have chosen Italy as my second country, and would dedicate this book to her as a thank-offering for the happiness she has afforded me. Chapter II Faido FOR some years past I have paid a visit of greater or less length to Faido in the Canton Ticino, which though politically Swiss is as much Italian in character as any part of Italy. I was attracted to this place, in the first instance, chiefly because it is one of the easiest places on the Italian side of the Alps to reach from England. This merit it will soon possess in a still greater degree, for when the St. Gothard tunnel is open, it will be possible to leave London, we will say, on a Monday morn- ing and be at Faido by six or seven o'clock the next evening, just as one can now do with S. Ambrogio on the line between Susa and Turin, of which more hereafter. True, by making use of the tunnel one will miss the St. Gothard scenery, but I would not, if I were the reader, lay this too much to heart. Mountain scenery, when one is staying right in the middle of it, or when one is on foot, is one thing, and mountain scenery as seen from the top of a diligence very likely smothered in dust is another. Besides I do not think he will like the St. Gothard £:3nery very much. It is a pity there is no mental microscope to show us our likes and dislikes while they are yet too vague to be made out easily. We are so apt to let imaginary likings run away with us, as a person at the far end of Cannon Street railway platform, if he expects a friend to join him, 22 I Faido 23 will see that friend in half the impossible people who are coming through the wicket. I once began an essay on " The Art of Knowing what gives one Pleasure/' but soon found myself out of the diatonic with it, in all manner of strange keys, amid a maze of metaphysical accidentals and double and treble flats, so I left it alone as a question not worth the trouble it seemed likely to take in answering. It is like everything else, if we much want to know our own mind on any particular point, we may be trusted to develop the faculty which will reveal it to us, and if we do not greatly care about know- ing, it does not much matter if we remain in ignorance. But in few cases can we get at our permanent liking without at least as much experience as a fishmonger must have had before he can choose at once the best bloater out of twenty which, to inexperienced eyes, seem one as good as the other. Lord Beaconsfield was a thor- ough Erasmus Darwinian when he said so well in '' Endy- mion " : " There is nothing like will ; everybody can do exactly what they like in this world, provided they really like it. Sometimes they think they do, but in general it's a mistake."* If this is as true as I believe it to be, '' the longing after immortality,'' though not indeed much of an argument in favour of our being immortal at the present moment, is perfectly sound as a reason for con- cluding that we shall one day develop immortality, if our desire is deep enough and lasting enough. As for knowing whether or not one likes a picture, which under the present aesthetic reign of terror is de rigueur, I once heard a man say the only test was to ask one's self whether one would care to look at it if one was quite sure that one was alone ; I have never been able to get beyond this test with the St. Gothard scenery, and applying it to the Devil's Bridge, * Vol, iii. p. 300, 24 Alps and Sanctuaries bel I should say a stay of about thirty seconds would be enough for me. I daresay Mendelssohn would have stayed at least two hours at the Devil's Bridge, but then he did stay such a long while before things. The coming out from the short tunnel on to the plain of Andermatt does certainly give the pleasure of a surprise. I shall never forget coming out of this tunnel one day late in November, and finding the whole Andermatt valley in brilliant sunshine, though from Fliielen up to the Devil's Bridge the clouds had hung heavy and low. It was one of the most striking transformation scenes imaginable. The top of the pass is good, and the Hotel Prosa a com- fortable inn to stay at. I do not know whether this house will be discontinued when the railway is opened, but understand that the proprietor has taken the large hotel at Piora, which I will speak of later on. The descent on the Italian side is impressive, and so is the point where sight is first caught of the valley below Airolo, but on the whole I cannot see that the St. Gothard is better than the S. Bernardino on the Italian side, or the Lukmanier, near the top, on the German ; this last is one of the most beautiful things imaginable, but it should be seen by one who is travelling towards German Switzerland, and in a fine summer's evening light. I was never more impressed by the St. Gothard than on the occasion already referred to when I crossed it in winter. We went in sledges from Hospenthal to Airolo, and I remember thinking what splendid fellows the postillions and guards and men who helped to shift the luggage on to the sledges, looked ; they were so ruddy and strong and full of health, as indeed they might well be — living an active outdoor life in such an air ; besides, they were picked men, for the passage in winter is never without possible dangers. It was delightful travelling in the sledge. The sky was of Faido 2 5 a deep blue ; there was not a single cloud either in sky or on mountain, but the snow was already deep, and had covered everything beneath its smooth and heaving bosom. There was no breath of air, but the cold was in- tense ; presently the sun set upon all except the higher peaks, and the broad shadows stole upwards. Then there was a rich crimson flush upon the mountain tops, and after this a pallor cold and ghastly as death. If he is fortunate in his day, I do not think any one will be sorry to have crossed the St. Gothard in mid- winter ; but one pass will do as well as another. Airolo, at the foot of the pass on the Italian side, was, till lately, a quiet and beautiful village, rising from among great green slopes, which in early summer are covered with innumerable flowers. The place, however, is now quite changed. The railway has turned the whole Val Leventina topsy-turvy, and altered it almost beyond recognition. When the line is finished and the workmen have gone elsewhere, things will get right again ; but just now there is an explosiveness about the valley which puzzles one who has been familiar with its former quietness. Airolo has been especially revolutionised, being the headquarters for the works upon the Italian side of the great St. Gothard tunnel, as Goschenen is for those on the German side ; besides this, it was burnt down two or three years ago, hardly one of the houses being left standing, so that it is now a new town, and has lost its former picturesqueness, but it will be not a bad place to stay at as soon as the bustle of the works has subsided, and there is a good hotel — the Hotel Airolo. It lies nearly 4000 feet above the sea, so that even in summer the air is cool. There are plenty of delightful walks — to Piora, for example, up the Val Canaria, and to Bedretto. 26 Alps and Sanctuaries After leaving Airolo the road descends rapidly for a few hundred feet and then more slowly for four or five kilo- metres to Piotta. Here the first signs of the Italian spirit appear in the wood carving of some of the houses. It is with these houses that I always consider myself as in Italy again. Then come Ronco on the mountain side to the left, and Quinto ; all the way the pastures are thickly covered with cowslips, even finer than those that grow on Salisbury Plain. A few kilometres farther on and sight is caught of a beautiful green hill with a few natural terraces IgpTr^;^^ PRATO FROM NEAR DAZIO upon it and a flat top — rising from amid pastures, and backed by higher hills as green as itself. On the top of this hill there stands a white church with an elegant Lombard campanile — the campanile left unwhitewashed. The whole forms a lovely little bit of landscape such as some old Venetian painter might have chosen as a background for a Madonna. This place is called Prato. After it is passed the road enters at once upon the Monte Piottino gorge, which is better than the Devil's Bridge, but not so much to my taste as the auriculas and rhododendrons which grow upon the rocks that flank it. The peep, however, at the Faido 2 7 hamlet of Vigera, caught through the opening of the gorge, is very nice. Soon after crossing the second of the Monte Piottino bridges the first chestnuts are reached, or rather were so till a year ago, when they were all cut down to make room for some construction in connection with the railway. A couple of kilometres farther on and mulberries and occasional fig-trees begin to appear. On this we find ourselves at Faido, the first place upon the Italian side which can be called a town, but which after all is hardly more than a village. Faido is a picturesque old place. It has several houses dated the middle of the sixteenth century ; and there is one, formerly a convent, close to the Hotel delF Angelo, which must be still older. There is a brewery where excellent beer is made, as good as that of Chiavenna — and a monastery where a few monks still continue to reside. The town is 2365 feet above the sea, and is never too hot even in the height of summer. The Angelo is the principal hotel of the town, and will be found thoroughly comfortable and in all respects a desirable place to stay at. I have stayed there so often, and consider the whole family of its proprietor so much among the number of my friends, that I have no hesitation in cordially recommend- ing the house. Other attractions I do not know that the actual town possesses, but the neighbourhood is rich. Years ago, in travelling by the St. Got hard road, I had noticed the many little villages perched high up on the sides of the mountain, from one to two thousand feet above the river, and had wondered what sort of places they would be. I resolved, therefore, after a time to make a stay at Faido and go up to all of them. I carried out my intention, and there is not a village nor fraction of a village in the Val Leventina from Airolo to Biasca which I have not 2 8 Alps and Sanctuaries inspected. I never tire of them, and the only regret I feel concerning them is, that the greater number are in- accessible except on foot, so that I do not see how I shall be able to reach them if I live to be old. These are the places of which I do find myself continually thinking when I am away from them. I may add that the Val Leventina is much the same as every other subalpine valley on the Italian side of the Alps that I have yet seen. I had no particular aversion to German Switzerland before I knew the Italian side of the Alps. On the con- trary, I was under the impression that I liked German Switzerland almost as much as I liked Italy itself, but now I can look at German Switzerland no longer. As soon as I see the water going down Rhinewards I hurry back to London. I was unwillingly compelled to take pleasure in the first hour and a half of the descent from the top of the Lukmanier towards Disentis, but this is only a lipping over of the brimfulness of Italy on to the Swiss side. The first place I tried from Faido was Mairengo — where there is the oldest church in the valley — a church older even than the church of St. Nicolao of Giornico. There is little of the original structure, but the rare peculiarity remains that there are two high altars side by side. There is a fine half-covered timber porch to the church. These porches are rare, the only others like it I know of being at Prato, Rossura, and to some extent Cornone. In each of these cases the arrangement is different, the only agreement being in the having an outer sheltered place, from which the church is entered instead of opening directly on to the churchyard. Mairengo is full of good bits, and nestles among magnificent chestnut-trees. From hence I went to Osco, about 3800 feet above the sea, and 1430 above Faido. It was here I first came to Faido 29 understand the purpose of certain high poles with cross bars to them which I had already seen elsewhere. They are for drying the barley on ; as soon as it is cut it is hung up on the cross bars and secured in this way from the rain, but it is obvious this can only be done when cultivation is on a small scale. These rascane, as they are called, are a feature of the Val Leventina, and look very well when they are full of barley. *-. ^\b^*^s;^ I. Jl, .'.•)• •'./.: ^; fj^^ ^ x/T o^-i - '* • . '• ;-. •; ' ' • ' ■/■' . ■ .'.V; '": y ■■;}.• ' ^ ; ';>"'. '^e<^4i^,il A^"^"^^ TICINESE BARLEY-STACKS From Osco I tried to coast along to Calpiognia, but was warned that the path was dangerous, and found it to be so. I therefore again descended to Mairengo, and re- ascended by a path which went straight up behind the village. After a time I got up to the level of Calpiognia, or nearly so, and found a path through pine woods which led me across a torrent in a ravine to Calpiognia itself. This path is very beautiful. While on it I caught sight of a lovely village nestling on a plateau that now showed itself high up on the other side the valley of the Ticino, 30 Alps and Sanctuaries perhaps a couple of miles off as the crow flies. This found upon inquiry to be Dalpe ; above Dalpe rose pine woods and pastures ; then the loftier alpi, then rugged precipices, and above all the Dalpe glacier roseate with sunset. I was enchanted, and it was only because night was coming on, and I had a long way to descend before getting back to Faido, that I could get myself away. I 1 CAMPO SANTO AT CALPIOGNIA passed through Calpiognia, and though the dusk was deepening, I could not forbear from pausing at the Campo Santo just outside the village. I give a sketch taken by daylight, but neither sketch nor words can give any idea of the pathos of the place. When I saw it first it was in the month of June, and the rank dandelions were in seed. Wild roses in full bloom, great daisies. Faibo 31 and the never-failing salvia ran riot among the graves. Looking over the churchyard itself there were the purple mountains of Biasca and the valley of the Ticino some couple of thousand feet below. There was no sound save the subdued but ceaseless roar of the Ticino, and the Piumogna. Involuntarily I found the following passage from the '* Messiah '' sounding in my ears, and felt as though Handel, who in his travels as a young man doubt- less saw such places, might have had one of them in his mind when he wrote the divine music which he has wedded to the words '' of them that sleep."* -fci|%3;=Z^^= ^ -^=rd==| 1 '■* '-' I ,' I J I J ^^ -&- III It! I know that my Redeemer liveth." — " Messiah." 32 Alps and Sanctuaries Or again : * -m t^j^^k MI ' ~ 1 # m -^wnr- Adagio. sss 4^ ;] r =£^ :»iB3-t: I tr i ^ « ; — —I 1 — 9. m— j.— I— M- m^. " ^r y'-p' ^"^^^^ ?- etc. ■^J J I fi f ^ iL^^-. From Calpiognia I came down to Primadengo, and thence to Faido. Suites de Pieces, set i., prelude to No. 8. Chapter III Primadengo, Calpiognia, Dalpe^ Cornone, and Prato NEXT morning I thought I would go up to Calpiognia again. It was Sunday. When I got up to Prima- dengo I saw no one, and heard nothing, save always the sound of distant waterfalls ; all was spacious and full of what Mr. Ruskin has called a '' great peacefulness of light.'' The village was so quiet that it seemed as though it were deserted ; after a minute or so, however, I heard a cherry fall, and looking up, saw the trees were full of people. There they were, crawling and lolling about on the boughs like caterpillars, and gorging themselves with cherries. They spoke not a word either to me or to one another. They were too happy and goodly to make a noise ; but they lay about on the large branches, and ate and sighed for content and ate till they could eat no longer. Lotus eating was a rough nerve- jarring business in comparison. They were like saints and evangelists by Filippo Lippi. Again the rendering of Handel came into my mind, and I thought of how the goodly fellowship of prophets praised God.* * Dettingen Te Deum. c 3^ 34 Alps and Sanctuaries M Andante^ non presto, J \ ~e> €f- 'WHT -1-^' -pi rr-fTfr " — -3e ^f-^ =p:i:i«- K^^^ i*B; * "-T^t atiTP-"; /" -^4 1^— .j"^ l.'-^i :-i -^=^0- rMz3^. lEESS •*^ I I I f^i r»=:j: j—i-n: :::i=d-; @l^ ^1* -I ^-f ^F^ • ^ ». 3: -* — I fvU : — • — — • ^JLm-^—. « z^* -J ^1 I r 1 El! •^ w Z).C. ^^p- H-^ k -^4- ■g-Ttf- ! utr -4-1—4- And how again in some such another quiet ecstasy the muses sing about Jove's altar in the '' Allegro and Penseroso/' Calpiognia 35 Here is a sketch of Primadengo Church — looking over it on to the other side the Ticino, but I could not get the cherry-trees nor cherry-eaters.* On leaving Primadengo I went on to Calpiognia, and there too I found the children's faces all purple with cherry juice ; thence I ascended till I got to a monte, or collection of chalets, about 5680 feet above the sea. It was deserted PRIMADENGO at this season. I mounted farther and reached an alpe, where a man and a boy were tending a mob of calves. Going still higher, I at last came upon a small lake close to the top of the range : I find this lake given in the map as about 7400 feet above the sea. Here, being more than 5000 feet above Faido, I stopped and dined. I have spoken of a monte and of an alpe. An alpe, or alp, IS not, as so many people in England think, a snowy 36 Alps and Sanctuaries mountain. Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau, for example, are not alps. They are mountains with alps upon them. An alpe is a tract of the highest summer pasturage just below the snow-line, and only capable of being grazed for two or three months in every year. It is held as common land by one or more villages in the immediate neighbourhood, and sometimes by a single individual to whom the village has sold it. A few men and boys attend the whole herd, whether of cattle or goats, and make the cheese, which is apportioned out among the owners of the cattle later on. The pigs go up to be fattened on whey. The cheese is not commonly made at the alpe, but as soon as the curd has been pressed clear of whey, it is sent down on men's backs to the village to be made into cheese. Sometimes there will be a little hay grown on an alpe, as at Gribbio and in Piora ; in this case there will be some chalets built, which will be inhabited for a few weeks and left empty the rest of the year. The monte is the pasture land immediately above the highest enclosed meadows and below the alpe. The cattle are kept here in spring and autumn before and after their visit to the alpe. The monte has many houses, dairies, and cowhouses, — being almost the paese, or village, in miniature. It will always have its chapel, and is inhabited by so considerable a number of the villagers, for so long a time both in spring and autumn, that they find it worth while to make themselves more comfortable than is necessary for the few who make the short summer visit to the alpe. Every inch of the ascent was good, but the descent was even better on account of the views of the Dalpe glacier on the other side the Ticino, towards which Dalp( 37 one's back is turned as one ascends. All day long the villages of Dalpe and Cornone had been tempting me, so I resolved to take them next day. This I did, crossing the Ticino and following a broad well-beaten path which ascends the mountains in a southerly direction. I found the rare English fern Woodsia hyperborea growing in great M ^v0j|# -m ;,,.■■■,..'■■■■)• ^^/. '-.fJ^ ^r;V....J-'../ ■■.■> .^v r*- ■■V.I. ,^/, ■■.<•"■-: •' ■■-'•■ V.'-... s<> .>^tA<,. .. ■.■.C^:^^^-.^..:-..: ..V*^..-. ... V . -^j- - ■ 1 luxuriance on the rocks between the path and the river. I saw some fronds fully six inches in length. I also found one specimen of Asplenium alternifolium, which, however, is abundant on the other side the valley, on the walls that flank the path between Primadengo and Calpiognia, and elsewhere. Woodsia also grows on the roadside walls near Airolo, but not so fine as at Faido. I have often looked for it in other subalpine valleys of North Italy and the Canton Ticino, but have never happened to light upon it. 38 Alps and Sanctuaries About three or four hundred feet above the river, under some pines, I saw a string of ants crossing and re- crossing the road ; I have since seen these ants every year in the same place. In one part I almost think the stone is a little worn with the daily passage and repassage of so many thousands of tiny feet, but for the most part it certainly is not. Half-an-hour or so after crossing the string of ants, one passes from under the pine-trees into a grassy meadow, which in spring is decked with all manner of Alpine flowers ; after crossing this, the old St. Got hard road is reached, which passed by Prato and Dalpe, so as to avoid the gorge of the Monte Piottino. This road is of very great antiquity, and has been long disused, except for local purposes ; for even before the carriage road over the St. Gothard was finished in 1827, there was a horse track through the Monte Piottino. In another twenty minutes or so, on coming out from a wood of willows and alders, Dalpe is seen close at hand after a walk of from an hour-and-a-half to two hours from Faido. Dalpe is rather more than 1500 feet above Faido, and is therefore nearly 4000 feet above the sea. It is reckoned a hel paese, inasmuch as it has a little tolerably level pasture and tillable land near it, and a fine alpe. This is how the wealth of a village is reckoned. The Italians set great store by a little bit of bella pianura, or level ground ; to them it is as precious as a hill or rock is to a Londoner out for a holiday. The peasantry are as blind to the beauties of rough unmanageable land as Peter Bell was to those of the primrose with a yellow brim (I quote from memory). The people complain of the climate of Dalpe, the snow not going off before the end of March or beginning of April. No climate, they say, should be colder than that of Faido ; barley, however, and Dalpe 39 potatoes do very well at Dalpe, and nothing can exceed the hay crops. A good deal of the hay is sent down to Faido on men's backs or rather on their heads, for the road is impracticable even for sledges. It is astonishing what a weight the men will bear upon their heads, and the rate at which they will come down while loaded. An average load is four hundredweight. The man is hardly visible beneath his burden, which looks like a good big part of an ordinary English haystack. With this weight on his head he will go down rough places almost at a run and never miss his footing. The men generally carry the hay down in threes and fours together for company. They look distressed, as well they may : every muscle is strained, and it is easy to see that their powers are being taxed to their utmost limit ; it is better not even to say good-day to them when they are thus loaded ; they have enough to attend to just then ; nevertheless, as soon as they have deposited their load at Faido they will go up to Dalpe again or Calpiognia, or wherever it may be, for another, and bring it down without resting. Two such journeys are reckoned enough for one day. This is how the people get their corpo di legno e gamha di ferro — '' their bodies of wood and legs of iron/' But I think they rather overdo it. Talking of legs, as I went through the main street of Dalpe an old lady of about sixty-five stopped me, and told me that while gathering her winter store of firewood she had had the misfortune to hurt her leg. I was very sorry, but I failed to satisfy her ; the more I sympathised in general terms, the more I felt that something further was expected of me. I went on trying to do the civil thing, when the old lady cut me short by saying it would be much better if I were to see the leg at once ; so she showed it me in the street, and there, sure enough, close 40 Alps and Sanctuaries to the groin there was a sweUing. Again I said how sorry I was, and added that perhaps she ought to show it to a medical man. '' But aren't you a medical man ? '' said she in an alarmed manner. '* Certainly not/' replied I. '' Then why did you let me show you my leg ? " said she indignantly, and pulling her clothes down, the poor old woman began to hobble off; presently two others joined her, and I heard hearty peals of laughter as she recounted her story. A stranger visiting these out-of-the-way villages is almost certain to be mistaken for a doctor. What business, they say to themselves, can any one else have there, and who in his senses would dream of visiting them for pleasure ? This old lady had rushed to the usual conclusion, and had been trying to get a little advice gratis. Above Dalpe there is a path through the upper valley of the Piumogna, which leads to the glacier whence the river comes. The highest peak above this upper valley just turns the 10,000 feet, but I was never able to find out that it has a name, nor is there a name marked in the Ordnance map of the Canton Ticino. The valley promises well, but I have not been to its head, where at about 7400 feet there is a small lake. Great quantities of crystals are found in the mountains above Dalpe. Some people make a living by collecting these from the higher parts of the ranges where none but born mountaineers and chamois can venture ; many, again, emigrate to Paris, London, America, or elsewhere, and return either for a month or two, or sometimes for a permanency, having become rich. In Cornone there is one large white new house belonging to a man who has made his fortune near Como, and in all these villages there are similar houses. From the Val Leventina and the Val Blenio, but more especially from this last, very large numbers come to London, while Prato 4 1 hardly fewer go to America. Signor Gatti, the great ice merchant, came from the Val Blenio. . I once found the words, *' Tommy, make room for your uncle/' on a chapel outside the walls of one very quiet little upland hamlet. The writing was in a child's scrawl, and in like fashion with all else that was written on the same wall. I should have been much surprised, if I had not already found out how many families return to these parts with children to whom English is the native language. Many as are the villages in the Canton Ticino in which I have sat sketching for hours together, I have rarely done so without being accosted sooner or later by some one who could speak English, either with an American accent or without it. It is curious at some out-of-the-way place high up among the mountains, to see a lot of children at play, and to hear one of them shout out, " Marietta, if you do that again, 111 go and tell mother.'' One English word has become universally adopted by the Ticinesi themselves. They say '' waitee " just as we should say " wait," to stop some one from going away. It is abhorrent to them to end a word with a consonant, so they have added '' ee," but there can be no doubt about the origin of the word.* When we bear in mind the tendency of any language, if it once attains a certain predominance, to supplant * In the index that Butler prepared in view of a possible second edition of Alps and Sanctuaries occurs the following entry under the heading " Waitee " : " All wrong ; ' waitee ' is * ohe, ti.' " He was subsequently compelled to abandon this eminently plausible ety- mology, for his friend the Avvocato Negri of Casale - Monferrato told him that the mysterious " waitee " is actually a word in the Ticinese dialect, and, if it were written, would appear as " vuaitee." It means " stop " or " look here," and is used to attract attention. Butler used to couple this little mistake of his with another that he made in The Authoress of the Odyssey, when he said, " Scheria means Jutland — a piece of land jutting out into the sea." Jutland, on the contrary, means the land of the Jutes, and has no more to do with jutting than " waitee " has to do with waiting. — R. A. S. 42 Alps and Sanctuaries all others, and when we look at the map of the world and see the extent now in the hands of the two English- speaking nations, I think it may be prophesied that the language in which this book is written will one day be almost as familiar to the greater number of Ticinesi as their own. I may mention one other expression which, though not derived from English, has a curious analogy to an English usage. When the beautiful children with names like Handers operas come round one while one is sketch- ing, some one of them will assuredly before long be heard to whisper the words " Tira giu," or as children say when they come round one in England, ''He is drawing it down/' The fundamental idea is, of course, that the draughtsman drags the object which he is drawing away from its position, and '' transfers " it, as we say by the same metaphor, to his paper, as St. Cecilia '' drew an angel down '' in '' Alexander's Feast." A good walk from Dalpe is to the Alpe di Campolungo and Fusio, but it is better taken from Fusio. A very favourite path with me is the one leading conjointly from Cornone and Dalpe to Prato. The view up the valley of the St. Gothard looking down on Prato is fine ; I give a sketch of it taken five years ago before the railway had been begun. The little objects looking like sentry boxes that go all round the church contain rough modern frescoes, repre- senting, if I remember rightly, the events attendant upon the Crucifixion. These are on a small scale what the chapels on the sacred mountain of Varallo are on a large one. Small single oratories are scattered about all over the Canton Ticino, and indeed everywhere in North Italy by the roadside, at all halting-places, and especially at the crest of any more marked ascent, where the tired wayfarer, Prato 43 probably heavy laden, might be inclined to say a naughty word or two if not checked. The people like them, and miss them when they come to England. They sometimes do what the lower animals do in confinement when pre- cluded from habits they are accustomed to, and put up with strange makeshifts by way of substitute. I once saw a poor Ticinese woman kneeling in prayer before a PRATO, AND VALLEY OF ST. GOTHARD dentist's show-case in the Hampstead Road ; she doubt- less mistook the teeth for the relics of some saint. I am afraid she was a little like a hen sitting upon a chalk egg, but she seemed quite contented. Which of us, indeed, does not sit contentedly enough upon chalk eggs at times ? And what would life be but for the power to do so ? We do not sufficiently realise the part which illusion has played in our development. 44 Alps and Sanctuaries One of the prime requisites for evolution is a certain power for adaptation to varying circumstances, that is to say, of plasticity, bodily and mental. But the power of adaptation is mainly dependent on the power of thinking certain new things sufficiently like certain others to which we have been accustomed for us not to be too much incommoded by the change — upon the power, in fact, of mistaking the new for the old. The power of fusing ideas (and through ideas, structures) depends upon the power of confusing them ; the power to confuse ideas that are not very unlike, and that are presented to us in immediate sequence, is mainly due to the fact of the impetus, so to speak, which the mind has upon it. We always, I believe, make an effort to see every new object as a repetition of the object last before us. Objects are so varied, and present themselves so rapidly, that as a general rule we renounce this effort too promptly to notice it, but it is always there, and it is because of it that we are able to mistake, and hence to evolve new mental and bodily developments. Where the effort is successful, there is illusion ; where nearly successful but not quite, there is a shock and a sense of being puzzled — more or less, as the case may be ; where it is so obviously impossible as not to be pursued, there is no perception of the effort at all. Mr. Locke has been greatly praised for his essay upon human understanding. An essay on human misunder- standing should be no less interesting and important. Illusion to a small extent is one of the main causes, if indeed it is not the main cause, of progress, but it must be upon a small scale. All abortive speculation, whether commercial or philosophical, is based upon it, and much as we may abuse such speculation, we are, all of us, its debtors. Prato 45 Leonardo da Vinci says that Sandro Botticelli spoke slightingly of landscape-painting, and called it '' but a vain study, since by throwing a sponge impregnated with various colours against a wall, it leaves some spots upon it, which may appear like a landscape/' Leonardo da Vinci continues : '* It is true that a variety of com- PRATO CHURCH PORCH, NO. I positions may be seen in such spots according to the disposition of mind with which they are considered ; such as heads of men, various animals, battles, rocky scenes, seas, clouds, words, and the like. It may be compared to the sound of bells which may seem to say whatever we choose to imagine. In the same manner these spots may furnish hints for composition, though 46 Alps and Sanctuaries they do not teach us how to finish any particular part/'* No one can hate drunkenness more than I do, but I am confident the human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to imagination — imagination being little else than another name for illusion. As for wayside chapels, mine, when I am in London, are the shop windows with pretty things in them. The flowers on the slopes above Prato are wonderful, and the village is full of nice bits for sketching, but the best thing, to my fancy, is the church, and the way it stands, and the lovely covered porch through which it is entered. This porch is not striking from the outside, but I took two sketches of it from within. There is, also, a fresco, half finished, of St. George and the Dragon, probably of the fifteenth century, and not without feeling. There is not much inside the church, which is modernised and more recent than the tower. The tower is very good, and only second, if second, in the upper Leventina to that of Quinto, which, however, is not nearly so well placed. The people of Prato are just as fond of cherries as those of Primadengo, but I did not see any men in the trees. The children in these parts are the most beautiful and most fascinating that I know anywhere ; they have black mouths all through the month of July from the quantities of cherries that they devour. I can bear witness that they are irresistible, for one kind old gentleman, seeing me painting near his house, used to bring me daily a branch of a cherry-tree with all the cherries on it. '' Son piccole," he would say, *' ma son gustose '' — '' They are small, but tasty,'' which indeed they were. Seeing I ate * Treatise on Painting, chap, cccxlix. Prato 47 all he gave me — for there was no stopping short as long as a single cherry was left — ^he, day by day, increased the size of the branch, but no matter how many he brought I was always even with him. I did my best to stop him from bringing them, or myself from eating all of them, but it was no use. Here is the autograph of one of the little black-mouthed folk. I watch them growing up from year to year in many a village. I was sketching at Primadengo, and a little girl of about three years came up with her brother, a boy of perhaps eight. Before long the smaller child began to set her cap at me, smiling, ogling, and showing all her tricks like an accomplished little flirt. Her brother said, '' She always goes on like that to strangers.'' I said, '' What's her name ? " '' Forolinda." The name being new to me, I made the boy write it, and here it is. He has forgotten to cross his F, but the writing is wonderfully good for a boy of his age. The child's name, doubtless, is Florinda. More than once at Prato, and often elsewhere, people have wanted to buy my sketches : if I had not required them for my own use I might have sold a good many. I do not think my patrons intended giving more than four or five francs a sketch, but a quick worker, who could cover his three or four Fortuny panels a day, might pay his expenses. It often happens that people who are doing well in London or Paris are paying a visit to their native village, and like to take back something to remind them of it in the winter. 48 Alps and Sanctuaries From Prato, there are two ways to Faido, one past an old castle, built to defend the northern entrance of the Monte Piottino, and so over a small pass which will avoid the gorge ; and the other, by Dazio and the Monte Piottino gorge. Both are good. PRATO CHURCH PORCH, NO. II Chapter IV Rossura, Calonico A NOTHER day I went up to Rossura, a village that j[\^ can be seen from the windows of the Hotel deir Angelo, and which stands about 3500 feet above the sea, or a little more than iioo feet above Faido. The path to it passes along some meadows, from which the church of Calonico can be seen on the top of its rocks some few miles off. By and by a torrent is reached, and the ascent begins in earnest. When the level of Rossura has been nearly attained, the path turns off into meadows to the right, and continues — occasionally under mag- nificent chestnuts — till one comes to Rossura. The church has been a good deal restored during the last few years, and an interesting old chapel — with an altar in it — at which mass was said during a time of D 49 ROSSURA CHURCH so Alps and Sanctuaries plague, while the people stood some way off in a meadow, has just been entirely renovated ; but as with some English churches, the more closely a piece of old work is copied the more palpabl}^ does the modern spirit show ROSSURA CHURCH PORCH through it, so here the opposite occurs, for the old- worldliness of the place has not been impaired by much renovation, though the intention has been to make every- thing as modern as possible. I know few things more touching in their way than Rossura 51 the porch of Rossura church. It is dated early in the last century, and is absolutely without ornament ; the flight of steps inside it lead up to the level of the floor of the church. One lovely summer Sunday morning, passing the church betimes, I saw the people kneehng upon these steps, the church within being crammed. In the darker light of the porch, they told out against the sky that showed through the open arch beyond them ; far away the eye rested on the mountains — deep blue save where the snow still lingered. I never saw anything more beautiful — and these forsooth are the people whom so many of us think to better by distributing tracts about Protestantism among them ! While I was looking, there came a sound of music through the open door — the people lifting up their voices and singing, as near as I can remember, something which on the piano would come thus : — $beS 'W :s: ,-j — I- ES^^Esd Grave, .-s^-#- -^- mi 33 \ \j r^ ■A^.4 4 -SI- =^ IQI -^. :c^^K~ii ~^- -o- ^. -IT" -SJ- -m- -#- • -m- -m- -m- -r^- -^- -m- - ^P^^ ra: ici^i<=i^ri 52 Alps and Sanctuaries --¥=^ J8E5 ^LtE^^ btzQ- 4--.J. "cr- =^4^^- -c^- i=t -^- :c^- ill -c>- -o- I liked the porch ahnost best under an aspect which it no longer presents. One summer an opening was made in the west wall, which was afterwards closed because the wind blew through it too much and made the church too cold. While it was open, one could sit on the church steps and look down through it on to the bottom of the Ticino valley ; and through the windows one could see the slopes about Dalpe and Cornone. Be- tween the two windows there is a picture of austere old S. Carlo Borromeo with his hands joined in prayer. It was at Rossura that I made the acquaintance of a w^ord which I have since found very largely used throughout North Italy. It is pronounced '' chow '' pure and simple, but is written, if written at all, '' ciau,'' or '' ciao,'' the *' a '' being kept very broad. I believe the w^ord is derived from '* schiavo,'' a slave, which became corrupted into *' schiao,'' and '' ciao/' It is used with two meanings, both of which, however, are deducible from the word slave. In its first and more common use it is simply a salute, either on greeting or taking leave, and means, *' I am your very obedient servant." Thus, if one has been talking to a small child, its mother will tell it to say '* chow '' before it goes away, and will then nod her head and say '' chow '' herself. The other use is a kind of pious expletive, intending " I must endure it," '' I am the slave of a higher power." It Rossura 53 was in this sense I first heard it at Rossura. A woman was washing at a fountain while I was eating my lunch. She said she had lost her daughter in Paris a few weeks earlier. *' She was a beautiful woman/' said the bereaved ROSSURA CHURCH PORCH IN 1879 mother, '' but — chow. She had great talents — chow. I had her educated by the nuns of Bellinzona — chow. Her knowledge of geography was consummate — chow, chow," &c. Here '' chow " means '' pazienza," '' I have done 54 Alps and Sanctuaries and said all that I can, and must now bear it as best I may/' I tried to comfort her, but could do nothing, till at last it occurred to me to say " chow '' too. I did so, and was astonished at the soothing effect it had upon her. How subtle are the laws that govern consolation ! I suppose they must ultimately be connected with repro- duction — the consoling idea being a kind of small cross which re-generates or re-creates the sufferer. It is im- portant, therefore, that the new ideas with which the old are to be crossed should differ from these last suffi- ciently to divert the attention, and yet not so much as to cause a painful shock. There should be a little shock, or there will be no variation in the new ideas that are generated, but they will resemble those that preceded them, and grief will be continued ; there must not be too great a shock or there will be no illusion — no confusion and fusion between the new set of ideas and the old, and in con- sequence, there will be no result at all, or, if anj^ an increase in mental discord. We know very little, how- ever, upon this subject, and are continually shown to be at fault by finding an unexpectedly small cross produce a wide diversion of the mental images, while in other cases a wide one will produce hardly any result. Sometimes again, a cross which we should have said was much too wide will have an excellent effect. I did not anticipate, for example, that my saying *' chow '' would have done much for the poor woman who had lost her daughter ; the cross did not seem wide enough ; she was already, as I thought, saturated with '* chow.'' I can only account for the effect my application of it produced by supposing the word to have derived some element of strangeness and novelty as coming from a foreigner — 1 I I Calonico 5 5 ust as land which will give a poor crop, if planted with •ets from potatoes that have been grown for three or four years on this same soil, will yet yield excellently if similar sets be brought from twenty miles off. For the potato, so far as I have studied it, is a good-tempered, frivolous plant, easily amused and easily bored, and one, moreover, which if bored, yawns horribly. As an example of a cross proving satisfactory which I had expected would be too wide, I would quote the following, which came under my notice when I was in America. A young man called upon me in a flood of tears over the loss of his grandmother, of whose death at the age of ninety-three he had just heard. I could do nothing with him ; I tried all the ordinary panaceas without effect, and was giving him up in despair, w^hen I thought of crossing him with the well-known ballad of Wednesbury Cocking.* He brightened up instantly, and left me in as cheerful a state as he had been before in a desponding one. '' Chow '' seems to do for the Italians what Wednesbury Cocking did for my American friend ; it is a kind of small spiritual pick-me-up, or cup of tea. From Rossura I went on to Tengia, about a hundred and fifty feet higher than Rossura. From Tengia the path to Calonico, the next village, is a little hard to find, and a boy had better be taken for ten minutes or so beyond Tengia. Calonico church show^s well for some time before it is actually reached. The pastures here are very rich in flowers, the tiger lilies being more abundant before the hay is mown, than perhaps even at Fusio itself. The w^hole walk is lovely, and the Gribbiasca waterfall, the most graceful in the Val Leventina, is just opposite. * See Appendix A. 56 Alps and Sanctuaries How often have I not sat about here in the shade sketching, and watched the blue upon the mountains which Titian watched from under the chestnuts of Cadore. No sound except the distant water, or the P^J2l1L^±. TENGIA, NO. 1 croak of a raven, or the booming of the great guns in that battle which is being fought out between man and nature on the Biaschina and the Monte Piottino. It is always a pleasure to me to feel that I have known the Calonico 57 Val Leventina intimately before the great change in it which the railway will effect, and that I may hope to see it after the present turmoil is over. Our descend- ants a hundred years hence will not think of the inces- sant noise as though of cannonading with which we ^ere so familiar. From nowhere was it more striking than from Calonico, the Monte Piottino having no sooner become silent than the Biaschina would open 58 Alps and Sanctuaries fire, and sometimes both would be firing at once. Posterity may care to know that another and less agreeable feature of the present time was the quantity of stones that would come flying about in places which one would have thought were out of range. All along the road, for example, between Giornico and Lavorgo, there was incessant blasting going on, and it was sur- prising to see the height to which stones were some- times carried. The dwellers in houses near the blast- ing would cover their roofs with boughs and leaves to soften the fall of the stones. A few people were hurt, but much less damage was done than might have been expected. I may mention for the benefit of English readers that the tunnels through Monte Piottino and the Biaschina are marvels of engineering skill, being both of them spiral ; the road describes a complete circle, and descends rapidly 'all the while, so that the point of egress as one goes from Airolo towards Faido is at a much lower level than that of ingress. If an accident does happen, they call it a disgrazia, thus confirming the soundness of a philosophy which I put forward in an earlier work. Every misfortune they hold (and quite rightly) to be a disgrace to the person who suffers it ; " Son disgraziato '' is the Italian for '' I have been unfortunate." I was once going to give a penny to a poor woman by the roadside, when two other women stopped me. " Non merita," they said ; *' She is no deserving object for charity " — the fact being that she was an idiot. Nevertheless they were very kind to her. Chapter V Calonico (continued) and Giornico OUR inventions increase in geometrical ratio. They are like living beings, each one of which may become parent of a dozen others — some good and some ne'er-do-weels ; but they differ from animals and vege- tables inasmuch as they not only increase in a geometrical ratio, but the period of their gestation decreases in geometrical ratio also. Take this matter of Alpine roads for example. For how many millions of years was there no approach to a road over the St. Gothard, save the untutored watercourses of the Ticino and the Reuss, and the track of the bouquetin or the chamois ? For how many more ages after this was there not a mere shepherd's or huntsman's path by the river side — without so much as a log thrown over so as to form a rude bridge ? No one would probably have ever thought of making a bridge out of his own unaided imagination, more than any monkey that we know of has done so. But an avalanche or a flood once swept a pine into position and left it there ; on this a genius, who was doubtless thought to be doing something very infamous, ventured to make use of it. Another time a pine was found nearly across the stream, but not quite, and not quite, again, in the place where it was wanted. A second genius, to the horror of his fellow-tribesmen — who declared that this time the world really would come to an end — shifted 59 6o Alps and Sanctuaries the pine a few feet so as to bring it across the stream and into the place where it was wanted. This man was the inventor of bridges — his family repudiated him, and he came to a bad end. From this to cutting down the pine and bringing it from some distance is an easy step. To avoid detail, let us come to the old Roman horse road over the Alps. The time between the shepherd's path and the Roman road is probably short in comparison with that between the mere chamois track and the first thing that can be called a path of men. From the Roman we go on to the mediaeval road with more frequent stone bridges, and from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic carriage road. The close of the last century and the first quarter of this present one was the great era for the making of carriage roads. Fifty years have hardly passed and here we are already in the age of tunnelling and rail- roads. The first period, from the chamois track to the foot road, was one of millions of years ; the second, from the first foot road to the Roman military way, was one of many thousands ; the third, from the Roman to the mediaeval, was perhaps a thousand ; from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic, five hundred ; from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty. What will come next we know not, but it should come within twenty years, and will probably have something to do with electricity. It follows by an easy process of reasoning that, after another couple of hundred years or so, great sweeping changes should be made several times in an hour, or indeed in a second, or fraction of a second, till they pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo in the embryonic stages, or are felt simply as vibrations. This would undoubtedly be the case but for the existence of a friction which interferes between theory and practice. Calonico 6 1 This friction is caused partly by the disturbance of vested interests which every invention involves, and which will be found intolerable when men become millionaires and paupers alternately once a fortnight — living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and having perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and refurnish, &c. — so that artificial means for stopping inventions will be adopted ; and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than others, and the backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness of another. At any rate, so far as I can see, the present is about the only comfortable time for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever will be. The past was too slow, and the future will be much too fast. Another thing which we do not bear in mind when thinking of the Alps is their narrowness, and the small extent of ground they really cover. From Goschenen, for example, to Airolo seems a very long distance. One must go up to the Devil's Bridge, and then to Andermatt. From here by Hospenthal to the top of the pass seems a long way, and again it is a long way down to Airolo ; but all this would easily go oa to the ground between Kensington and vStratford. From Goschenen to Ander- matt is about as far as from Holland House to Hyde Park Corner. From Andermatt to Hospenthal is much the same distance as from Hyde Park Corner to the Oxford Street end of Tottenham Court Road. From Hospenthal to the hospice on the top of the pass is about equal to the space between Tottenham Court Road and Bow ; and from Bow you must go down three thousand feet of zig-zags into Stratford, for Airolo. I have made the deviation from the straight line about the same in one case as in the other ; in each, the direct distance is nine 62 Alps and Sanctuaries and a half miles. The whole distance from Fliielen, on the Lake of Lucerne, to Biasca, which is almost on the same level with the Lago Maggiore, is only forty miles, and could be all got in between London and Lewes, while from Lucerne to Locarno, actually on the Lago Maggiore itself, would go, with a good large margin to spare, between London and Dover. We can hardly fancy, however, people going backwards and forwards to business daily between Fliielen and Biasca, as some doubtless do between London and Lewes. But how small all Europe is. We seem almost able to take it in at a single coup d'mL From Mont Blanc we can ' see the mountains on the Paris side of Dijon on the one hand, and those above Florence and Bologna on the other. What a hole would not be made in Europe if this great eyeful were scooped out of it. The fact is (but it is so obvious that I am ashamed to say anything about it), science is rapidly reducing space to the same unsatisfactory state that it has already reduced time. Take lamb : we can get lamb all the year round. This is perpetual spring ; but perpetual spring is no spring at all ; it is not a season ; there are no more seasons, and being no seasons, there is no time. Take rhubarb, again. Rhubarb to the philosopher is the beginning of autumn, if indeed, the philosopher can see anything as the beginning of anything. If any one asks why, I suppose the philosopher would say that rhubarb is the beginning of the fruit season, which is clearly au- tumnal, according to our present classification. From rhubarb to the green gooseberry the step is so small as to require no bridging — with one's eyes shut, and plenty of cream and sugar, they are almost indistinguishable — but the gooseberry is quite an autumnal fruit, and only a little earlier than apples and plums, which last ^re almost Calonico 63 winter ; clearly, therefore, for scientific purposes rhubarb is autumnal. As soon as we can find gradations, or a sufficient number of uniting links between two things, they become united or made one thing, and any classification of them must be illusory. Classification is only possible where there is a shock given to the senses by reason of a perceiv'fed differ- ence, which, if it is considerable, can be expressed in words. When the world was younger and less experienced, people were shocked at what appeared great differences between living forms ; but species, whether of animals or plants, are now seen to be so united, either inferentially or by actual finding of the links, that all classification is felt to be arbitrary. The seasons are like species — they were at one time thought to be clearly marked, and capable of being classified with some approach to satisfaction. It is now seen that they blend either in the present or the past insensibly into one another, and cannot be classified except by cutting Gordian knots in a way which none but plain sensible people can tolerate. Strictly speaking, there is only one place, one time, one action, and one individual or thing ; of this thing or individual each one of us is a part. It is perplexing, but it is philosophy ; and modern philosophy like modern music is nothing if it is not perplexing. A simple verification of the autumnal character of rhubarb may, at first sight, appear to be found in Covent Garden Market, where we can actually see the rhubarb towards the end of October. But this way of looking at the matter argues a fatal ineptitude for the pursuit of true philosophy. It would be a most serious error to regard the rhubarb that will appear in Covent Garden Market next October as belonging to the autumn then supposed to be current. Practically, no doubt, it does 64 Alps and Sanctuaries so, but theoretically it must be considered as the first- fruits of the autumn (if any) of the following year, which begins before the preceding summer (or, perhaps, more strictly, the preceding summer but one — and hence, but any number), has well ended. Whether this, however, is so or no, the rhubarb can be seen in Covent Garden, and I am afraid it must be admitted that to the philosophically CALONICO CHURCH, NO. I minded there lurks within it a theory of evolution, and even Pantheism, as surely as Theism was lurking in Bishop Berkeley's tar water. To return, however, to Calonico. The church is built on the extreme edge of a cliff that has been formed by the breaking away of a large fragment of the mountain. This fragment may be seen lying down below shattered into countless pieces. There is a fissure in the cliff which Calonico 65 suggests that at no very distant day some more will follow, and I am afraid carry the church too. My favourite view of the church is from the other side of the small valley which separates it from the village, (see preceding page). Another very good view is from closer up to the church. The curato of Calonico was very kind to me. We had long talks together. I could see it pained him that l11^^ry:/'-->^!^>: CALONICO CHURCH, NO. II I was not a Catholic. He could never quite get over this, but he was very good and tolerant. He was anxious to be assured that I was not one of those English who went about distributing tracts, and trying to convert people. This of course was the last thing I should have wished to do ; and when I told him so, he viewed me with sorrow, but henceforth without alarm. All the time I was with him I felt how much I wished I could be a Catholic in Catholic countries, and a Pro- testant in Protestant ones. Surely there are some things 66 Alps and Sanctuaries which, Hke pohtics, are too serious to be taken quite seriously. Surtout point de zele is not the saying of a cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible man ; and the more deep our feeling is about any matter, the more occasion have we to be on our guard against zele in this particular respect. There is but one step from the *' earnest " to the '' intense." When St. Paul told us to be all things to all men he let in the thin end of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say how far it was to be driven. I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they think I flirt just a trifle too much with il partito nero when I am in Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do. '' These people,'' they say, '' make themselves very agreeable to you, and show you their smooth side ; we, who see more of them, know their rough one. Knuckle under to them, and they will per- haps condescend to patronise you ; have any individu- ality of your own, and they know neither scruple nor remorse in their attempts to get you out of their way. '* II prete,'' they say, with a significant look, " e sempre prete. For the future let us have professors and men of science instead of priests.'' I smile to myself at this last, and reply, that I am a foreigner come among them for recreation, and anxious to keep clear of their internal dis- cords. I do not wish to cut myself off from one side of their national character — a side which, in some respects, is no less interesting than the one with which I suppose I am on the whole more sympathetic. If I w^ere an Italian, I should feel bound to take a side ; as it is, I wish to leave all quarrelling behind me, having as much of that in England as suffices to keep me in good health and temper. In old times people gave their spiritual and intel- lectual sop to Nemesis. Even when most positive, Calonico 6^ they admitted a percentage of doubt. Mr. Tennyson has said well, '' There lives more doubt '' — I quote from memory — '' in honest faith, believe me, than in half the '' systems of philosophy, or words to that effect. The victor had a slave at his ear during his triumph ; the slaves during the Roman Saturnalia dressed in their masters' clothes, sat at meat with them, told them of their faults, and blacked their faces for them. They made their masters wait upon them. In the ages of faith, an ass dressed in sacerdotal robes was gravely conducted to the cathedral choir at a certain season, and mass was said b^^fore him, and hymns chanted discordantly. The elJer DTsraeli, from whom I am quoting, writes : ''On other occasions, they put burnt old shoes to fume in the censers ; ran about the church leaping, singing, dancing, and playing at dice upon the altar, while a boy bishop or pope of fools burlesqued the divine service ; '' and later on he says : ''So late as 1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master what he himself witnessed at Aix on the feast of Innocents, says — ' I have seen in some monasteries in this province extravagances solemnised, which pagans would not have practised. Neither the clergy nor the guardians indeed go to the choir on this day, but all is given up to the lay brethren, the cabbage cutters, errand boys, cooks, scullions, and gardeners ; in a word, all the menials fill their places in the church, and insist that they perform the offices proper for the day. They dress themselves with all the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them inside out ; they hold in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which they pretend to read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which they fix the rinds of scooped oranges . . . ; particularly while dangling the censers they keep shaking them in derision, 68 Alps and Sanctuaries and letting the ashes fly about their heads and faces, one against the other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The nonsense verses they chant are singularly barbarous : — Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierum, Haec est festa dies festarum festa dierum.' " * Faith was far more assured in the times when the spiritual saturnalia were allowed than now\ The irrever- ence which was not dangerous then, is now intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man's peace in his own convictions when he cannot stand turning the canvas of his hfe occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a mirror, as painters do with their pictures that they may judge the better concerning them. I would persuade all Jews, Mohammedans, Comtists, and freethinkers to turn high Anglicans, or better still, downright Catholics for a week in every year, and I would send people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr. Bradlaugh's lectures in the forenoon, and the Grecian pantomime in the evening, two or three times every winter. I should perhaps tell them that the Grecian pantomime has nothing to do with Greek plays. They little know how much more keenly they would relish their normal opinions during the rest of the year for the little spiritual outing which I would prescribe for them, which, after all, is but another phase of the wise saying- — Surtout point de zele. St. Paul attempted an obviously hopeless task (as the Church of Rome very well understands) when he tried to put down seasonarianism. People must and will go to church to be a little better, to the theatre to be a little naughtier, to the Royal Institution to be a ♦ Curiosities of Literature, Lond. 1866, Routledge & Co., p. 272. Calonico 69 little more scientific, than they are in actual life. It is only by pulsations of goodness, naughtiness, and whatever else we affect that we can get on at all. I grant that when in his office, a man should be exact and precise, but our holidays are our garden, and too much precision here is a mistake. Surely truces, without even an arriere pensee of differ- ence of opinion, between those who are compelled to take widely different sides during the greater part of their lives, must be of infinite service to those who can enter on them. There are few merely spiritual pleasures com- parable to that derived from the temporary laying down of a quarrel, even though we may know that it must be renewed shortly. It is a great grief to me that there is no place where I can go among Mr. Darwin, Professors Huxley, Tyndall, and Ray Lankester, Miss Buckley, Mr. Romanes, Mr. Allen, and others whom I cannot call to mind at this moment, as I can go among the Italian priests. I remember in one monastery (but this was not in the Canton Ticino) the novice taught me how to make sacramental wafers, and I played him Handel on the organ as well as I could. I told him that Handel was a Catholic ; he said he could tell that by his music at once. There is no chance of getting among our scientists in this way. Some friends say I was telling a lie when I told the novice Handel was a Catholic, and ought not to have done so. I make it a rule to swallow a few gnats a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt camels ; but the whole question^of lying is difficult. What is '' lying *' ? Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the lower animals, whose unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a directness we may some- times study, I find the plover lying when she lures us 70 Alps and Sanctuaries from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry, think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy ? or was it not He who whispered to her to tell the falsehood — to tell it with a circumstance, without conscientious scruple, not once only, but to make a practice of it, so as to be a plausible, habitual, and pro- fessional liar for some six weeks or so in the year ? I imagine so. When I was young I used to read in good books that it was God who taught the bird to make her nest, and if so He probably taught each species the other domestic arrangements best suited to it. Or did the nest- building information come from God, and was there an evil one among the birds also who taught them at any rate to steer clear of priggishness ? Think of the spider again — an ugly creature, but I suppose God likes it. What a mean and odious lie is that web which naturalists extol as such a marvel of ingenuity ! Once on a summer afternoon in a far country I met one of those orchids who make it their business to imitate a fly with their petals. This lie they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being already plun- dered, pass them without molesting them. Watching in- tently and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not. " My children,'' she exclaimed, " I must soon leave you ; think upon the fly, my loved ones, for this is truth ; cling to this great thought in your passage through life, for it is the one thing needful ; once lose sight of it and you are lost ! '' Over and over again she sang this burden in a small still voice, and so I left her. Then straightway I came upon some butterflies whose profession it was to pretend to believe in all manner of vital truths which in their inner practice they rejected ; thus, asserting themselves to be certain other and hateful Calonico 71 butterflies which no bird will eat by reason of their abominable smell, these cunning ones conceal their own sweetness, and live long in the land and see good days. No : lying is so deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork, and yet it will always come back again : it is like the poor, we must have it always with us ; we must all eat a peck of moral dirt before we die. All depends upon who it is that is lying. One man may steal a horse when another may not look over a hedge. The good man who tells no lies wittingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie and lie and lie whenever he chooses to other people, and he will not be false to any man : his lies become truths as they pass into the hearers' ear. If a man deceives himself and is unkind, the truth is not in him, it turns to falsehood while yet in his mouth, like the quails in the Wilderness of Sinai. How this is so or why, I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy on whom He will have mercy and whom He willeth He hardeneth. My Italian friends are doubtless in the main right about the priests, but there are many exceptions, as they themselves gladly admit. For my own part I have found the curato in the small subalpine villages of North Italy to be more often than not a kindly excellent man to whom I am attracted by sympathies deeper than any mere superficial differences of opinion can counteract. With monks, however, as a general rule I am less able to get on : nevertheless, I have received much courtesy at the hands of some. My young friend the novice was delightful — only it was so sad to think of the future that is before him. He wanted to know all about England, and when I told him it was an island, clasped his hands and said, '' Oh che Provvidenza ! '' He told me how the other young men 72 Alps and Sanctuaries of his own age plagued him as he trudged his rounds ■! high up among the most distant hamlets begging alms ' for the poor. '* Be a good fellow/' they would say to him, '' drop all this nonsense and come back to us, and we will never plague you again/' Then he would turn upon them and put their words from him. Of course my sympathies were with the other young men rather than with him, but it was impossible not to be sorry for the manner in which he had been humbugged from the day of his birth, till he was now incapable of seeing things from any other standpoint than that of authority. What he said to me about knowing that Handel was a Catholic by his music, put me in mind of what another good Catholic once said to me about a picture. He was a Frenchman and very nice, but a devot, and anxious to convert me. He paid a few days' visit to London, so I showed him the National Gallery. While there I pointed out to him Sebastian del Piombo's picture of the raising of Lazarus as one of the supposed master- pieces of our collection. He had the proper orthodox fit of admiration over it, and then we went through the other rooms. After a while we found ourselves before West's picture of '' Christ healing the sick." My French friend did not, I suppose, examine it very carefully, at any rate he believed he was again before the raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo ; he paused before it and had his fit of admiration over again : then turning to me he said, " Ah ! you would understand this picture better if you were a Catholic." I did not tell him of the mistake he had made, but I thought even a Protestant after a certain amount of experience would learn to see some difference between Benjamin West and Sebastian del Piombo. From Calonico I went down into the main road and Giornico 73 walked to Giornico, taking the right bank of the river from the bridge at the top of the Biaschina. Not a sod of the railway was as yet turned. At Giornico I visited the grand old church of S. Nicolao, which, though a later foun- dation than the church at Mairengo, retains its original con- dition, and appears, therefore, to be much the older of the two. The stones are very massive, and the courses are here and there irregular as in Cyclopean w^alls ; the end wall is not bonded into the side walls but simply built between them ; the main door is very fine, and there is a side door also very good. There are two altars one above the other, as in the churches of S. Abbondio and S. Cristoforo at Como, but I could not make the lower altar intelligible in my sketch, and indeed conld hardly see it, so was obliged to leave it out. The remains of some very early frescoes can be seen, but I did not think them remarkable. Altogether, however, the church is one which no one should miss seeing who takes an interest in early architecture. While painting the study from w^hich the following sketch is taken, I was struck with the wonderfully vivid green which the whitewashed vault of the chancel and the arch dividing the chancel from the body of the church took by way of reflection from the grass and trees outside. It is not easy at first to see how the green manages to find its way inside the church, but the grass seems to get in everywhere. I had already often seen green re- flected from brilliant pasturage on to the shadow under the eaves of whitewashed houses, but I never saw it MAIN DOORWAY, S. NICOLAO 74 Alps and Sanctuaries suffuse a whole interior as it does on a fine summer's day at Giornico. I do not remember to have seen this effect , in England. Looking up again against the mountain through thei open door of the church when the sun was in a certain position, I could see an infinity of insect life swarming! IN'PERIOR OF OLD CHURCH, GIORNICO throughout the air. No one could have suspected its existence, till the sun's rays fell on the wings of these small creatures at a proper angle ; on this they became revealed against the darkness of the mountain behind them. The swallows that were flying among them cannot have to hunt them, they need only fly with their mouths wide open and they must run against as many as Giornico 75 will be good for them. I saw this incredibly multitudinous swarm extending to a great height, and am satisfied that it was no more than what is always present during the summer months, though it is only visible in certain lights. To these minute creatures the space between the moun- tains on the two sides of the Ticino valley must be as great as that between England and America to a codfish. Many, doubtless, live in the mid-air, and never touch the bottom or sides of the valley, except at birth and death, if then. No doubt some atmospheric effects of haze on a summer's afternoon are due to nothing but these insects. What, again, do the smaller of them live upon ? On germs, which to them are comfortable mouthfuls, though to us invisible even with a microscope ? I find nothing more in my notes about Giornico except that the people are very handsome, and, as I thought, of a Roman type. The place was a Roman military station, but it does not follow that the soldiers were Romans ; nevertheless, there is a strain of bullet-headed blood in the place. Also I remember being told in 1869 that two bears had been killed in the mountains above Giornico the preceding year. At Giornico the vine begins to grow lustily, and wine is made. The vines are trellised, and looking down upon them one would think one could walk upon them as upon a solid surface, so closely and luxuri- antly do they grow. From Giornico I began to turn my steps homeward in company with an engineer who was also about to walk back to Faido, but we resolved to take Chironico on our way, and kept therefore to the right bank of the river. After about three or four kilometres from Giornico we reached Chironico, which is well placed upon a fiUed-up lake and envied as a paese ricco, but is not so captivating as some others. Hence we ascended till at last we reached 76 Alps and Sanctuaries Gribbio (3960 ft.), a collection of chalets inhabited only for a short time in the year, but a nice place in summer, rich in gentians and sulphur-coloured anemones. From Gribbio there is a path to Dalpe, offering no difficulty whatever and perfect in its way. On this occasion, how- ever, we went straight back to Faido by a rather shorter way than the ordinary path, and this certainly was a little difficult, or as my companion called it, " un tantino difficoltoso,'' in one or two places ; I at least did not quite like them. Another day I went to Lavorgo, below Calonico, and thence up to Anzonico. The church and churchyard at Anzonico are very good ; from Anzonico there is a path to Cavagnago — which is also full of good bits for sketching — and Sobrio. The highest villages in the immediate neighbourhood of Faido are Campello and Molare ; they can be seen from the market-place of the town, and are well worth the trouble of a climb. Chapter VI Piora AN excursion which may be very well made from Faido is to the Val Piora, which I have already more than once mentioned. There is a large hotel here which has been opened some years, but has not hitherto proved the success which it was hoped it would be. I have stayed there two or three times and found it very com- fortable ; doubtless, now that Signor Lombardi of the Hotel Prosa has taken it, it will become a more popular place of resort. I took a trap from Faido to Ambri, and thence walked over to Quinto ; here the path begins to ascend, and after an hour Ronco is reached. There is a house at Ronco where refreshments and excellent Faido beer can be had. The old lady who keeps the house would make a perfect Fate ; I saw her sitting at her window spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley as though it were the world and she were spinning its destiny. She had a somewhat stern expression, thin lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline nose ; her scanty locks straggled from under the handkerchief which she wore round her head. Her employment and the wistful far-away look she cast upon the expanse below made a very fine ensemble. '' She would have afforded," as Sir Walter Scott says, " a study for a Rembrandt, 77 78 Alps and Sanctuaries had that celebrated painter existed at the period/' * but she must have been a smart-looking handsome girl once. She brightened up in conversation. I talked about Piora, which I already knew, and the Lago Tom, the highest of the three lakes. She said she knew the Lago^ Tom. I said laughingly, '' Oh, I have no doubt you do^ WeVe had many a good day at the Lago Tom, I know/ She looked down at once. In spite of her nearly eighty years she was activej as a woman of forty, and altogether she was a very granc old lady. Her house is scrupulously clean. While I' watched her spinning, I thought of what must so often occur to summer visitors. I mean what sort of a look-out the old woman must have in winter, when the wind roars and whistles, and the snow drives down the valley with a fury of which we in England can have little conception. What a place to see a snowstorm from ! and what a placeB from which to survey the landscape next morning after the storm is over and the air is calm and brilliant. There are such mornings : I saw one once, but I was at the bottom of the valley and not high up, as at Ronco.J Ronco would take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the bottom of the valley there is no sun for weeks and weeks together ; all is in deep shadow below, though thej upper hillsides may be seen to have the sun upon them.j I walked once on a frosty winter's morning from Airolo to j Giornico, and can call to mind nothing in its way morel beautiful : everything was locked in frost — there was j not a waterwheel but was sheeted and coated with ice : the road was hard as granite — all was quiet and seen as through a dark but incredibly transparent medium. Near Piotta I met the whole village dragging a large tree ; there were many men and women dragging at it, but * Ivanhoe, chap, xxiii., near the beginning. Piora 79 they had to pull hard and they were silent ; as I passed them I thought what comely, well-begotten people they were. Then, looking up, there was a sky, cloudless and of the deepest blue, against which the snow-clad moun- tains stood out splendidly. No one will regret a walk in these valleys during the depth of winter. But I should have liked to have looked down from the sun into the sunlessness, as the old Fate woman at Ronco can do when she sits in winter at her window ; or again, I should like to see how things would look from this same window on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow has fallen heavily nnd the sky is murky and much darker than the earth. When the storm is at its height, the snow must search and search and search even through the double windows with which the houses are protected. It must rest upon the frames of the pictures of saints, and of the sister's '* grab,'' and of the last hours of Count Ugolino, which adorn the walls of the parlour. No wonder there is a S. Maria della Neve — a '' St. Mary of the Snow " ; but I do wonder that she has not been painted. From Ronco the path keeps level and then descends a little so as to cross the stream that comes down from Piora. This is near the village of Altanca, the church of which looks remarkably well from here. Then there is an hour and a half's rapid ascent, and at last all on a sudden one finds one's self on the Lago Ritom, close to the hotel. The lake is about a mile, or a mile and a half, long, and half a mile broad. It is 6000 feet above the sea, very deep at the lower end, and does not freeze where the stream issues from it, so that the magnificent trout in the lake can get air and live through the winter. In many other lakes, as for example the Lago di Tre- morgio, they cannot do this, and hence perish, though 8o Alps and Sanctuaries the lakes have been repeatedly stocked. The trout in the Lago Ritom are said to be the finest in the world, and certainly I know none so fine myself. They grow to be as large as moderate-sized salmon, and have a deep red flesh, very firm and full of flavour. I had two cutlets off one for breakfast and should have said they were salmon unless I had known otherwise. In winter, when the lake is frozen over, the people bring their hay from the farther Lake of Cadagno in sledges across the Lake Ritom. Here, again, winter must be worth seeing, but on a rough snowy day Piora must be an awful place. There are a few stunted pines near the hotel, but the hillsides are for the most part bare and green. Piora in fact is a fine breezy open upland valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it ; it is rich in rhododendrons, and all manner of Alpine flowers, just a trifle bleak, but as bracing as the Engadine itself. The first night I was ever in Piora there was a brilliant moon, and the unruffled surface of the lake took the reflection of the mountains. I could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells which danced multitudinously before the ear as fireflies come and go before the eyes ; for all through a fine summer's night the cattle will feed as though it were day. A little above the lake I came upon a man in a cave before a furnace, burning lime, and he sat looking into the fire with his back to the moonlight. He was a quiet moody man, and I am afraid I bored him, for I could get hardly anything out of him but '' Oh altro '' — polite but not communica- tive. So after a while I left him with his face burnished as with gold from the fire, and his back silver with the moonbeams ; behind him were the pastures and the reflections in the lake and the mountains ; and the distant cowbells were ringing. Piora 8i Then I wandered on till I came to the chapel of S. Carlo ; and in a few minutes found myself on the Lago di Cadagno. Here I heard that there were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the simple peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine o'clock in the evening. For now was the time ^pM ^^P"^^^^ \,J*WM.-v.- ^:^:^^X^^^I^m^. CHAPEL OF S. CARLO, PIORA when they had moved up from Ronco, Altanca, and other villages in some numbers to cut the hay, and were living for a fortnight or three weeks in the chalets upon the Lago di Cadagno. As I have said, there is a chapel, but I doubt whether it is attended during this season with the regularity with which the parish churches of Ronco, Altanca, &c., are attended during the rest of the year. The young people, I am sure, like these annual visits to 82 Alps and Sanctuaries the high places, and will be hardly weaned from them. Happily the hay will be always there, and will have to be cut by some one, and the old people will send the young ones. As I was thinking of these things, I found myself going off into a doze, and thought the burnished man from the furnace came up and sat beside me, and laid his hand upon my shoulder. Then I saw the green slopes that rise all round the lake were much higher than I had thought ; they went up thousands of feet, and there were pine forests upon them, while two large glaciers came down in streams that ended in a precipice of ice, falling sheer into the lake. The edges of the mountains against the sky were rugged and full of clefts, through w^hich I saw thick clouds of dust being blown by the wind as though from the other side of the moun- tains. And as I looked, I saw that this was not dust, but people coming in crowds from the other side, but so small as to be visible at first only as dust. And the people became musicians, and the mountainous amphi- theatre a huge orchestra, and the glaciers were two noble armies of women-singers in w^hite robes, ranged tier above tier behind each other, and the pines became orchestral players, while the thick dust-like cloud of chorus-singers kept pouring in through the clefts in the precipices in inconceivable numbers. When I turned my telescope upon them I saw they were crowded up to the extreme edge of the mountains, so that I could see underneath the soles of their boots as their legs dangled in the air. In the midst of all, a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiHng and pluming himself like a bird as he Piora 83 thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majesti- cally up and down, hke the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people rose and sang the chorus '' Venus laughing from the skies ; '' but ere the sound had well died away, I awoke, and all was changed ; a light fleecy cloud had filled the whole basin, but I still thought I heard a sound of music, and a scampering-off of great crowds from the part where the precipices should be. The music went thus : — * i irizr/«^z*:i; s 4 pEE ^i±± i -#•- -p*- -^-#- j=i — ^ ^t^tE -w \ ■ • \ »SJ^-*J^ -• -#- etc. t ^ m^ Handel's third set of organ Concertos, No. 6. 84 Alps and Sanctuaries By and by the cantering, galloping movement became a trotting one, thus : — PifcS ^^± ^ _L^ I UJ b^t: l ^iM .^teM ^^ »i -^.^a ^ -rZ-^ H -F h- ^!±t -jH—rn- Piora 8 5 After that I heard no more but a Httle singing from the chalets, and turned homewards. When I got to the chapel of S. Carlo, I was in the moonlight again, and when near the hotel, I passed the man at the mouth of the furnace with the moon still gleaming upon his back, and the fire upon his face, and he was very grave and quiet. Next morning I went along the lake till I came to a good-sized streamlet on the north side. If this is followed for half -an-hour or so — and the walk is a very good one — ^Lake Tom is reached, about 7500 feet above the sea. The lake is not large, and there are not so many chalets as at Cadagno ; still there are some. The view of the mountain tops on the other side the Ticino valley, as seen from across the lake, is very fine. I tried to sketch, but was fairly driven back by a cloud of black gnats. The ridges immediately at the back of the lake, and no great height above it, are the main dividing line of the watershed ; so are those that rise from the Lago di Cadagno ; in fact, about 600 feet above this lake is the top of a pass which goes through the Piano dei Porci, and leads down to S. Maria Maggiore, on the German side of the Lukmanier. I do not know the short piece be- tween the Lago di Cadagno and S. Maria, but it is sure to be good. It is a pity there is no place at S. Maria where one can put up for a night or two. There is a small inn there, but it did not look tempting. Before leaving the Val Leventina, I would call atten- tion to the beautiful old parish church at Biasca, where there is now an excellent inn, the Hotel Biasca. This church is not so old as the one at Giornico, but it is a good though plain example of early Lombard architec- ture. Chapter VII S. Michele and the Monte Pirchiriano SOME time after the traveller* from Paris to Turin has passed through the Mont Cenis tunnel, and shortly before he arrives at Bussoleno station, the line turns eastward, and a view is obtained of the valley of the Dora, with the hills beyond Turin, and the Superga, in the distance. On the right-hand side of the valley and S. MICHELE FROM NEAR BUSSOLENO S. MICHELE about half-way between Susa and Turin the eye is struck by an abruptly-descending mountain with a large build- ing like a castle upon the top of it, and the nearer it is approached the more imposing does it prove to be. Presently the mountain is seen more edgeways, and the shape changes. In half -an -hour or so from this point, S. Ambrogio is reached, once a thriving town, where 86 S. Michele 87 carriages used to break the journey between Turin and Susa, but left stranded since the opening of the railway. Here we are at the very foot of the Monte Pirchiriano, for so the mountain is called, and can see the front of the building — ^which is none other than the famous sanctuary of S. Michele, commonly called '' della Chiusa,'' from the wall built here by Desiderius, king of the Lom- bards, to protect his kingdom from Charlemagne. The history of the sanctuary is briefly as follows : — At the close of the tenth century, when Otho III was Emperor of Germany, a certain Hugh de Montboissier, a noble of Auvergne, commonly called '' Hugh the Unsewn '' {lo sdruscito), was commanded by the Pope to found a monastery in expiation of some grave offence. He chose for his site the summit of the Monte Pirchiriano in the valley of Susa, being attracted partly by the fame of a church already built there by a recluse of Ravenna, Giovanni Vincenzo by name, and partly by the striking nature of the situation. Hugh de Montboissier when returning from Rome to France with Isengarde his wife, would, as a matter of course, pass through the valley of Susa. The two^ — perhaps when stopping to dine at S. Ambrogio — would look up and observe the church founded by Giovanni Vincenzo : they had got to build a monastery somewhere ; it would very likely, therefore, occur to them that they could not perpetuate their names better than by choosing this site, which was on a much travelled road, and on which a fine building would show to advantage. If my view is correct, we have here an illustration of a fact which is continually observable — namely, that all things which come to much, whether they be books, buildings, pictures, music, or living beings, are suggested by others of their own kind. It is always the most successful, like Handel and Shake- S8 Alps and Sanctuaries speare, who owe most to their forerunners, in spite of the modifications with which their works descend. Giovanni Vincenzo had built his church about the year 987. It is maintained by some that he had been Bishop of Ravenna, but Claretta gives sufficient reason for thinking otherwise. In the '' Cronaca Clusina " it is said that he had for some years previously lived as a recluse on the Monte Caprasio, to the north of the present Monte Pirchiriano ; but that one night he had a vision, in which he saw the summit of Monte Pirchi- riano enveloped in heaven-descended flames, and on this founded a church there, and dedicated it to St. Michael. This is the origin of the name Pirchiriano, which means TTvp Kvplavovy or the Lord's fire. The fame of the heavenly flames and the piety of pilgrims brought in enough money to complete the building — which, to judge from the remains of it em- bodied in the later work, must have been small, but still a church, and more than a mere chapel or oratory. It was, as I have already suggested, probably imposing enough to fire the imagination of Hugh de Montboissier, and make him feel the capabilities of the situation, which a mere ordinary wayside chapel might perhaps have failed to do. Having built his church, Giovanni Vincenzo returned to his solitude on the top of Monte Caprasio, and thenceforth went backwards and forwards from one place of abode to the other. Avogadro is among those who make Giovanni Bishop, or rather Archbishop, of Ravenna, and gives the follow- ing account of the circumstances which led to his resign- ing his diocese and going to live at the top of the in- hospitable Monte Caprasio. It seems there had been a confirmation at Ravenna, during which he had accident- ally forgotten to confirm the child of a certain widow. S. Michele 89 The child, being in weakly health, died before Giovanni could repair his oversight, and this preyed upon his mind. In answer, however, to his earnest prayers, it pleased the Almighty to give him power to raise the dead child to life again : this he did, and having immediately per- formed the rite of confirmation, restored the boy to his overjoyed mother. He now became so much revered that he began to be alarmed lest pride should obtain dominion over him ; he felt, therefore, that his only course was to resign his diocese, and go and live the life of a recluse on the top of some high mountain. It is said that he suffered agonies of doubt as to whether it was not selfish of him to take such care of his own eternal welfare, at the expense of that of his flock, whom no successor could so well guide and guard from evil ; but in the end he took a reasonable view of the matter, and concluded that his first duty was to secure his own spiritual position. Nothing short of the top of a very uncomfortable moun- tain could do this, so he at once resigned his bishopric and chose Monte Caprasio as on the whole the most comfortable uncomfortable mountain he could find. The latter part of the story will seem strange to Englishmen. We can hardly fancy the Archbishop of Canterbury or York resigning his diocese and settling down quietly on the top of Scafell or Cader Idris to secure his eternal welfare. They would hardly do so even on the top of Primrose Hill. But nine hundred years ago human nature was not the same as nowadays. The valley of Susa, then little else than marsh and forest, was held by a marquis of the name of Arduin, a descendant of a French or Norman adventurer Roger, who, with a brother, also named Arduin, had come to seek his fortune in Italy at the beginning of the tenth century. Roger had a son, Arduin Glabrio, who 90 Alps and Sanctuaries recovered the valley of Susa from the Saracens, and established himself at vSusa, at the junction of the roads that come down from Mont Cenis and the Mont Genevre. He built a castle here which commanded the valley, and was his base of operations as Lord of the Marches and Warden of the Alps. Hugh de Montboissier applied to Arduin for leave to build upon the Monte Pirchiriano. Arduin was then holding his court at Avigliana, a small town near S. Ambrogio, even now singularly little altered, and full of mediaeval remains ; he not only gave his consent, but volunteered to sell a site to the monastery, so as to ensure it against future disturbance. The first church of Giovanni Vincenzo had been built upon whatever little space could be found upon the top of the mountain, without, so far as I can gather, enlarging the ground artificially. The present church — the one, that is to say, built by Hugh de Montboissier about A.D. 1000 — rests almost entirely upon stone piers and masonry. The rock has been masked by a lofty granite wall of several feet in thickness, w^hich presents something of a keep-like appearance. The spectator naturally imagines that there are rooms, &c., behind this wall, whereas in point of fact there is nothing but the staircase leading up to the floor of the church. Arches spring from this masking wall, and are continued thence until the rock is reached ; it is on the level surface thus obtained that the church rests. The true floor, therefore, does not begin till near what appears from the outside to be the top of the building. There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of the foundation of the monastery, but Claretta* inclines * " Storia diplomatica dell' antica abbazia di S. Michele della Chiusa," by Gaudenzio Claretta. Turin, 1870. Pp. 8, 9. S. Michele 91 decidedly to the date 999, as against 966, the one assigned by Mabillon and Torraneo. Claretta rehes on the discovery, by Provana, of a document in the royal archives which seems to place the matter beyond dispute. The first abbot was undoubtedly Avverto or Arveo, who established the rules of the Benedictine Order in his monastery. *' In the seven hours of daily work prescribed by the Benedictine rule/' writes Cesare Balbo, '' innumerable were the fields they ploughed, and the houses they built in deserts, while in more frequented places men were laying cultivated ground waste, and destroying buildings : innumerable, again, were the works of the holy fathers and of ancient authors which were copied and pre- served."* From this time forward the monastery received gifts in land and privileges, and became in a few years the most important religious establishment in that part of Italy. There have been several fires — one, among others, in the year 1340, which destroyed a great part of the monastery, and some of the deeds under which it held valuable grants ; but though the part inhabited by the monks may have been rebuilt or added to, the church is certainly untouched. * " Storia diplomatica dell' antica abbazia di S. Michele della Chiusa," by Gaudenzio Claretta. Turin, 1870. P. 14. Chapter VIII S. Michele (continued') I HAD often seen this wonderful pile of buildings, and had marvelled at it, as all must do who pass from Susa to Turin, but I never went actually up to it till last summer, in company with my friend and collaborateur, Mr. H. F. Jones. We reached S. Ambrogio station one sultry evening in July, and, before many minutes were over, were on the path that leads to San Pietro, a little more than an hour's walk above S. Ambrogio. In spite of what I have said about Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, we found ourselves thinking how thin and want- ing, as it were, in adipose cushion is every other country in comparison with Italy ; but the charm is enhanced in these days by the feeling that it can be reached so easily. Wednesday morning, Fleet Street ; Thursday evening, a path upon the quiet mountain side, under the overspreading chestnuts, with Lombardy at one's feet. Some twenty minutes after we had begun to climb, the sanctuary became lost to sight, large drops of thunder- rain began to fall, and by the time we reached San Pietro it was pouring heavily, and had become quite dark. An hour or so later the sky had cleared, and there was a splendid moon : opening the windows, we found our- selves looking over the tops of trees on to some lovely upland pastures, on a winding path through which we could almost fancy we saw a youth led by an angel, 92 S. Michele 93 and there was a dog with him, and he held a fish in his hand. Far below were lights from villages in the valley of the Dora. Above us rose the mountains, bathed in shadow, or glittering in the moonbeams, and there came from them the pleasant murmuring of streamlets that had been swollen by the storm. Next morning the sky was cloudless and the air in- vigorating. S. Ambrogio, at the foot of the mountain, S. MICHELE FROM S. PIETRO must be some 800 feet above the sea, and San Pietro about 1500 feet above S. Ambrogio. The sanctuary at the top of the mountain is 2800 feet above the sea-level, or about 500 feet above San Pietro. A situation more de- lightful than that of San Pietro it is impossible to con- ceive. It contains some 200 inhabitants, and lies on a ledge of level land, which is, of course, covered with the most beautifully green grass, and in spring carpeted with 94 Alps and Sanctuaries wild-flowers ; great broad-leaved chestnuts rise from out the meadows, and beneath their shade are strewn masses of sober mulberry-coloured rock ; but above all these rises the great feature of the place, from which, when it is in sight, the eyes can hardly be diverted, — I mean the sanctuary of S. Michele itself. A sketch gives but little idea of the place. In nature it appears as one of those fascinating things like the smoke from Vesuvius, or the town on the Sacro Monte at Varese, which take possession of one to the exclusion of all else, as long as they are in sight. From each point of view it becomes more and more striking. Climbing up to it from San Pietro and getting at last nearly on a level with the lower parts of the building, or again keeping to a pathway along the side of the mountain towards Avigliana, it will come as on the following page. There is a very beautiful view from near the spot where the first of these sketches is taken. We are then on the very ridge or crest of the mountain, and look down on the one hand upon the valley of the Dora going up to Susa, with the glaciers of the Mont Cenis in the background, and on the other upon the plains near Turin, with the colline bounding the horizon. Immediately beneath is seen the glaring white straight line of the old Mont Cenis road, looking much more important than the dingy narrow little strip of railroad that has super- seded it. The trains that pass along the line look no bigger than caterpillars, but even at this distance they make a great roar. If the path from which the second view is taken is followed for a quarter of an hour or so, another no less beautiful point is reached from which one can look down upon the two small lakes of Avigliana. These lakes supply Turin with water, and, I may add, S. Michele 95 v^^^^ s' t-: ::-^ -V---:;^ 7\ '>r^^-^ S. MICHELE, NEAR VIEW S. MICHELE, FROM PATH TO AVIGLIANA 96 Alps and Sanctuaries with the best water that I know of as supphed to any town. We will now return to the place from which the first of the sketches on p. 95 was taken, and proceed to the ,/^/Wt^.lC^ — "--I i r i«r«_ m Soazza and Valley of Mesocco 201 0^.^.^ — ^ ^- ■Wm ^1 «— •h ~^ rays, 1 1*^ . etc. WW zW-Wz \ i . r^j ■ WW jFnW. ^^=q- ~p~ p--j-#- F i' ^ -•ill H — I — ■ ^- iLzt -^—w- 1—1 — ^- ^ ^- How quiet and full of rest does everything appear to be. There is no dust nor glare, and hardly a sound save that of the unfaihng waterfalls, or the falhng cry with which the peasants call to one another from afar.* So much depends upon the aspect in which one sees a place for the first time. What scenery can stand, for example, a noontide glare ? Take the valley from Lanzo to Viu. It is of incredible beauty in the mornings and afternoons of briUiant days, and all day long upon a gray day ; but in the middle hours of a bright summer's day it is hardly beautiful at all, except locally in the shade under chestnuts. Buildings and towns are the only things that show well in a glare. We perhaps, therefore, thought the valley of the Moesa to be of such singular beauty on account of the day on which we saw it, but doubt whether it must not be absolutely among the most beautiful of the subalpine valleys upon the Italian side. The least interesting part is that between Bellinzona and Roveredo, but soon after leaving Roveredo the * 1 cannot give this cry in musical notation more nearly than as follows : — Accelerando, 202 ' Alps and Sanctuaries valley begins to get narrower and to assume a more mountain character. Ere long the eye catches sight of a white church tower and a massive keep, near to one another and some two thousand feet above the road. This is Santa Maria in Calanca. One can see at once that it must be an important place for such a district, but it is strange why it should be placed so high. I will say more about it later on. Presently we passed Cama, where there is an inn, and where the road branches off into the Val Calanca. Alighting here for a few minutes we saw a cane lupino — that is to say, a dun mouse-coloured dog about as large as a mastiff, and with a very large infusion of wolf blood in him. It was like finding one's self alone with a wolf — but he looked even more uncanny and ferocious than a wolf. I once saw a man walking down Fleet Street accompanied by one of these cani lupini, and noted the general attention and alarm which the dog caused. En- couraged by the landlord, we introduced ourselves to the dog at Cama, and found him to be a most sweet person, with no sense whatever of self-respect, and shrinking from no ignominy in his importunity for bits of bread. When we put the bread into his mouth and felt his teeth, he would not take it till he had looked in our eyes and said as plainly as though in words, " Are you quite sure that my teeth are not painful to you ? Do you really think I may now close my teeth upon the bread without causing you any inconvenience ? '' We assured him that we were quite comfortable, so he swallowed it down, and presently began to pat us softly with his foot to remind us that it was our turn now. Before we left, a wandering organ-grinder began to play outside the inn. Our friend the dog lifted up his voice and howled. I am sure it was with pleasure. If he had Soazza and Valley of Mesocco 203 disliked the music he would have gone away. He was not at all the kind of person who would stay a concert out if he did not like it. He howled because he was stirred to the innermost depths of his nature. On this he became intense, and as a matter of course made a fool of himself ; but he was in no way more ridiculous than an Art Professor whom I once observed as he was holding forth to a number of working men, whilst escorting them round the Italian pictures in the National Gallery. When the organ left off he cast an appealing look at Jones, and we could SOAZZA CHURCH almost hear the words, '' What is it out of ? '' coming from his eyes. We did not happen to know, so we told him that it was " Ah che la morte " from '' II Trovatore,'' and he was quite contented. Jones even thought he looked as much as to say, '' Oh yes, of course, how stupid of me ; I thought I knew it.'' He very well may have done so, but I am bound to say that I did not see this. Near to Cama is Grono, where Baedeker says there is a chapel containing some ancient frescoes. I searched Grono in vain for any such chapel. A few miles higher up, the church of Soazza makes its appearance perched upon the top of its hill, and soon afterwards the splendid 2 04 Alps and Sanctuaries ruin of Mesocco on another rock or hill which rises in the middle of the valley. The mortuary chapel of Soazza church is the subject my friend Mr. Gogin has selected for the etching at the beginning of this volume. There was a man mowing another part of the churchyard when I was there. He was so old and lean that his flesh seemed little more than parchment stretched over his bones, and he might have been almost taken for Death mowing his own acre. When he was gone some children came to play, but he had left his scythe behind him. These children were beyond my strength to draw, so I turned the subject over to Mr. Gogin's stronger hands. Children are dynamical ; churches and frescoes are statical. I can get on with statical subjects, but can do nothing with dynamical ones. Over the door and windows are two frescoes of skeletons holding mirrors in their hands, with a death's head in the mirror. This reflected head is supposed to be that of the spectator to whom death is holding up the image of what he will one day become. I do not re- member the inscription at Soazza ; the one in the Campo Santo at Mesocco is, " Sicut vos estis nos fuimus, et sicut nos sumus vos eritis.''* On my return to England I mentioned this inscrip- tion to a friend who, as a young man, had been an ex- cellent Latin scholar ; he took a panic into his head that '' eritis " was not right for the second person plural of the future tense of the verb " esse.'' Whatever it was, it was not '' eritis." This panic was speedily communi- cated to myself, and we both puzzled for some time to think what the future of '' esse " really was. At last we turned to a grammar and found that " eritis " was right after all. How skin-deep that classical training penetrates ♦ " Such as ye are, we once were, and such as we ire, ye shall be," Soazza and Valley of Mesocco 205 on which we waste so many years, and how completely w^e drop it as soon as we are left to ourselves. On the right-hand side of the door of the mortuary chapel there hangs a wooden tablet inscribed with a poem to the memory of Maria Zara. It is a pleasing poem, and begins : — '' Appena al trapassar il terzo lustro Maria Zara la sua vita fini. Se a Soazza ebbe la sua colma A Roveredo la sua tomba ... she found/' or words to that effect, but I forget the Italian. This poem is the nearest thing to an Italian rendering of '* Affliction sore long time I bore '' that I remember to have met wdth, but it is longer and more grandiose generally. Soazza is full of beautiful subjects, and indeed is the first place in the valley of the Moesa which I thought good sketching ground, in spite of the general beauty of the valley. There is an inn there quite sufficient for a bachelor artist. The clergyman of the place is a monk, and he will not let one paint on a feast-day. I was told that if I wanted to paint on a certain feast-day I had better consult him ; I did so, but was flatly refused per- mission, and that too as it appeared to me with more peremptoriness than a priest would have shown towards me. It is at Soazza that the ascent of the San Bernardino becomes perceptible ; hitherto the road has seemed to be level all the way, but henceforth the ascent though gradual is steady. Mesocco Castle looks very fine as soon as Soazza is passed, and gets finer and finer until it is actually reached. Here is the upper limit of the chestnuts, which leave off upon the lower side of Mesocco Castle. A few yards off the castle on the upper side is 2o6 Alps and Sanctuaries the ancient church of S. Crist of oro, with its huge St. Christopher on the right-hand side of the door. St. Christopher is a very favourite saint in these parts ; people call him S. Cristofano, and even S. Carpofano. I think it must be in the church of S. Cristoforo at Mesocco that the frescoes are which Baedeker writes of as being near Grono. Of these I will speak at length in the next chapter. About half or three-quarters of a mile higher up the road than the castle is Mesocco itself. Chapter XVIII Mesocco, S. Bernardino^ and S. Maria in Calanca A T the time of my first visit there was an inn kept by /~\ one Desteffanis and his wife, where I stayed nearly a month, and was made very comfortable. Last year, however, Jones and I found it closed, but did very well at the Hotel Toscani. At the Hotel Desteffanis there used to be a parrot which lived about loose and had no cage, but did exactly what it liked. Its name was Lorrito. It was a very human bird ; I saw it eat some bread and milk from its tin one day and then sidle along a pole to a place where there was a towel hanging. It took a corner of the towel in its claw, wiped its beak with it, and then sidled back again. It would sometimes come and see me at breakfast ; it got from a chair-back on to the table by dropping its head and putting its round beak on to the table first, making a third leg as it were of its head ; it would then waddle to the butter and begin helping itself. It was a great respecter of persons and knew the landlord and landlady perfectly well. It yawned just like a dog or a human being, and this not from love of imitation but from being sleepy. I do not remember to have seen any other bird yawn. It hated boys because the boys plagued it sometimes. The boys generally go barefoot in summer, and if ever a boy came near the 207 2o8 Alps and Sanctuaries door of the hotel this parrot would go straight for his toes. The most striking feature of Mesocco is the castle, which, as I have said, occupies a rock in the middle of the valley, and is one of the finest ruins in Switzerland. More interesting than the castle, however, is the church CASTLE OF MESOCCO of S. Cristoforo. Before I entered it I was struck with the fresco on the facciata of the church, which, though the facciata bears the date 1720, was painted in a style so much earlier than that of 1720 that I at first imagined I had found here another old master born out of due time ; for the fresco was in such a good state of preservation that it did not look more than 150 years old, and it was hardly Mesocco 209 likely to have been preserved when the facciata was reno- vated in 1720. When, however, my friend Jones joined me, he blew that little romance away by discovering a series of names with dates scrawled upon it from '' 1481. viii. Febraio " to the present century. The lowest part of the fresco must be six feet from the ground, and it must rise at least ten or a dozen feet more, so the writings upon it are not immediately obvious, but they will be found on looking at all closely. It is plain, therefore, that when the facciata was re- paired the original fresco was pre- served ; it cannot be, as I had sup- posed, the work of a local painter who had taken his ideas of rocks and trees from the frescoes inside the church. That I am right in supposing the curious blanc-mange- mould - looking objects on either side St. Christopher's legs to be intended for rocks will be clear to any one who has seen the frescoes inside the church, where mountains with trees and towns upon them are treated on exactly the same principle. I cannot think the artist can have been quite easy in his mind about them. On entering the church the left- hand wall is found to be covered with the most remarkable series of frescoes in the Italian Grisons. They are disposed in three rows, one above the other, occupying the whole wall of the church as far as the chancel. The top row depicts a series of incidents prior S. CRISTOFORO 2IO Alps and Sanctuaries to the Crucifixion, and is cut up by the pulpit at the chancel end. These events are treated so as to form a single picture. The second row is in several compartments. There is a saint in armour on horseback, life-size, killing a dragon, and a queen who seems to have been leading the dragon bj^ a piece of red tape buckled round its neck — unless, indeed, the dragon is supposed to have been leading the queen. The queen still holds the tape and points heaven- ward. Next to this there is a very nice saint on horse- back, who is giving a cloak to a man who is nearly naked. Then comes St. Michael trampling on the dragon, and holding a pair of scales in his hand, in which are two little souls of a man and of a woman. The dragon has a hook in his hand, and thrusting this up from under St. Michael, he hooks it on to the edge of the scale with the woman in it, and drags her down. The man, it seems, will escape. Next to this there is a compartment in which a monk is offering a round thing to St. Michael, who does not seem to care much about it ; there are other saints and martyrs in this compartment, and St. Anthony with his pig, and Sta. Lucia holding a box with two eyes in it, she being patroness of the eyesight as well as of mariners. Lastly, there is the Adoration, ruined by the pulpit. Below this second compartment are twelve frescoes, each about three and a half feet square, representing the twelve months — from a purely secular point of view. January is a man making and hanging up sausages ; February, a man chopping wood ; March, a youth pro- claiming spring with two horns to his mouth, and his hair flying all abroad ; April is a young man on horseback carrying a flower in his hand ; May, a knight, not in armour, going out hawking with his hawk on one finger, his bride on a pillion behind him, and a dog beside the Mesocco 2 1 1 horse ; June is a mower ; July, another man reaping mm FRESCO AT MESOCCO— MARCH twenty-seven ears of corn ; August, an invahd going to FRESCO AT MESOCCO— APRIL 212 Alps and Sanctuaries see his doctor ; October, a man knocking down chestnuts FRESCO AT MESOCCO— MAY from a tree and a woman catching them ; November is to .FRESCO AT MESOCCO — AUGUST n Mesocco 213 hidden and destroyed by the pulpit ; December is a butcher felHng an ox with a hatchet. We could find no signature of the artist, nor any date on the frescoes to show when they were painted ; but while looking for a signature we found a name scratched with a knife or stone, and rubbed the tracing which I reproduce, greatly reduced, here ; Jones thinks the last line was not written by Lazarus Bovollinus, but by another who signs A. T. ^^^^^=^^^ /';:\j^:::=3^^ The Boelini were one of the principal families in Mesocco. Gaspare Boelini, the head of the house, had been treacherously thrown over the castle walls and killed by order of Giovanni Giacomo Triulci in the year 1525, because as chancellor of the valley he declined to annul the purchase of the castle of Mesocco, which Triulci had already sold to the people of Mesocco, and for which he had been in great part paid. His death is recorded on a stone placed by the roadside under the castle. Examining the wall further, we found a little to the right that the same Lazzaro BovoUino (I need hardly say that " BovoUino " is another way of spelling '' Boe- 2 14 Alps and Sanctuaries I lini ") scratched his name again some sixteen years later, as follows : — ,. ,^, 1550 adj(?) 26 Decemb. morijm (?) Lazzaro Bovollino * I 15 L B 50 The handwriting is not so good as it was when he wrote his name before ; but we observed, with sym- pathy, that the writer had dropped his Latin. Close by is scratched " GuUielmo B°." The mark between the two letters L and B was the family mark of the Boelini, each family having its mark, a practice of which further examples will be given presently. We looked still more, and on the border of one of the frescoes we discovered — Veneris " 1 481 die Jcvis vii j Februarij hoines di Misochi et Soazza fecerunt fidelitatem in manibus di Johani Jacobi Triulzio," — '' The men of Mesocco and Soazza did fealty to John Jacob Triulci on Friday the 8th of February 1481." The day originally written was Thursday the 7th of February, but '' Jovis " was scratched out and " Veneris " written above, while another '' i'' was intercalated among the i's of the viij of February. We could not determine whether some hitch arose so as to cause a change of day, or whether ** Thursday " and '' viij '' were written by a mistake for *' Friday " and '' viiij," but we imagined both inscription and correction to have been contemporaneous with the event itself. It will be remembered that on the St. Christopher outside the church there is scratched " 1481. 8 Febraio " and nothing more. The mistake of Mesocco 215 the day, therefore, if it was a mistake, was made twice, and was corrected inside the church but not upon the fresco outside — perhaps because a ladder would have had to be fetched to reach it. Possibly the day had been originally fixed for Thursday the 8th, and a heavy snow- storm prevented people from coming till next day. I could not find that any one in Mesocco, not even my excellent friend Signer a Marca, the curato himself, knew anything about either the inscriptions or the cause of their being written. No one was aware even of their existence ; on borrowing, however, the history of the Valle Mesolcina by Signor Giovanni Antonio a Marca,* I found what I think will throw light upon the matter. The family of De Sax had held the valley of Mesocco for over four hundred years, and sold it in 1480 to John Jacob Triulci, who it seems tried to cheat him out of a large part of the purchase money later on ; probably this John Jacob Triulci had the frescoes painted to con- ciliate the clergy and inaugurate his entry into possession. Early in 1481 he made the inhabitants of the valley do fealty to him. I may say that as soon as he had entered upon possession, he began to oppress the people by de- manding tolls on all produce that passed the castle. This the people resisted. They were also harassed by Peter De Sax, who made incursions into the valley and seized property, being unable to get his money out of John Jacob Triulci. Other reasons that make me think the frescoes were painted in 1480 are as follows. The spurs worn by the young men in the April and May frescoes (pp. 211, 212) are about the date 1460. Their facsimiles can be seen in the Tower of London with this date assigned to them. The frescoes, therefore, can hardly have been painted * Lugano, 1838. 2i6 Alps and Sanctuaries before this time ; but they were probably painted later" for in the St. Christopher there is a distinct hint at anatomy ; enough to show that the study of anatomy introduced by Leonardo da Vinci was beginning to be talked about as more or less the correct thing. This would hardly be the case before 1480, as Leonardo was not born till 1452. By February 1481 the frescoes were already painted ; this is plain because the inscription — which, I think, may be taken as a record made at the time that fealty was done — is scratched over them. Peter De Sax, if he was selling his property, is not likely to have had the frescoes painted just before he was going away ; I think it most likely, therefore, that they were painted in 1480, when the valley of Mesocco passed from the hands of the De Sax family to those of the Triulci. Underneath the inscription about the doing fealty there is scratched in another hand, and very likely years after the event it commemorates — " 1548 fu liberata la Vallata.'' This date is contradicted (and, I believe, corrected) by another inscription hard by, also in another hand, which says — ** 1549. ^ La valle di Misocho compro la liberta da casa Triulcia per 2400 scuti." This inscription is signed thus : — Carlo a Marca had written his name /<^A2,3 alone with three others in 1606 on another r' — — ■ M part of the frescoes. Here are the signa- carioam tures : — 1623. 1 /^o^ rti A H 3 A- m SIGNATURES Mesocco 217 Two of these signatures belong to members of the Triulci family, as appears by the trident, which translates the name. The T in each case is doubtless for '' Triulci/' Four j^ears earlier still, Carlo a Marca had written his name, with that of his wife or fiancee, on the fresco of St. Christopher on the facciata of the church, for we found there — Carlo a Marca. ) Margherita dei Paglioni. There is one other place where his name appears, or rather a part of it, for the inscription is half hidden by a gallery, erected probably in the last century. The a Marca family still flourish in Mesocco. The ciirato is an a Marca, so is the postmaster. On the walls of a house near the convent there is an inscription to the effect that it was given by his fellow-townsmen to a member of the a Marca family, and the best work on the history of the valley is the work of Giovanni Antonio a Marca from which I have already quoted. Returning to the frescoes, we found that the men of Soazza and Mesocco did fealty again to John Jacob Triulci on the feast of St. Bartholomew, the 24th day of August 1503 ; this I believe to have been the son of the original purchaser, but am not certain ; if so, he is the Triulci who had Gaspare Boelini thrown down from the castle walls. The people seem by another inscription to have done fealty again upon the same day of the following year. On the St. Christopher we found one date, 1530, scratched on the right ankle, and several of 1607, apparently done at one time. One date was scratched in the left-hand corner — 1498 il Conte di (Misocho?) 2i8 Alps and Sanctuaries I There are also other dates — 1627, 1633, 1635, 1626 ;■ and right across the fresco there is written in red chalk, in a bold sixteenth or seventeenth century handwriting — *' II parlar di li homini da bene deve valer piii che quelle dcgli altri." — '' The word of a man of substance ought to carry j more weight than that of other people ; " and again — *' Non ha la fede ognun come tu chredi ; Non chreder almen [quello?] che non vedi " — '' People are not so worthy of being believed as you think they are ; do not believe anything that you do not see yourself.'' Big with our discoveries, w^e returned towards our inn, Jones leaving me sketching by the roadside. Presently an elderly English gentleman of some importance, judging from his manner, came up to me and entered into conversation. Englishmen do not often visit Mesocco, and I was rather surprised. '* Have you seen that horrid fresco of St. Christopher down at that church there ? said he, pointing towards it. I said I had. '* It's very bad," said he decidedly ; ''it was painted in the year 1725." I had been through all that myself, and I was a little cross into the bargain, so I said, '* No ; the fresco is very good. It is of the fifteenth century, and the facciata w^as restored in 1720, not in 1725. The old fresco was preserved." The old gentleman looked a little scared. " Oh," said he, '* I know nothing about art — but I will see you again at the hotel ; " and left me at once. I never saw him again. Who he was, where he came from, how he departed, I do not know. He was the only English- man I saw during my stay of some four weeks at Mesocco. On the first day of my first visit to Mesocco in 1879, I had gone on to S. Bernardino, and just before getting there, looking down over the great stretches of pasture* P Mesocco 219 land above S. Giacomo, could see that there was a storm raging lower down in the valley about where Mesocco should be ; I never saw such inky blackness in clouds before, and the conductor of the diligence said that he had seen nothing like it. Next morning we learnt that a water-spout had burst on the mountain above Anzone, a hamlet of Mesocco, and that the water had done a great deal of damage to the convent at Mesocco. Returning a few days later, I saw where the torrent had flowed by the mud upon the grass, but could not have believed such a stream of water (running with the velocity with which it must have run) to have been possible under any circum- stances in that place unless I had actually seen its traces. It carried great rocks of several cubic yards as though they had been small stones, and among other mischief it had knocked down the garden wall of the convent of S. Rocco and covered the garden with debris. As I looked at it I remembered what Signor Bullo had told me at Faido about the inundations of 1868, '' It was not the great rivers," he said, '' which did the damage : it was the ruscelli " or small streams. So in revolutions it is not the heretofore great people, but small ones swollen under unusual circumstances who are most conspicuous and do most damage. Padre Bernardino, of the convent of S. Rocco, asked me to make him a sketch of the effect of the inundation, which I was delighted to do. It was not, however, exactly what he wanted, and, moreover, it got spoiled in the mounting, so I did another and he returned me the first with an inscription upon it which I reproduce below. First came the words — fl ^^ G Ou ia J OJU t ( soc co^ 2 20 Alps and Sanctuaries ^_^ Then came my sketch ; and then — ^1 The Enghsh of which is as follows : — '' View of the church, garden, and hospice of S. Rocco, after the visita- tion inflicted upon them by the sad torrent of Anzone, on the unhallowed evening of the 4th of August 1879/' I regret that the *' no '' of Padre Bernardino's name, through being written in faint ink, was not reproduced in my facsimile. I doubt whether Padre Bernardino would have got the second sketch out of me, if I had not liked the inscription he had written on the first so much that I wanted to be possessed of it. Besides, he wrote me a note addressed '' all' egregio pittore S. Butler." To be called an egregious painter was too much for me, so I did the sketch. I was once addressed as '' L'esimio pittore." I think this is one degree better even than " egregio." The damage which torrents can do must be seen to be believed. There is not a streamlet, however innocent looking, which is not liable occasionally to be turned into a furious destructive agent, carrying ruin over the pastures which at ordinary times it irrigates. Perhaps in old times people deified and worshipped streams because they were afraid of them. Every year each one of the great Alpine roads will be interrupted at some point or another by the tons of stones and gravel that are swept over it perhaps for a hundred yards together. I have seen the St. Gothard road more than once soon after these inter- ruptions and could not have believed such damage possible; Mesocco 2 2 1 in 1869 people would still shudder when they spoke of the inundations of 1868. It is curious to note how they will now say that rocks which have evidently been in their present place for hundreds of years, were brought there in 1868 ; as for the torrent that damaged S. Rocco when I was in the valley of Mesocco, it shaved off the strong parapet of the bridge on either side clean and sharp, but the arch was left standing, the flood going right over the top. Many scars are visible on the mountain tops which are clearly the work of similar water-spouts, and altogether the amount of solid matter which gets taken down each year into the valleys is much greater than we generally think. Let any one watch the Ticino flowing into the Lago Maggiore after a few days' heavy rain, and consider how many tons of mud per day it must carry into and leave in the lake, and he will wonder that the gradual fiUing-up process is not more noticeable from age to age than it is. Anzone, whence the sad torrent derives its name, is an exquisitely lovely little hamlet close to Mesocco. Another no less beautiful village is Doera, on the other side of the Moesa, and half a mile lower down than Mesocco. Doera overlooks the castle, the original hexa- gonal form of which can be made out from this point. It must have been much of the same plan as the castle at Eynsford in Kent — of which, by the way, I was once assured that the oldest inhabitant could not say " what it come from.'' While I was copying the fresco outside the chapel at Doera, some charming people came round me. I said the fresco was very beautiful. '' Son persuaso," said the spokesman solemnly. Then he said there were some more pictures inside and we had better see them ; so the keys were brought. We said that they too were very beautiful. " Siam persuasi," was the reply in chorus. 222 Alps and Sanctuaries j Then they said that perhaps we should hke to buy them and take them away with us. This was a more serious matter, so we explained that they were very beautiful, but that these things had a charm upon the spot which they would lose if removed elsewhere. The nice people at once replied, '' Siam persuasi,'' and so they left us. It was like a fragment from one of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas. For the rest, Mesocco is beautifully situated and sur- rounded by waterfalls. There is a man there who takes the cows and goats out in the morning for their several owners in the village, and brings them home in the evening. He announces his departure and his return by blowing a twisted shell, like those that Tritons blow on fountains or in pictures ; it yields a softer sound than a horn ; when his shell is heard people go to the cow-house and let the cows out ; they need not drive them to join the others, they need only open the door ; and so in the evening, they only want the sound of the shell to tell them that they must open the stable-door, for the cows or goats when turned from the rest of the mob make straight to their own abode. There are two great avalanches which descend every spring ; one of them when I was there last was not quite gone until September ; these avalanches push the air before them and compress it, so that a terrific wind descends to the bottom of the valley and mounts up on to the village of Mesocco. One year this wind snapped a whole grove of full-grown walnuts across the middle of their trunks, and carried stones and bits of wood up against the houses at some distance off ; it tore off part of the covering from the cupola of the church, and twisted the weathercock awry in the fashion in which it may still be seen, unless it has been mended since I left. S. Bernardino 223 The judges at Mesocco get four francs a day when they are wanted, but unless actually sitting they get nothing. No wonder the people are so nice to one another and quarrel so seldom. The walk from Mesocco to S. Bernardino is delightful ; it should take about three hours. For grassy slopes and flowers I do not know a better, more especially from S. Giacomo onward. In the woods above S. Giacomo there are some bears, or were last year. Five were known — a father, mother, and three young ones — but two were killed. They do a good deal of damage, and the Canton offers a reward for their destruction. The Grisons is the only Swiss Canton in which there are bears still re- maining. San Bernardino, 5500 feet above the sea, pleased me less than Mesocco, but there are some nice bits in it. The Hotel Brocco is the best to go to. The village is about two hours below the top of the pass ; the walk to this is a pleasant one. The old Roman road can still be seen in many places, and is in parts in an excellent state even now. San Bernardino is a fashionable watering- place and has a chalybeate spring. In the summer it often has as many as two or three thousand visitors, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the Lago Maggiore and even from Milan. It is not so good a sketching ground — at least so I thought — as some others of a similar character that I have seen. It is not comparable, for example, to Fusio. It is little visited by the English. On our way down to Bellinzona again we determined to take S. Maria in Calanca, and accordingly were dropped by the diligence near Gabbiolo, whence there is a path across the meadows and under the chestnuts which leads to Verdabbio. There are some good bits near the church of this village, and some quaint modern frescoes on a 2 24 ^^P^ ^^^ Sanctuaries public-house a little off the main footpath, but there is no accommodation. From this village the path ascends rapidly for an hour or more, till just as one has made almost sure that one must have gone wrong and have got too high, or be on the track to an alpe only, one finds one's self on a wide beaten path with walls on either side. We are now on a level with S. Maria itself, and turning sharply to the left come in a few minutes right upon the massive keep and the campanile, which are so striking when seen from down below. They are much more striking ■^\v^-^ _-w'^ -^-v. ~v^ ^.y^i ^/ -^ 3^ BS^ ~~ 7^ \^'^ •)i' 1 , ^JI^H w^ ^~~^-\^ ' "" '' '^-"""^^ ^ h • •'/■• 1 -■ ,^.. ^^ .,^^__ S^ i1 ^^s i* '-^-^ ,r^.» .1 ^,^ 9 Big ^ -.y 1 ^^^^^ ^H ^^ E^BS^^mHl^^ i^^-*''^^^ T^^'T'^i.'-' ^^B ^ ' 'y-''l:'tlr\^(^ APPROACH TO STA. MARIA when seen from close at hand. The sketch I give does not convey the notion — as what sketch can convey it ? — that one is at a great elevation, and it is this which gives its especial charm to S. Maria in Calanca. The approach to the church is beautiful, and the church itself full of interest. The village was evidently at one time a place of some importance, though it is not easy to understand how it came to be built in such a situation. Even now it is unaccountably large. There is no accommodation for sleeping, but an artist who could rough it would, I think, find a good deal that he would like. On p. 226 is a sketch of the church and tower as seen Sta. Maria 225 from the opposite side to that from which the sketch on p. 224 was taken. The church seems to have been very much altered, if indeed the body of it was not entirely rebuilt, in 1618 — a date which is found on a pillar inside the church. On going up into the gallery at the west end of the church, there is found a Nativity painted in fresco by a local artist, one Agostino Duso of Roveredo, in the STA. MARIA, APPROACH TO CHURCH year 1727, and better by a good deal than one would anticipate from the epoch and habitat of the painter. On the other side of the same gallery there is a Death of the Virgin, also by the same painter, but not so good. On the left-hand side of the nave going towards the altar there is a remarkable picture of the battle of Lepanto, signed " Georgius Wilhelmus Groesner Constantiensis fecit A.D. 1649,'' ^^d with an inscription to the effect that it was painted for the confraternity of the most holy 2 26 Alps and Sanctuaries Rosary, and by them set up ''in this church of St. Mary commonly called of Calancha." The picture displays very little respect for academic principles, but is full of spirit and sensible painting. Above this picture there hang two others — also very interesting, from being examples of, as it were, the last groans of true art while being stifled by academicism FRONT VIEW OF STA. MARIA —or it may be the attempt at a new birth, which was nevertheless doomed to extinction by academicians while yet in its infancy. Such pictures are to be found all over Italy. Sometimes, as in the case of the work of Dedo- menici, they have absolute merit— more commonly they have the relative merit of showing that the painter was trying to look and feel for himself, and a picture does much when it conveys this impression. It is a small still voice, which, however small, can be heard through I Sta. Maria 227 and above the roar of cant which tries to drown it. We want a book about the unknown ItaHan painters in out- of-the-way Itahan valleys during the times of the deca- dence of art. There is ample material for one who has the time at his command. We lunched at the house of the incumbent, a monk, who was very kind to us. We found him drying French marigold blossoms to colour his risotto with during the winter. He gave us some excellent wine, and took us over the tower near the church. Nothing can be more lovely than the monk's garden. If aesthetic people are ever going to get tired of sun-flowers and lilies, let me suggest to them that they will find a weary utterness in chicory and seed onions which they should not overlook ; I never felt chicory and seed onions till I was in the monk's garden at S. Maria in Calanca. All about the terrace or artificial level ground on which the church is placed, there are admirable bits for painting, and if there was only accommodation so that one could get up as high as the alpi, I can fancy few better places to stay at than S. Maria in Calanca. Chapter XIX The Mendrisiotto WE stayed a day or two at Bellinzona, and then went on over the Monte Cenere to Lugano. My first acquaintance with the Monte Cenere was made some seven-and-thirty years ago when I was a small boy. I remember with what delight I found wild narcissuses growing in a meadow upon the top of it, and was allowed to gather as many as I liked. It was not till some thirty years afterwards that I again passed over the Monte Cenere in summer time, but I well remembered the nar- cissus place, and wondered whether there would still be any of them growing there. Sure enough when we got to the top, there they were as thick as cowslips in an English meadow. At Lugano, having half-an-hour to spare, we paid our respects to the glorious frescoes by Bernardino Luini, and to the fagade of the duomo, and then went on to Mendrisio. The neighbourhood of Mendrisio, or, as it is called, the " Mendrisiotto/' is a rich one. Mendrisio itself should be the headquarters ; there is an excellent hotel there, the Hotel Mendrisio, kept by Signora Pasta, which cannot be surpassed for comfort and all that makes a hotel pleasant to stay at. I never saw a house where the arrangements were more perfect ; even in the hottest weather I found the rooms always cool and airy, and the nights never oppressive. Part of the secret of this 228 The Mendrisiotto 229 may be that Mendrisio lies higher than it appears to do, and the hotel, which is situated on the slope of the hill, takes all the breeze there is. The lake of Lugano is about 950 feet above the sea. The river falls rapidly between Mendrisio and the lake, while the hotel is high above the river. I do not see, therefore, how the hotel can be less than 1200 feet above the sea-line ; but whatever height it is, I never felt the heat oppressive, though on more than one occasion I have stayed there for weeks together in July and August. Mendrisio being situated on the railway between Lugano and Como, both these places are within easy reach. Milan is only a couple of hours off, and Varese a three or four hours' carriage drive. It lies on the very last slopes of the Alps, so that whether the visitor has a fancy for mountains or for the smiling beauty of the colline, he may be equally gratified. There are excellent roads in every direction, and none of them can be taken without its leading to some new feature of interest ; I do not think any English family will regret spending a fortnight at this charming place. Most visitors to Mendrisio, however, make it a place of passage only, en roitte for the celebrated hotel on the Monte Generoso, kept by Dr. Pasta, Signora Pasta's brother-in-law. The Monte Generoso is very fine ; I know few places of which I am fonder ; whether one looks down at evening upon the lake of Lugano thousands of feet below, and then lets the eye wander upward again and rest upon the ghastly pallor of Monte Rosa, or whether one takes the path to the Colma and saunters over green slopes carpeted with wild-flowers, and studded with the gentlest cattle, all is equally delightful. What a sense of vastness and freedom is there on the broad heaving slopes of these subalpine spurs. They are just 230 Alps and Sanctuaries high enough without being too high. The South Downs are very good, and by making beheve very much I have sometimes been half able to fancy when upon them that I might be on the Monte Generoso, but they are only good as a quartet is good if one cannot get a symphony. I think there are more wild-flowers upon the Monte Generoso than upon any other that I know, and among them numbers of beautiful wild narcissuses, as on the Monte Cenere. At the top of the Monte Generoso, among the rocks that jut out from the herbage, there grows — unless it has been all uprooted — the large yellow auricula, and this I own to being my favourite mountain wild- flower. It is the only flower which, I think, fairly beats cowslips. Here too I heard, or thought I heard, the song of that most beautiful of all bird songsters, the passero solitario, or solitary sparrow — if it is a sparrow, which I should doubt. Nobody knows what a bird can do in the way of song until he has heard a passero solitario. I think they still have one at the Hotel Mendrisio, but am not sure. I heard one there once, and can only say that I shall ever remember it as the most beautiful warbling that I ever heard come out of the throat of bird. All other bird singing is loud, vulgar, and unsympathetic in comparison. The bird itself is about as big as a starling, and is of a dull blue colour. It is easily tamed, and becomes very much attached to its master and mistress, but it is apt to die in confinement before very long. It fights all others of its own species ; it is now a rare bird, and is doomed, I fear, ere long to extinction, to the regret of all who have had the pleasure of its acquaintance. The Italians are very fond of them, and Professor Vela told me they will even act like a house dog and set up a cry if any The Mendrisiotto 231 strangers come. The one I saw flew instantly at my finger when I put it near its cage, but I was not sure whether it did so in anger or play. I thought it liked being listened to, and as long as it chose to sing I was delighted to stay, whereas as a general rule I want singing birds to leave off.* People say the nightingale's song is so beautiful ; I am ashamed to own it, but I do not like it. It does not use the diatonic scale. A bird should either make no attempt to sing in tune, or it should succeed in doing so. Larks are Wordsworth, and as for canaries, I would almost sooner hear a pig having its nose ringed, or the grinding of an axe. Cuckoos are all right ; they sing in tune. Rooks are lovely ; they do not pretend to tune. Seagulls again, and the plaintive creatures that pity them- selves on moorlands, as the plover and the curlew, or the birds that lift up their voices and cry at eventide when there is an eager air blowing upon the mountains and the last yellow in the sky is fading — I have no words with which to praise the music of these people. Or listen to the chuckling of a string of soft young ducks, as they glide single-file beside a ditch under a hedgerow, so close together that they look like some long brown serpent, and say what sound can be more seductive. * Butler always regretted that he did not find out about Medea CoUeone's passero solitario in time to introduce it into Alps and Sanctu- aries. Medea was the daughter of Bartolomeo Colleone, the famous condottiere, whose statue adorns the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. Like Catullus's Lesbia, whose immortal passer Butler felt sure was also a passero solitario, she had the misfortune to lose her pet. Its little body can still be seen in the Capella Colleone, up in the old town at Bergamo, lying on a little cushion on the top of a little column, and behind it there stands a little weeping willow tree whose leaves, cut out in green paper, droop over the corpse. In front of the column is the inscription, " Passer Medeae Colleonis," and the whole is covered by a glass shade about eight inches high. Mr. Festing Jones has kindly allowed me to borrow this note from his " Diary of a Tour through North Italy to Sicily."— R. A. S. 232 Alps and Sanctuaries Many years ago I remember thinking that the birds in New Zealand approached the diatonic scale more nearly than European birds do. There was one bird, I think it was the New Zealand thrush, but am not sure, which used to sing thus : — i EL =P2Z T=t -Q ^ ZMZHW- It IQI -•— E- I was always wanting it to go on :- -G^-L-p- -SZ=^\L EE H 1 1 h- -l—H m w ^r EE etc. But it never got beyond the first four bars. Then there w^as another which I noticed the first day I landed, more than twenty years since, and whose song descended by very nearly perfect semitones as follow^s : — Andante. but the semitones are here and there in this bird's song a trifle out of tune, whereas in that of the other there was no departure from the diatonic scale. Be this, how- ever, as it may, none of these please me so much as the passero solitario. The only mammals that I can call to mind at this moment as showing any even apparent approach to an Th6 Mendrisiotto 233 appreciation of the diatonic scale are the elephant and the rhinoceros. The braying (or whatever is the technical term for it) of an elephant comprises a pretty accurate third, and is of a rich mellow tone with a good deal of brass in it. The rhinoceros grunts a good fourth, begin- ning, we will say, on C, and dropping correctly on to the G below. The Monte Generoso, then, is a good place to stay a few days at, but one soon comes to an end of it. The top of a mountain is like an island in the air, one is cooped up upon it unless one descends ; in the case of the Monte Generoso there is the view of the lake of Lugano, the walk to the Colma, the walk along the crest of the hill by the farm, and the view over Lombardy, and that is all. If one goes far down one is haunted by the recollection that when one is tired in the even- ing one will have all one's climbing to do, and, beautiful as the upper parts of the Monte Generoso are, there is little for a painter there except to study cattle, goats, and clouds. I recommend a traveller, therefore, by all means to spend a day or two at the hotel on the Monte Generoso, but to make his longer sojourn down below at Mendrisio, the walks and ex- cursions from which are endless, and all of them beautiful. Among the best of these is the ascent of the Monte Bisbino, which can be easily made in a day from Men- drisio ; I found no difficulty in doing it on foot all the way there and back a few years ago, but I now prefer to take a trap as far as Sagno, and do the rest of the journey on foot, returning to the trap in the evening. Every one who knows North Italy knows the Monte Bisbino. It is a high pyramidal mountain with what seems a little white chapel on the top that glistens like a star when the sun is full upon it. From Como it is seen most plainly, 2 34 Alps and Sanctuaries but it is distinguishable over a very large part of Lom- bardy when the sun is right ; it is frequently ascended from Como and Cernobbio, but I believe the easiest way of getting up it is to start from Mendrisio with a trap as far as Sagno. A mile and a half or so after leaving Mendrisio there is a village called Castello on the left. Here, a little off the road on the right hand, there is the small church of S. Cristoforo, of great antiquity, containing the remains of some early frescoes, I should think of the thirteenth or early part of the fourteenth century. As usual, people have scratched their names on the frescoes. We found one name '' Battista," with the date '' 1485 '' against it. It is a mistake to hold thatl the English scribble their names about more than other" people. The Italians like doing this just as well as we do. Let the reader go to Varallo, for example, and note the names scratched up from the beginning of the six- teenth century to the present day, on the walls of the chapel containing the Crucifixion. Indeed, the Italians seem to have begun the habit long before we did, for we very rarely find names scratched on English buildings so long ago as the fifteenth century, whereas in Italy they are common. The earliest I can call to mind in England at this moment (of course, excepting the names written in the Beauchamp Tower) is on the church porch at Harlington, "where there is a name cut and dated in one of the early years of the seventeenth century. I never even in Italy saw a name scratched on a wall with an earlier date than 1480. Why is it, I wonder, that these little bits of soul- fossil, as it were, touch us so much when we come across them ? A fossil does not touch us — while a fly in amber does. Why should a fly in amber interest us and give us The Mendrisiotto 235 a slightly solemn feeling for a moment, when the fossil of a megatherium bores us ? I give it up ; but few of us can see the lightest trifle scratched off casually and idly long ago, without liking it better than almost any great thing of the same, or ever so much earlier date, done with purpose and intention that it should remain. So when we left S. Crist of oro it was not the old church, nor the fres- coes, but the name of the idle fellow who had scratched his name " Battista . . . 1485,'' that we carried away with us. A little bit of old world life and entire w^ant of earnestness, preserved as though it were a smile in amber. In the Val vSesia, several years ago, I bought some tobacco that was wrapped up for me in a yellow old MS. which I in due course examined. It was dated 1797, and was a leaf from the book in which a tanner used to enter the skins which his customers brought him to be tanned. *' October 24," he writes, '* I received from Signora Silvestre, called the widow, the skin of a goat branded in the neck. — (I am not to give it up unless they give me proof that she is the rightful owner.) Mem. I delivered it to Mr. Peter Job (Signor Pietro Giobbe). *' October 27. — I receive two small skins of a goat, very thin and branded in the neck, from Giuseppe Gianote of Campertogno. *' October 29. — I receive three skins of a chamois from Signor Antonio Cinere of Alagna, branded in the neck.'' Then there is a subsequent entry written small. " I receive also a little gray marmot's skin weighing thirty ounces." I am sorry I did not get a sheet with the tanner's name. I am sure he was an excellent person, and might have been trusted with any number of skins, branded 236 Alps and Sanctuaries or unbranded. It is nearly a hundred years ago since that httle gray marmot's skin was tanned in the Val Sesia ; but the wretch will not lie quiet in his grave ; he walks, and has haunted me once a month or so any time this ten years past. I will see if I cannot lay him by prevailing on him to haunt some one or other of my readers. Chapter XX Sanctuary on Monte Bisbino BUT to return to S. Cristoforo. In the Middle Ages there was a certain duke who held this part of the country and was notorious for his exactions. One Christmas eve when he and his whole household had assembled to their devotions, the people rose up against them and murdered them inside the church. After this tragedy the church was desecrated, though monuments have been put up on the outside walls even in recent years. There is a fine bit of early religious sculpture over the door, and the traces of a fresco of Christ walking upon the water, also very early. Returning to the road by a path of a couple of hundred yards, we descended to cross the river, and then ascended again to Morbio Superiore. The view from the piazza in front of the church is very fine, extending over the whole Mendrisiotto, and reaching as far as Varese and the Lago Maggiore. Below is Morbio Inferiore, a place of singular beauty. A couple of Italian friends were with us, one of them Signor Spartaco Vela, son of Professor Vela. He called us into the church and showed us a beautiful altar-piece — a Madonna with saints on either side, apparently moved from some earlier church, and, as we all agreed, a very fine work, though we could form no idea who the artist was. From Morbio Superiore the ascent is steep, and it 237 238 Alps and Sanctuaries will take half-an-hour or more to reach the level bit of road close to Sagno. This, again, commands the most exquisite views, especially over Como, through the trunks of the trees. Then comes Sagno itself, the last village of the Canton Ticino and close to the Italian frontier. There is no inn with sleeping accommodation here, but if there was, Sagno would be a very good place to stay at. They say that some of its inhabitants some- times smuggle a pound or two of tobacco across the Italian frontier, hiding it in the fern close to the boundary, and TOP OF MONTE BISBINO whisking it over the line on a dark night, but I know not what truth there is in the allegation ; the people struck me as being above the average in respect of good looks and good breeding — and the average in those parts is a very high one. Immediately behind Sagno the old paved pilgrim's road begins to ascend rapidly. We followed it, and in half-an-hour reached the stone marking the Itahan boundary ; then comes some level walking, and then on turning a corner the monastery at the top of the Monte Bisbino is caught sight of. It still looks small, but one can now see what an important building it Sanctuary on Monte Bisbino 239 really is, and how different from the mere chapel which it appears to be when seen from a distance. The sketch which I give is taken from about a mile further on than the place where the summit is first seen. Here some men joined us who lived in a hut a few hundred feet from the top of the mountain and looked after the cattle there during the summer. It is at their alpe that the last water can be obtained, so w^e resolved to stay there and eat the provisions we had brought with us. For the benefit of travellers, I should say they will find the water by opening the door of a kind of outhouse ; this covers the water and prevents the cows from dirtying it. There will be a wooden bowl floating on the top. The water outside is not drinkable, but that in the outhouse is excellent. The men were very good to us ; they knew me, having seen me pass and watched me sketching in other years. It had unfortunately now begun to rain, so we were glad of shelter : they threw faggots on the fire and soon kindled a blaze ; when these died down and it was seen that the sparks clung to the kettle and smouldered on it, they said that it would rain much, and they were right. It poured during the hour we spent in dining, after which it only got a little better ; we thanked them, and went up five or six hundred feet till the monastery at length loomed out suddenly upon us from the mist, w^hen we were close to it but not before. There is a restaurant at the top which is open for a few days before and after a festa, but generally closed ; it was open now, so we went in to dry ourselves. We found rather a roughish lot assembled, and imagined the smuggling element to preponderate over the religious, but nothing could be better than the way in which they treated us. There was one gentleman, however, who was 240 Alps and Sanctuaries no smuggler, but who had Hved many years in London and had now settled down at Rovenna, just below on the lake of Como. He had taken a room here and fur- nished it for the sake of the shooting. He spoke perfect English, and would have none but English things about him. He had Cockle's antibilious pills, and the la? numbers of the '' Illustrated London News '' and '' Morris,; ing Chronicle ; " his bath and bath-towels were English, and there was a box of Huntley & Palmer's biscuits oui his dressing-table. He was delighted to see some Englishmen, and showed us everything that was to be TABLE ON MONTE BISBINO Sanctuary on Monte Bisbino 241 seen — among the rest the birds he kept in cages to lure those that he intended to shoot. He also took us behind the church, and there we found a very beautiful marble statue of the Madonna and child, an admirable work, with painted eyes and the dress gilded and figured. What an extraordinary number of fine or, at the least, interesting things one finds in Italy which no one knows anything about. In one day, poking about at random, we had seen some early frescoes at S. Crist of oro, an excellent work at Morbio, and here was another fine thing sprung upon us. It is not safe ever to pass a church in Italy without exploring it carefully. The church may be new and for the most part full of nothing but what is odious, but there is no knowing what fragment of earlier w^ork one may not find preserved. Signor Barelli, for this was our friend's name, now gave us some prints of the sanctuary, one of which I re- produce on p. 240. Behind the church there is a level piece of ground with a table and stone seats round it. The view from here in fine weather is very striking. As it was, how^- ^er, it was perhaps hardly ^ss fine than in clear weather, for the clouds had now raised themselves a little, though very little, above the sanctuary, but here and there lay all ragged down below us, and cast beautiful reflected lights upon the lake and town of Como. Above, the heavens were still black and lowering. Over Q CHAPEL OF S. NICOLAO !1 24.2 Alps and Sanctuaries against us was the Monte Generoso, very sombre, and scarred with snow-white torrents ; below, the dull, sullen I slopes of the Monte Bisbino, and the lake of Como ; further | on, the Mendrisiotto and the blue-black plains of Lombardy . I have been at the top of the Monte Bisbino several times, but never w^as more impressed with it. At all times, however, it is a marvellous place. Coming down we kept the ridge of the hill instead of taking the path by which we ascended. Beautiful views of the monastery are thus obtained. The flowers in |j spring must be very varied ; and we still found two or three large kinds of gentians and any number of cyclamens. Presently Vela dug up a fern root of the common Poly- podmm vulgare ; he scraped it with his knife and gave us some to eat. It is not at all bad, and tastes very much hke hquorice. Then we came upon the little chapel of S. Nicolao. I do not know whether there is anything good inside or no. Then we reached Sagno and returned to Mendrisio ; as we re-crossed the stream between Morbio Superiore and Castello we found it had become a raging torrent, capable of any villainy. Chapter XXI A Day at the Cantine NEXT day we went to breakfast with Professor Vela, the father of my friend Spartaco, at Ligor- netto. After we had admired the many fine works which Professor Vela's studio contains, it was agreed that we should take a walk by S. Agata, and spend the after- noon at the cantine, or cellars where the wine is kept. Spartaco had two painter friends staying with him whom I already knew, and a young lady, his cousin ; so we all went together across the meadows. I think we started about one o'clock, and it was some three or four by the time we got to the cantine, for we kept stopping con- tinually to drink wine. The two painter visitors had a fine comic vein, and enlivened us continually with bits of stage business which were sometimes uncommonly droll. We were laughing incessantly, but carried very little away with us except that the drier one of the two, who was also unfortunately deaf, threw himself into a rhapsodical attitude with his middle finger against his cheek, and his eyes upturned to heaven, but to make sure that his finger should stick to his cheek he just wetted the end of it against his tongue first. He did this with unruffled gravity, and as if it were the only thing to do under the circumstances. The young lady who was with us all the time enjoyed everything just as much as we did ; once, indeed, she 243 244 Alps and Sanctuaries thought they were going a httle too far — not as among themselves — but considering that there were a couple of earnest-minded Englishmen with them : the pair had begun a short performance which certainly did look, as if it might develop into something a little hazardous. '' Minga far tutto/' she exclaimed rather promptly — *' Don't do all/' So what the rest would have been we shall never know. Then we came to some precipices, whereon it at once occurred to the two comedians that they would commit suicide. The pathetic way in which they shared the contents of their pockets among us, and came back more than once to give little additional parting messages which occurred to them just as they were about to take the fatal plunge, was irresistibly comic, and was the more remarkable for the spontaneousness of the whole thing and the admirable way in which the pair played into one another's hands. The deaf one even played his deafness, making it worse than it was so as to heighten the comedy. By and by we came to a stile which they pretended to have a delicacy in crossing, but the lady helped them over. We concluded that if these young men were average specimens of the Italian student^ — and I should say they were— the Italian character has an enormous fund of pure love of fun — not of mischievous fun, but of the very best kind of playful humour, such as I have never seen elsewhere except among Englishmen. Several times we stopped and had a bottle of wine at one place or another, till at last we came to a beautiful shady place looking down towards the lake of Lugano where we were to rest for half-an-hour or so. There was a cantina here, so of course we had more wine. In that air, and with the walk and incessant state of laughter in which we were being kept, we might drink ad libitum, A Day at the Cantine 245 and the lady did not refuse a second small hicchiere. On this our deaf friend assumed an anxious, fatherly air. He said nothing, but put his eyeglass in his eye, and looked first at the lady's glass and then at the lady with an expression at once kind, pitying, and pained ; he looked backwards and forwards from the glass to the lady more than once, and then made as though he were going to quit a scene in which it was plain he could be of no further use, throwing up his hands and ej^es like the old stew^ard in Hogarth's '' Marriage a la mode." They never seemed to tire, and every fresh incident at once sug- gested its appropriate treatment. Jones asked them whether they thought they could mimic me. '' Oh dear, yes," was the answer ; ''we have mimicked him hundreds of times," and they at once began. At last we reached Professor Vela's own cantina, and here we were to have our final bottle. There were several other cantine hard by, and other parties that had come like ourselves to take a walk and get some wine. The people bring their evening meal with them up to the cantina and then sit on the wall outside, or go to a rough table and eat it. Instead, in fact, of bringing their wine to their dinner, they take their dinner to their wine. There was one very fat old gentleman who had got the corner of the wall to sit on, and was smoking a cigar with his coat off. He comes, I am told, every day at about three during the summer months, and sits on the wall till seven, when he goes home to bed, rising at about four o'clock next morning. He seemed exceedingly good- tempered and happy. Another family who owned a cantina adjoining Professor Vela's, had brought their evening meal with them, and insisted on giving us a quantity of excellent river cray-fish which looked like little lobsters. I may be wrong, but I thought this 246 Alps and Sanctuaries family looked at us once or twice as though they thought we were seeing a little more of the Italians absolutely chez eux than strangers ought to be allowed to see. We can only say we liked all we saw so much that we would fain see it again, and were left with the impres- sion that we were among the nicest and most loveable people in the world. I have said that the cantine are the cellars where the people keep their wine. They are caves hollowed out into the side of the mountain, and it is only certain localities that are suitable for the purpose. The cantine, therefore, of any village will be all together. The cantine of Mendrisio, for example, can be seen from the railroad, all in a row, a little before one gets into the town ; they form a place of reunion where the village or town unites to unbend itself on feste or after business hours. I do not know exactly how they manage it, but from the innermost chamber of each cantina they run a small gallery as far as they can into the mountain, and from this gallery, which may be a foot square, there issues a strong current of what, in summer, is icy cold air, while in winter it feels quite warm. I could understand the equableness of the temperature of the mountain at some yards from the surface of the ground, causing the cantina to feel cool in summer and warm in winter, but I was not prepared for the strength and iciness of the cold current that came from the gallery. I had not been in the innermost cantina two minutes before I felt thoroughly chilled and in want of a greatcoat. Having been shown the cantine, we took some of the little cups which are kept inside and began to drink. These little cups are common crockery, but at the bottom there is written, Viva Bacco, Viva ITtalia, Viva la Gioia, Viva Venere, or other such matter ; they are to be had A Day at the C amine 247 in every crockery shop throughout the Mendrisiotto, and are very pretty. We drank out of them, and ate the cray-fish which had been given us. Then seeing that it was getting late, we returned together to Besazio, and there parted, they descending to Ligornetto and we to Mendrisio, after a day which I should be glad to think would be as long and pleasantly remembered by our Italian friends as it will assuredly be by ourselves. SOMMAZZO The excursions in the neighbourhood of Mendrisio are endless. The walk, for example, to S. Agata and thence to Meride is exquisite. S. Agata itself is perfect, and commands a splendid view. Then there is the little chapel of S. Nicolao on a ledge of the red precipice. The walk to this by the village of Sommazzo is as good as any- thing can be, and the quiet terrace leading to the church door will not be forgotten by those who have seen it. 248 Alps and Sanctuaries Sommazzo itself from the other side of the valley comes as on p. 247. There is Cragno, again, on the Monte Generoso, or Riva with its series of pictures in tempera by the brothers Giulio Cesare and Camillo Procaccini, men who, had they lived before the days of academies, might have done as well as any, except the few whom no academy can mould, but who, as it was, were carried away by fluency and facility. It is useless, however, to specify. There is not one of the many villages which can be seen from any rising ground in the neighbourhood, but what contains something that is picturesque and interesting, while the coup d'ceil, as a whole, is always equally striking, whether one is on the plain and looks towards the mountains, or looks from the mountains to the plains. Chapter XXII Sacro Monte, Varese FROM Mendrisio we took a trap across the country to Varese, passing through Stabbio, where there are some baths that are much frequented by Itahans in the summer. The road is a pleasant one, but does not go through any specially remarkable places. Travellers taking this road had better leave every cigarette behind them on which they do not want to pay duty, as the custom-house official at the frontier takes a strict view of what is due to his employers. I had, perhaps, a couple of ounces of tobacco in my pouch, but was made to pay duty on it, and the searching of our small amount of luggage was little less than inquisitorial. From Varese we went without stopping to the Sacro Monte, four or five miles beyond, and several hundred feet higher than the town itself. Close to the first chapel, and just below the arch through which the more sacred part of the mountain is entered upon, there is an ex- cellent hotel called the Hotel Riposo, kept by Signor Piotti ; it is very comfortable, and not at all too hot even in the dog-days ; it commands magnificent views, and makes very good headquarters. Here we rested and watched the pilgrims going up and down. They seemed very good-humoured and merry. Then we looked through the grating of the first chapel 249 250 Alps and Sanctuaries inside the arch, and found it to contain a representa- tion of the Annunciation. The Virgin had a real washing- stand, with a basin and jug, and a piece of real soap. Her slippers were disposed neatly under the bed, so also were her shoes, and, if I remember rightly, there was everything else that Messrs. Heal & Co. would send for the furnishing of a lady's bedroom. I have already said perhaps too much about the realism of these groups of painted statuary, but will venture a word or two more which may help the reader to understand the matter better as it appears to Catholics themselves. The object is to bring the scene as vividly as possible before people who have not had the opportu- nity of being able to realise it to themselves through travel or general cultivation of the imaginative faculties. How can an Italian peasant realise to himself the notion of the Annunciation so well as by seeing such a chapel as that at Varese ? Common sense says, either tell the peasant nothing about the Annunciation, or put every facility in his way by the help of which he will be able to conceive the idea with some definiteness. We stuff the dead bodies of birds and animals which we think it worth while to put into our museums. We put them in the most life-like attitudes we can, with bits of grass and bush, and painted landscape behind them : by doing this we give people who have never seen the actual animals, a more vivid idea concerning them than we know how to give by any other means. We have not room in the British Museum to give a loose rein to realism in the matter of accessories, but each bird or animal in the collection is so stuffed as to make it look as much alive as the stuffer can make it — even to the insertion of glass eyes. We think it well that our people should have an opportunity of realising these birds and beasts to them- Sacro Monte, Varese 251 selves, but we are shocked at the notion of giving them a similar aid to the realisation of events which, as we say, concern them more nearly than any others in the history of the world. A stuffed rabbit or blackbird is a good thing. A stuffed Charge of Balaclava again is quite legitimate ; but a stuffed Nativity is, according to Protestant notions, offensive. Over and above the desire to help the masses to realise the events in Christ's life more vividly, something is doubtless due to the wish to attract people by giving them what they like. This is both natural and legitimate. Our own rectors find the prettiest psalm and hymn tunes they can for the use of their congregations, and take much pains generally to beautify their churches. Why should not the Church of Rome make herself attractive also ? If she knows better how to do this than Protestant churches do, small blame to her for that. For the people delight in these graven images. Listen to the hushed '' oh bel ! '' which falls from them as they peep through grating after grating ; and the more tawdry a chapel is, the better, as a general rule, they are contented. They like them as our own people like Madame Tussaud's. Granted that they come to worship the images ; they do ; they hardly attempt to conceal it. The writer of the authorised handbook to the Sacro Monte at Locarno, for example, speaks of " the solemn coronation of the image that is there revered '' — '' la solenne coronazione del simulacro ivi venerato '' (p. 7). But how, pray, can we avoid worshipping images ? or loving images ? The actual living form of Christ on earth was still not Christ, it was but the image under which His disciples saw Him ; nor can we see more of any of those we love than a certain more versatile and warmer presentment of them than an artist can counterfeit. The ultimate '' them " we see not. 252 Alps and Sanctuaries How far these chapels have done all that their founders expected of them is another matter. They have un- doubtedly strengthened the hands of the Church in their immediate neighbourhood, and they have given an in- calculable amount of pleasure, but I think that in the Middle Ages people expected of art more than art can do. They hoped a fine work of art would exercise a deep and permanent effect upon the lives of those w^ho lived near it. Doubtless it does have some effect — enough to make it worth while to encourage such works, but nevertheless the effect is, I imagine, very transient. The only thing that can produce a deep and permanently good influence upon a man's character is to have been begotten of good ancestors for many generations — or at any rate to have reverted to a good ancestor — and to live among nice people. The chapels themselves at Varese, apart from their contents, are very beautiful. They come as fresh one after the other as a set of variations by Handel. Each one of them is a little architectural gem, while the figures they contain are sometimes very good, though on the whole not equal to those at Varallo. The subjects are the mysteries of joy, namely, the Annunciation (imme- diately after the first great arch is passed), the Salutation of Mary by Elizabeth, the Nativity, the Presentation, and the Disputing with the Doctors. Then there is a second arch, after which come the mysteries of grief — the Agony in the Garden, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, the Ascent to Calvary, and the Crucifixion. Passing through a third arch, we come to the mysteries of glory — the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The Dispute in the Temple is the chapel which left the deepest impression upon us. Here the various Sacro Monte, Varese 253 attitudes and expressions of the doctors are admirably rendered. There is one man, I think he must have been a broad churchman and have taken in the '' Spectator'' ; his arms are folded, and he is smiling a little, with his head on one side. He is not prepared, he seems to say, to deny that there is a certain element of truth in what this young person has been saying, but it is very shallow, and SACRO MONTE OF VARESE in all essential points has been refuted over and over again ; he has seen these things come and go so often, &c. But all the doctors are good. The Christ is weak, and so are the Joseph and Mary in the background ; in fact, throughout the whole series of chapels the wicked or worldly and indifferent people are well done, while the saints are a feeble folk : the sculptor evidently neither understood them nor liked them, and could never get beyond silliness ; but the artist who has lately done 2 54 Alps and Sanctuaries them up has made them still weaker and sillier by giving them all pink noses. Shortly after the sixth chapel has been passed the road turns a corner, and the town on the hill (see preceding page) comes into full view. This is a singularly beautiful spot. The chapels are worth coming a long way to see, but this view of the town is better still : we generally SACRO MONTE OF VARESE, NEARER VIEW like any building that is on the top of a hill ; it is an instinct in our nature to do so ; it is a remnant of the same instinct which makes sheep like to camp at the top of a hill ; it gives a remote sense of security and vantage-ground against an enemy. The Italians seem hardly able to look at a high place without longing to put something on the top of it, and they have seldom done so with better effect than in the case of the Sacro Sacro Monte. Varese 255 Monte at Varese. From the moment of its bursting upon one on turning the corner near the seventh, or Flagehation chapel, one cannot keep one's eyes off it, and one fancies, as with S. Michele, that it comes better and better with every step one takes ; near the top it composes, as on p. 254, but without colour nothing can give an adequate notion of its extreme beauty. Once at the top the interest centres in the higgledy-pigglediness of the houses, the ^^ ^^^''^'/C-^^^r^^^^^ 'U-y4rtA^fi. TERRACE AT THE SACRO MONTE, VARESE gay colours of the booths where strings of beads and other religious knick-knacks are sold, the glorious panorama, and in the inn where one can dine very well, and I should imagine find good sleeping accommodation. The view from the balcony outside the dining-room is wonderful, and above is a sketch from the terrace just in front of the church. There is here no single building comparable to the sanctuary of Sammichele, nor is there any trace of 2^6 Alps and Sanctuaries that beautiful Lombard work which makes so much impression upon one in the church on the Monte Pir- chiriano ; the architecture is late, and barocco, not to say rococo, reigns everywhere ; nevertheless the effect of the church is good. The visitor should get the sacristan to show him a very fine pagliotto or altar cloth of raised embroidery, worked in the thirteenth century. He will also do well to walk some little distance behind the town SACRO MONTE FEOM ABOVE on the way to S. Maria dei fiori (St. Mary of the flowers) and look down upon the town and Lombardy. I do not think he need go much higher than this, unless he has a fancy for chmbing. The Sacro Monte is a kind of ecclesiastical Rosherville Gardens, eminently the place to spend a happy day. We happened by good luck to be there during one of the great feste of the year, and saw I am afraid to say how many thousands of pilgrims go up and down. They Sacro Monte, Varese 257 were admirably behaved, and not one of them tipsy. There was an old English gentleman at the Hotel Riposo who told us that there had been another snch. festa not many weeks previously, and that he had seen one drunken man there — an Englishman — who kept abusing all he saw and crying out, '' Manchester's the place for me/' The^rocessions were best at the last part of the ascent ; there were pilgrims, all decked out with coloured feathers, and priests and banners and music and crimson and gold and white and glittering brass against the cloudless blue sky. The old priest sat at his open window to receive the offerings of the devout as they passed ; but he did not seem to get more than a few bambini modelled in wax. Perhaps he was used to it. And the band played the barocco music on the barocco little piazza and we were all barocco together. It was as though the clergyman at Lady well had given out that, instead of having service as usual, the congregation would go in procession to the Crystal Palace with all their traps, and that the band had been practising '' Wait till the clouds roll by '' for some time, and on Sunday as a great treat they should have it. The Pope has issued an order saying he will not have masses written like operas. It is no use. The Pope can do much, but he will not be able to get contrapuntal music into Varese. He will not be able to get anything more solemn than '' La Fille de Madame Angot '' into Varese. As for fugues — — ! I would as soon take an English bishop to the Surrey pantomime as to the Sacro Monte on difesta. Then the pilgrims went into the shadow of a great rock behind the sanctuary, spread themselves out over the grass and dined. Chapter XXIII Angera and Arona FROM the Hotel Riposo we drove to Angera, on the Lago Maggiore. There are many interesting things to see on the way. Close to Velate, for example, there is the magnificent bit of ruin which is so striking a feature as seen from the Sacro Monte. A little further on, at Luinate, there is a fine old Lombard campanile and some conventual buildings which are worth sparing five minutes or so to see. The views hereabouts over tli^ lake of Varese and towards Monte Rosa are exceedingly fine. The driver should be told to go a mile or so out of his direct route in order to pass Oltrona, near Voltrone. Here there was a monastery which must once have been an important one. Little of old work remains, except a very beautiful cloister of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, which should not be missed. It measures about twenty-one paces each way : the north side has round arches made of brick, the arches are supported by small columns about six inches through, each of which has a different capital ; the middle is now garden ground. A few miles nearer Angera there is Brebbia, the church of which is an excellent specimen of early Lombard work. We thought we saw the traditions of Cyclopean masonry in the occasional irregularity of the string-courses. The stones near the bottom of the wall are very massive, and the west wall is not, if I remember rightly, bonded into 258 Angera and Arona 259 the north and south walls, but these walls are only built up against it as at Giornico. The door on the south side is simple, but remarkably beautiful. It looks almost as if it might belong to some early Norman church in England, and the stones have acquired a most exquisite warm colour with age. At Ispra there is a campanile which Mr. Ruskin would probably disapprove of, but CASTLE OF ANGERA which we thought lovely. A few kilometres further on a corner is turned, and the splendid castle of Angera is caught sight of. . Before going up to the castle we stayed at the inn on the left immediately on entering the town, to dine. They gave us a very good dinner, and the garden was a delightful place to dine in. There is a kind of red champagne made hereabouts which is very good ; the figs were ripe, and we could gather them for ourselves and 26o Alps and Sanctuaries eat ad libitum. There were two tame sparrows hopping continually about us ; they pretended to make a little fuss about allowing themselves to be caught, but they evidently did not mind it. I dropped a bit of bread and was stooping to pick it up ; one of them on seeing me move made for it and carried it off at once ; the action was exactly that of one who was saying, '' I don't particularly want it myself, but I'm not going to let you have it." CASTLE OF ANGERA, FROM S. QUIRICO Presently some cacciatori came with a poodle-dog. They explained to us that though the poodle was " a truly hunting dog,'' he would not touch the sparrows, which to do him justice he did not. There was a tame jay also, like the sparrows going about loose, but, like them, aware when he was well off. After dinner we went up to the castle, which I have now visited off and on for many years, and like always better and better each time I go there. I know no place comparable to it in its own way. I know no place so Angera and Arona 261 pathetic, and yet so impressive, in its decay. It is not a ruin — all ruins are frauds — it is only decayed. It is a kind of Stokesay or Ightham Mote, better preserved than the first, and less furnished than the second, but on a grander scale than either, and set in incomparably finer surroundings. The path towards it passes the church, which has been spoiled. Outside this there are TERRACE AT CASTLE OF ANGERA, NO. I parts of old Roman columns from some temple, stuck in the ground ; inside are two statues called St. Peter and St. Paul, but evidently effigies of some magistrates in the Roman times. If the traveller likes to continue the road past the church for three-quarters of a mile or so, he will get a fine view of the castle, and if he goes up to the little chapel of S. Quirico on the top of the hill on his right hand, he will look down upon it and upon Arona. We will suppose, however, that he goes straight for the 262 Alps and Sanctuaries castle itself ; every moment as he approaches it, it will seem finer and finer ; presently he will turn into a vineyard on his left, and at once begin to climb. Passing under the old gateway — with its portcullis still ready to be dropped, if need be, and with the iron plates that sheathe it pierced with bullets — as at S. Michele, the visitor enters at once upon a terrace from TERRACE AT CASTLE OF ANGERA, NO. II which the two foregoing illustrations were taken. I know nothing like this terrace. On a summer's afternoon and evening it is fully shaded, the sun being behind the castle. The lake and town below are still in sunlight. This, I think, is about the best time to see the castle — say from six to eight on a July evening, or at any hour on a gray day. Count Borromeo, to whom the castle belongs, allows it to be shown, and visitors are numerous. There is Angera and Arona 263 very little furniture inside the rooms, and the little there is is decaying ; the walls are covered with pictures, mostly copies, and none of them of any great merit, but the rooms themselves are lovely. Here is a sketch of the one in which San Carlo Borromeo was born, but the one on the floor beneath is better still. The whole of this part was built about the year 1350, and inside, where the ROOM IN WHICH S. CARLO BORROMEO WAS BORN weather has not reached, the stones are as sharp as if they had been cut yesterday. It was in the great Sala of this castle that the rising against the Austrians in 1848 was planned ; then there is the Sala di Gmsttzia, a fine room, with the remains of frescoes ; the roof and the tower should also certainly be visited. All is solid and real, yet it is like an Italian opera in actual life. Lastly, there is the kitchen, where the wheel still remains in which a turnspit dog used to be put to tm-n it 264 Alps and Sanctuaries and roast the meat ; but this room is not shown to strangers. The inner court of the castle is as beautiful as the outer one. Through the open door one catches glimpses of the terrace, and of the lake beyond it. I know Ightham, Hever, and Stokesay, both inside and out, and I know the outside of Leeds ; these are all of them exquisitely beautiful, but neither they nor any other such place that I have ever seen please me as much as the castle of Anger a. We stayed talking to my old friend Signer Signorelli, the custode of the castle, and his family, and sketching upon the terrace until Tonio came to tell us that his boat was at the quay waiting for us. Tonio is now about fourteen years old, but was only four when I first had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. He is son to Giovanni, or as he is more commonly called, Giovannino, a boatman of Arona. The boy is deservedly a great favourite, and is now a padrone with a boat of his own, from which he can get a good living. He pulled us across the warm and sleepy lake, so far the most beautiful of all even the Italian lakes ; as we neared Arona, and the wall that runs along the lake became more plain, I could not help thinking of what Giovanni had told me about it some years before, when Tonio was lying curled up, a little mite of an object, in the bottom of the boat. He was extolling a certain family of peasants who live near the castle of Angera, as being models of everything a family ought to be. *' There,'' he said, '' the children do not speak at meal- times ; the polenta is put upon the table, and each takes exactly what is given him ; even though one of the children thinks another has got a larger helping than he has, he will eat his piece in silence. My children are Angera and Arona 265 not like that ; if Marietta thinks Irene has a bigger ^ piece than she has, she will leave the room and go to the wall." '' What/' I asked, '' does she go to the wall for ? '' '' Oh ! to cry ; all the children go to the wall to cry." I thought of Hezekiah. The wall is the crying place, playing, lounging place, and a great deal more, of all the houses in its vicinity. It is the common drawing- room during the summer months ; if the weather is too sultry, a boatman will leave his bed and finish the night on his back upon its broad coping ; we who live in a colder climate can hardly understand how great a blank in the existence of these people the destruction of the wall would be. We soon reached Arona, and in a few minutes were in that kind and hospitable house the Hotel dTtalia, than which no better hotel is to be found in Italy. Arona is cooler than Angera. The proverb says, '' He who would know the pains of the infernal regions, should go to Angera in the summer and to Arona in the winter.'' The neighbourhood is exquisite. Unless during the extreme heat of summer, it is the best place to stay at on the Lago Maggiore. The Monte Motterone is within the compass of a single day's excursion ; there is Orta, also, and Varallo easily accessible, and any number of drives and nearer excursions whether by boat or carriage. One day we made Tonio take us to Castelletto near Sesto Calende, to hear the bells. They ring the bells very beautifully at Vogogna, but, unless my recollection of a good many years ago fails me, at Castelletto they ring them better still. At Vogogna, while we were getting our breakfast, 266 Alps and Sanctuaries we heard the bells strike up as follows, from a campanile on the side of the hill : — They did this because a baby had just died, but we were told it was nothing to what they would have done if it had been a grown-up person. At Castelletto we were disappointed ; the bells did not ring that morning ; we hinted at the possibility of paying a small fee to the ringer and getting him to ring them, but were told that '' la gente " would not at all approve of this, and so I was unable to take dow^n the chimes at Castelletto as I had intended to do. I may say that I had a visit from some Italian friends a few years ago, and found them hardly less delighted with our English mode of ringing than I had been with theirs. It would be very nice if we could ring our bells sometimes in the English and sometimes in the Italian way. When I say the Italian way — I should say that the custom of ringing, as above described, is not a common one — I have only heard it at Vogogna and Castelletto, though doubtless it prevails elsewhere. We were told that the people take a good deal of pride in their bells, and that one village will be jealous of another, and consider itself more or less insulted if the bells of that other can be heard more plainly than its own can be heard back again. There are two villages Angera and Arona 267 in the Brianza called Balzano and Cremella ; the dispute between these grew so hot that each of them changed their bells three times, so as to try and be heard the loudest. I believe an honourable compromise was in the end arrived at. In other respects Castelletto is a quiet, sleepy little place. The Ticino flows through it just after leaving the lake. It is very wide here, and when flooded must carry down an enormous quantity of water. Barges go down it at all times, but the river is difficult of navigation and requires skilful pilots. These pilots are well paid, and Tonio seemed to have a great respect for them. The views of Monte Rosa are superb. One of the great advantages of Arona, as of Mendrisio, is that it commands such a number of other places. There is rail to Milan, and again to Novara, and each station on the way is a sub-centre ; there are also the steamers on the lake, and there is not a village at which they stop which will not repay examination, and which is not in its turn a sub-centre. In England I have found by experience that there is nothing for it but to examine every village and town within easy railway distance ; no books are of much use : one never knows that some- thing good is not going to be sprung upon one, and few indeed are the places where there is no old public- house, or overhanging cottage, or farmhouse and barn, or bit of De Hooghe-like entry which, if one had two or three lives, one would not willingly leave unpainted. It is just the same in North Italy ; there is not a village which can be passed over with a light heart. Chapter XXIV Locarno WE were attracted to Locarno by the approaching fetes in honour of the fourth centenary of the apparition of the Virgin Mary to Fra Bartolomeo da Ivrea, who founded the sanctuary in consequence. The programme announced that the festivities would begin on Saturday, at 3.30 p.m., with the carrying of the sacred image {sacro simulacro) of the Virgin from the Madonna del Sasso to the collegiate church of S. Antonio. There would then be a benediction and celebration of the holy communion. At eight o'clock there were to be illuminations, fireworks, balloons, &c., at the sanctuary and the adjacent premises. On Sunday at half-past nine there was to be mass at the church of S. Antonio, with a homily by Monsignor Paolo Angelo Ballerini, Patriarch of Alexandria in partibiis, and blessing of the crown sent by Pope Leo XIII for the occasion. S. Antonio is the church the roof of which fell in during service one Sunday in 1865, through the weight of the snow, killing sixty people. At half-past three a grand procession would convey the Holy Image to a pretty temple which had been erected in the market-place. The image was then to be crowned by the Patriarch, carried round the town in procession, and returned to the church of S. Antonio. At eight o'clock 268 Locarno 269 there were to be fireworks near the port ; a grand illumination of a triumphal arch, an illumination of the sanctuary and chapels with Bengal lights, and an artificial apparition of the Madonna {Apparizione artificiale della Bcata Vergine col Bambino) above the church upon the Sacro Monte. Next day the Holy Image was to be carried back from the church of S. Antonio SACRO MONTE, LOCARNO, NO. I to its normal resting-place at the sanctuary. We wanted to see all this, but it was the artificial apparition of the Madonna that most attracted us. Locarno is, as every one knows, a beautiful town. Both the Hotel Locarno and the Hotel della Corona are good, but the latter is, I believe, the cheaper. At the castello there is a fresco of the Madonna, ascribed, I should think rightly, to Bernardino Luini, and at the 270 Alps and Sanctuaries cemetery outside the town there are some old frescoes | of the second half of the fifteenth century, in a ruinous state, but interesting. If I remember rightly there are several dates on them, averaging 1475-80. They might easily have been done by the same man who did the frescoes at Mesocco, but I prefer these last. The great feature, however, of Locarno is the Sacro Monte which rises above it. From the wooden bridge which crosses the stream just before entering upon the sacred precincts, the church and chapels and road arrange themselves as on p. 269. On the way up, keeping to the steeper and abrupter route, one catches sight of the monks' garden — a little paradise with vines, beehives, onions, lettuces, cabbages, marigolds to colour the risotto with, and a little plot of great luxuriant tobacco plants. Amongst the foliage may be now and again seen the burly figure of a monk Locarno 271 with a straw hat on. The best view of the sanctuary from above is the one which I give on p. 270. The church itself is not remarkable, but it contains the best collection of votive pictures that I know in any church, unless the one at Oropa be excepted ; there is also a modern Italian '' Return from the Cross " by Ciseri, MifiilifeM^'^^ /'f^^ ^ ^ f■ 4 ^- zmn :«:t= ■^^^s^ ;:»-t« if^D eg etc. r^ 3E :t :l2t fzl One day Signor Dazio brought us in a chamois foot. He explained to us that chamois were now in season, but that even when they were not, they were sometimes to be had, inasmuch as they occasionally fell from the rocks and got killed. As we looked at it we could not help reflecting that, wonderful as the provisions of animal and vegetable organisms often are, the marvels of adaptation are sometimes almost exceeded by the feats which an animal will perform with a very simple and even clumsy 2 84 Alps and Sanctuaries instrument if it knows how to use it. A chamois foot is a smooth and sUppery thing, such as no respectable bootmaker would dream of offering to a mountaineer : there is not a nail in it, nor even an apology for a nail ; the surefootedness of its owner is an assumption only — a piece of faith or impudence which fulfils itself. If some other animal were to induce the chamois to believe that it should at the least have feet with suckers to them, like a fly, before venturing in such breakneck places, or if by any means it could get to know how bad a foot it really has, there would soon be no more chamois. The chamois continues to exist through its absolute refusal to hear reason upon the matter. But the whole question is one of extreme intricacy ; all we know is that some animals and plants, like some men, devote great pains to the perfection of the mechanism with which they wish to work, while others rather scorn appliances, and concen- trate their attention upon the skilful use of whatever they happen to have. I think, however, that in the clumsiness of the chamois foot must lie the explanation of the fact that sometimes when chamois are out of season, they do nevertheless actually tumble off the rocks and get killed ; being killed, of course it is only natural that they should sometimes be found, and if found, be eaten ; but they are not good for much. After a day or two's stay in this delightful place, we left at six o'clock one brilliant morning in September for Dalpe and Faido, accompanied by the excellent Signer Guglielmoni as guide. There are two main passes from Fusio into the Val Leventina — the one by the Sassello Grande to Nante and Airolo, and the other by the Alpe di Campolungo to Dalpe. Neither should be attempted by strangers without a guide, though neither of them presents the smallest difficulty. There is a third and 1 Fusio 285 longer pass by the Lago di Naret to Bedretto, but I have never been over this. The other two are both good ; on the whole, however, I think I prefer the second. Signor Guglielmoni led us over the freshest grassy slopes conceivable — slopes that four or five weeks earlier had been gay with tiger and Turk's-cap lilies, and the flaunting arnica, and every flower that likes mountain company. After a three hours' walk we reached the top of the pass, from whence on the one hand one can see the Basodino glacier, and on the other the great Rheinwald glaciers above Olivone. Other small glaciers show in valleys near Biasca which I know nothing about, and which I imagine to be almost a terra incognita, except to the inhabitants of such villages as Malvaglia in the Val Blenio. When near the top of the pass we heard the whistle of a marmot. Guglielmoni told us he had a tame one once which was very fond of him. It slept all the winter, but turned round once a fortnight to avoid lying too long upon one side. When it woke up from its winter sleep it no longer recognised him, but bit him savagely right through the finger ; by and by its recollection re- turned to it, and it apologised. From the summit, which is about 7600 feet above the sea, the path descends over the roughest ground that is to be found on the whole route. Here there are good specimens of asbestos to be picked up abundantly, and the rocks are full of garnets ; after about six or seven hundred feet the Alpe di Campolungo is reached, and this again is an especially favourite place with me. It is an old lake filled up, surrounded by peaks and precipices where some snow rests all the year round, and traversed by a stream. Here, just as we had done lunching, we were joined by a family of knife-grinders, who were also 2 86 Alps and Sanctuaries _ crossing from the Val Maggia to the Val Leventina. We had eaten all we had with us except our bread ; this Guglielmoni gave to one of the boys, who seemed as much pleased with it as if it had been cake. Then after taking a look at the Lago di Tremorgio, a beautiful lake some hundreds of feet below, we went on to the Alpe di Cadoni- ghino where our guide left us. At this point pines begin, and soon the path enters them ; after a while we catch sight of Prato, and eventu- ally come down upon Dalpe. In another hour and a quarter Faido is reached. The descent to Faido from the summit of the pass is much greater than the ascent from Fusio, for Faido is not more than 2300 feet above the sea, whereas, as I have said, Fusio is over 4200 feet. The descent from the top of the pass to Faido is about 5300 feet, while to Fusio it is only 3400. The reader, therefore, will see that he had better go from Fusio to Faido, and not vice versa, unless he is a good walker. ^ Chapter XXVI Fusio Revisited THIS last year Jones and I sent for Guglielmoni to take us over the Sassello Grande from Airolo to Fusio. Soon after starting we were joined by a peasant woman and her daughter who were returning to their home at Mugno in the Val Maggia some twenty minutes' walk below Fusio. They had come the day before over the Sassello Pass through Fusio carrying two hundred eggs and several fowls to Airolo. They had had to climb a full four thousand feet ; the path is rugged in the extreme ; neither of them had any shoes or stockings ; the weather was very wet ; the clouds hung low ; the wind on the Colma blew so hard that, though the rain was coming down in torrents, it was impossible to hold up an umbrella, and they did not know the little road there is. Happily, before they got above the Valle di Sambucco they had fallen in with Guglielmoni, on his way to meet us ; otherwise one does not see how they could have got over. As it was, they did not break a single egg, but they were a good deal scared and asked us to let them go back in our company. We found them delightful people ; the girl was very pretty and the mother still comely, with a singularly pleasing expression. We found out what they had done with their eggs and fowls. They sold the eggs for nine centimes apiece, 287 288 Alps and Sanctuaries whereas at Fusio they would have got but five. The fowis fetched three francs apiece as against two they would have got at Fusio. Altogether they had made the best part of twenty francs by their journey, over and above what they would have made if they had stayed at home, and thought they had done good business. The weather was perfect for the return journey. After passing Nante we noticed by the side of the path several round burnt patches some four feet in diameter which struck us as rather strange, so we asked Guglielmoni about them. He said there had been ants' nests there, and the people burnt them because the ants did so much damage. He showed us one that was in process of re- construction, the ants building upon the remains of their ruined home, and pointed out the deep channel which the ants had worn in the ground through their habit of entering and quitting their old-established nest by one main road. We had thought the channel was a rill artificially cut for irrigation, and it was not till Gugliel- moni showed us how impossible this was that we came to see he was right. He showed us a disused road that had led to a nest now destroyed, and on two or three other occasions showed us roads leading from one nest to another. He told us several more things about marmots which I may mention as opinions held by the Fusians, but upon which I should be sorry to base a theory. He said their fat was so subtle that it would go through glass and could not therefore be kept in a bottle. He said it would go through a man's hand. I said : " Let us try," but it appeared that it might take three or four hours in getting through, so we delayed the experiment for a more convenient season. I asked how the marmots held their own fat if it would Fusio Revisited 289 go through skin. I was answered that at the end of summer, when the marmots are very fat, they no longer hold it and their fur is greasy. I could not contradict this from personal knowledge and was obliged to let it pass. He said marmots' fat was good for rheumatism and sprains, but that it must never be used for a broken bone, as the ends of the bone would not grow together again if the fat reached them. Badgers' fat, he said, was very good, but it was not so sovereign a remedy as marmots'. There are badgers about Fusio, though not so many as lower down the valley in the chestnut country. We saw some badgers' fat later on at Tesserete ; it was kept in a tin which was certainly very greasy, but we did not think that the fat had gone through the tin. Then we met an old gentleman with a Rembrandt- Rabbi far-away look in his eyes. He wore a coarse but clean linen shirt, and was otherwise neat in his attire. He looked as if he had suffered much and had been chastened rather than soured by it. We talked a little and the conversation turned upon deceit. I said that deceit was a necessary alloy for truth which, without this hardening addition, like gold without an alloy of copper, would be unworkable. '' Chi non sa ingannare/' I said in conclusion, '' non sa parlare il vero." The old gentleman seemed to like this, and so we parted. Guglielmoni told us he was a painter and liable to temporary fits of insanity. During these fits he would go up by himself into the mountains, like some old prophet going out into the wilderness, and stay there till the fit was over, living no one knew where or how. Cheese is the principal product of these valleys. I asked Guglielmoni whether there was any sign of the upper pastures becoming impoverished by the annual 290 Alps and Sanctuaries removal of so much cheese. He said the soil about Fusio did not yield as much by a third as it had yielded when he was a boy, but I hardly think it likely that there is much difference. He did not see why taking away so many hundredweight, or rather tons, of cheese yearly should impoverish the land, for, he said, the cows manured it. He did not see that the cheeses should be taken into account. At one time he said that two hundred years hence the Alpe di Campo la Turba would not be worth feeding ; at another that the cows left what they ate behind them. Our own impression was that, what with insect and bird life and the fertilising power of snow and the frequent addition of new soil by avalanches, there was probably no harm done, and that the grass was there or thereabouts much what it always had been since people had first begun to feed it. I have myself known these alpi off and on ever since 1843, and can perceive no difference, except that the glaciers, especially at Grindelwald, have receded very considerably, and even this may be only fancy. I asked Guglielmoni whether the Alpigiani — the people who spend the summer in the alpi — ever get pulmonary complaints. '' Oh si," was his answer, and he nodded as though it were common, which I can well believe ; but it is more difficult to understand how the few robust Alpigiani escape. The majority seemed to us to be prematurely w^orn and to live in a state almost of squalor. What would a doctor say to the damp floor covered with mildew growing on spilt milk and fragments of half- made cheese ? What about men sleeping night after night in a room built in the middle of a dung-heap, with never a ray of sunshine save a little near the door and an occasional beam through crannies in the walls ? What nidus can be conceived more favourable for the 1 Fusio Revisited 291 development of organic germs ? How can any one escape who spends a summer in one of these huts ? I should say the worst and most insanitary cellar into which human beings are huddled in London is not more un- wholesome than these alpi in the middle of the finest air in Europe. Guglielmoni had some edelweiss in his hat, and we asked him the Italian name for it. He replied that it had no other name. The passion for this flower has evidently spread from the north. The Italians are great at suppressing unnecessary details. I was going up once in the posta from Varallo to Fobello and had an American- ised Italian cook for my only fellow-traveller. I asked him the name of a bird I happened to see, and he said : '* Oh, he not got no name. There is two birds got names. There is the gazza ; he spik very nice. I have one ; he spik beautiful. And there is the merlo ; he sing very pretty. The other, they not got no names ; they not want no names ; every one call them what he choose.'' And so it is with the flowers. There is the rose and perhaps half-a-dozen more plants, but as for the others '' they not got no names ; they not want no names." My fellow-traveller, speaking of the villagers in the villages we passed through, said : '* They all right as long as they stop here, but when they go away and travel, then they not never happy no more." When we reached the floor of the Valle di Sambucco, the people were milking the few cattle that remained there, and the milk purred into the pails as with a deep hum of satisfaction. The sun was setting red upon the Piz Campo Tencia ; the water was as clear as the air, and the air in the deep shadow of the bottom of the valley had something of the deep blue as well as of the trans- 292 Alps and Sanctuaries parency of the water. We passed the gorge in twihght and presently were again at Fusio. We ordered some wine for the women who had accompanied us, and as they sat waiting for it with their hands folded before them they looked so good and holy and quiet that one would have thought they were returning from a pilgrimage. I have nothing to retract from what I have said in praise of Fusio. It is the most old-world subalpine village that I know. It w^as probably burnt down some time in the Middle Ages and perhaps the scare thus caused led to its being rebuilt not in wood but in stone. The houses are much built into one another as at S. Remo ; the roofs are all of them made of large stones ; there are a good many wooden balconies, but it is probably because it has been chiefly built of stone that we now see it much as it must have looked two or even three centuries ago. If any one wants to know what kind of village the people of three hundred years ago beheld, at Fusio he will find an almost untouched specimen of what he wants. For picturesqueness I know no subalpine village so good. Sit down wherever one will there is a subject ready made. The back of the village is perhaps more mediaeval in appearance than the front. Its quaint picturesqueness, the beauty of its flowers, the brilliancy of its meadows, and the genial presence of Signor Dazio prevent me from allowing any great length of time to pass without a visit to Fusio. I said to Jones once : '' It is worth while going to Fusio if only to please Signor Dazio.'' " Yes,'' said Jones, *' and he is so very easily pleased." It is just this that makes it so pleasant to try to please him. I believe all the people in Fusio are good. I asked Guglielmoni once what happened when any one did something wrong. He seemed bewildered. The case 3 Fusio Revisited 293 had not arisen within his recollection. I pressed him and said that it might arise even at Fusio, and what would happen then ? Had they a prison or a lock-up of any kind ? He said they had none, and he supposed the offender would have to be taken down the valley to Cevio, about fourteen or fifteen miles off — but the case had not arisen. At Fusio, in spite of all its flowers, there are no bees ; the summer is too short and they would have to be fed too long. Nevertheless, we got the best honey at Fusio that we got anywhere. Signor Dazio said it was from his own hives at Locarno and had not been '' elongated '' in any way. What was bought at the shops, he said, was almost invariably '' elongated " with flour, sugar and a variety of other things. The hotel has been much improved during these last two years ; the kitchen has been taken downstairs and the old one thrown into the dining-room, which has been newly decorated after a happily-conceived and tastefully- executed scheme. The visitor is to suppose himself seated in a large open belvedere upon the roof of the house, over which a light iron trellis-work has been thrown and gracefully festooned with a profusion of brilliant flowers. In the sky, which is of unclouded blue, birds of lustrous plumage are engaged in carrying a wreath, presumably for the brow of one of the visitors. The lower part of the heavens is studded with commodious hat pegs, two or three doors, the windows, and a sub- stantial fire-place. The gorgeous parrot of the establish- ment has chosen the point where the sky unites with the right-hand corner of the chimney-piece as the most convenient spot to perch on, and his presence there gives life and nature to the scene. We were struck with the wise reticence of the painter in not putting another 294 Alps and Sanctuaries parrot at the opposite corner ; there is a verisimihtude about one bird which would have been lost with two, for few houses have more than one parrot. The effect of the whole is singularly gay and pleasing. For an English household I admit that there is nothing to compare with Mr. Morris's wall-papers — except, of course, his poetry— but there is an over-the-garden-walliness, if the ex- pression may be pardoned, about these Italian decora- tions, a frank meretriciousness, both of design and colour, which will be found infinitely refreshing and may be looked for in vain in the works of our English masters of decoration. The day after our arrival was the feast of the Assump- tion of the Madonna, and the next day was the feast of S. Rocco, the patron saint of Fusio, so the bells were ringing continually. There are only three bells, but they are good ones ; they were brought up from Peccia some forty years ago, long before Signor Dazio had the present road made ; he was then a boy and assisted at the very arduous task of bringing them up. Like bells generally in North Italy they hang half-way out of the windows of the campanile, instead of being wholly within the belfry as our English bells are. This is why an Italian campanile is such a much more slender object than an English belfry ; it has less to cover. When the bells are rung by being raised and swung in and out of the window, there is one ringer to each bell, and the following is all that is attempted : ^-^i ns -« This, however, is varied with another and very different effect to which I have alluded in Chapter XXIII, but of Fusio Revisited 295 which I can now speak at greater length inasmuch as we went up among the bells and saw how it was done. The ringer has a light cord for each bell ; he fastens one end of the cord by an iron hook to a hole in the clapper and the other to a beam of the belfry. The cords are just long enough to hold the clapper an inch or so off the side of the bell, the weight of the clapper keeping the cord tight. The ringer has thus three tight cords before him, on which he plays by hitting the middle of which- ever one he wants with his hand ; this depresses it and brings the clapper suddenly against the bell. He sits so that he can easily reach all the strings, and sets to work playing on the cords as though on a clumsy three- stringed harp. He plays out of his head without any music, and it is wonderful what variety he makes this rude instrument produce and how responsive it is to moods requiring different shades of expression. Of course, when the player's resources are enlarged by the addition of two more bells, as at Castelletto and Vogogna, he can produce an infinitely more varied effect. The notes, according to the pitch of Signor Dazio's piano, were G, A, and B, and when we watched the ringer we saw that he frequently played the B with the G ; some- times he struck the B with the A, no doubt intending it as an appoggiatura, and, at a distance, this was the effect produced. But when he struck the two notes together and made the B louder than the A it had the effect of var3dng the tune. He never played his tunes in precisely the same way twice running, and this makes it difficult to say with certainty what they were, but, omitting variations, the two favourite tunes went like this : Alps and Sanctuaries ra:ii!:*-*j-g— ^-*^g:JL-i!:g3tg:tf:g^z»z^ii=grj I -i=r z^^ml mm *B1 I I i- H — X — . 1_ :3Cir*= H=PM= :fi: I i :■ i H zMzJ!!^-M::izM Fusio Revisited 297 This last he treated almost like a patter song, making it go as fast as ever he could. Give the Italian three bells, a belfry, and some bits of string and he will play with them and with you by the hour together with infinite variety. Give the German five bells and he will know a single figure, which he will probably have got an Italian to make for him, and will repeat it till you have to close the windows to keep the sound out, and the bottom bell will make a noise like the smell of a crushed cockroach. This is what happened to us in the valley of Gressoney at Issime, where German influences and the German language prevail. It was at Issime, by the by, that we saw the most beautiful woman that either of us ever saw. She was gathering French beans in the little garden in front of the hotel and had her apron full of leeks and celery. No words can give an idea of the dignity and grace with which she moved, and as for her head, it was what Leonardo da Vinci, Gaudenzio Ferrari, and Bernardino Luini all tried to get without ever getting it. As long as she was in sight it was impossible to look at anything else, and at the same time there was a something about her which forbade staring. S. Rocco is the saint who is always pointing to the dreadful wound in his poor leg ; accordingly he is in- voked by people who are out of health and thanked by those who have recovered. Near the first stalle in one of the neighbouring valleys there is a chapel where we saw three women praying. It had been prettily decorated with edelweiss, mountain-elder berries, thistle flowers, and everything gay that could be got. There was nothing of interest inside it, except a votive picture of a little man in a tailed coat who had got a bad leg like S. Rocco and was expos^tulating about it to the Virgin Mary. I 298 Alps and Sanctuaries have seldom seen any even tolerably serious frescoes in any of these small wayside oratories ; they are usually done by some local man who has cultivated the Madonna touch, as it may be called, much as some English amateurs cultivate the tree touch, and with about as happy a result. The three women had crossed by the Sassello Grande from Nante, starting with earliest daybreak. It seems that one of them had for a time been deprived of her reason, but her sister had prayed at this chapel that it might be restored and her prayer had been granted ; so the two sisters and another woman come over every year as near the feast of S. Rocco as they can, and repeat their thanks at this spot. The feast of S. Rocco is kept at Fusio with considerable solemnity. Jones happened to be outside the church and kissed a relic of the saint which was handed round after service. I was sorry not to have been there at the moment, but I joined in the procession and helped to carry S. Rocco out of the church and down the valley to Peccia. There a table covered with a handsome cloth had been placed in the middle of the road, and on this the bearers rested the silvered statue. The officiating priest approached it, said some appropriate words before it, I believe in Latin, at any rate I could not catch them, and then we all turned home again. When the procession doubled round we could see the faces of the people as they met us in pairs. First came the women, one of them bearing a crucifix turned so that the people following might see the figure on the cross. Then came the men in white shirts, some carrying candles, among whom we saw Guglielmoni, and some bearing the image of the saint. Then came the men of the place in their ordinary dress, and we followed last of all. The older women wore the Fusio costume, which is now fast disappearing ; many Fusio Revisited 299 of them wore white hnen drapery over their heads, but we did not understand why some did and some did not. Immediately before the statue of S. Rocco came two nuns from Italy who were seeking alms for some purpose in connection with the Church. We thought the people did not as a general rule look in robust health ; some few, both men and women, seemed to have little or nothing the matter with them, but most of them looked as though they were suffering from the unwholesome conditions under which they live, for the conditions in the villages are not much healthier than in the alpi. The houses in such a village as Fusio are few of them even tolerably wholesome. Signor Dazio's houses are all that can be wished for in this respect, but in too many of the others the rooms are low, without sufficient sunlight, and too many of them are far from inodorous. We see a place like Fusio in summer, but what must it be after, say, the middle of October ? How chill and damp, with reeking clouds that search into every corner. What, again, must it be a little later, when snow has fallen that lies till the middle of May ? The men go about all day in great boots, working in the snow at whatever they can find to do ; they come in at night tired and with their legs and feet half frozen. The main room of the house may have a stufa in it, but how about the bedrooms ? With single windows and the thermometer outside down to zero, if the room is warm enough to thaw and keep things damp it is as much as can be expected. Fancy an elderly man after a day's work in snow climbing up, like David, step by step to a bed in such a room as this. How chill it must strike him as he goes into it, and how cold must be the bed itself till he has been in it an hour or two. We asked Guglielmoni 300 Alps and Sanctuaries how he warmed his house in winter and what he did about his bedroom. He said he put his wife and children into the warm room and slept himself in one that on inquiry proved to have only single windows and no stove. It then turned out that he had been at death's door this last spring and the one before, and that the doctors at Locarno said he had serious chest mischief. The wonder is that he is alive at all. I advised him to get a half- crown petroleum burner and, if he felt he had caught cold, to keep it in his room burning all night. He asked how much it would cost and, when told from twenty to twenty-five centimes a night, said this was prohibitive, and I have no doubt to him with his wife and family it was. One cause of the mischief doubtless lies in the fact that the high-altitude houses have descended with insufficient modification from ancestors adapted to a warmer climate. Their forefathers were built for the plains. These houses should have been begotten of Russian or Canadian dwell- ings, not of Piedmontese or Lombard. At any rate, if a reform is to be initiated it should begin by a study of the Canadian or Russian house. But it is not only the hard, long cold winters, with rough living of every kind, that weigh the people down ; the monotony of the snow, seven months upon the ground, is enough to bow even the strongest spirit. It is not as if one could get the '' Times '* every morning at break- fast and theatres, concerts, exhibitions of pictures, social gatherings of every kind. Day after day not a blade of grass can be seen, not a little bit of green any- where, save the mockery of the pine-trees. I once spent a remarkably severe winter at Montreal and saw the thermometer for a month at 22° below zero in the main street of the city. True, it was warm enough indoors, Fusio Revisited 301 and grass does not usually grow in houses, so that one ought not to have missed it ; nevertheless one did miss it, as one misses a dead friend whom one may have been seeing but seldom. There is a depressing effect about long cold and snow which one feels whether one is cold or not. I suspect it is the monotony of the snow-surface that is so fatiguing. I used to trudge up to the far end of Montreal Mountain every day because there was a space of a few yards there on which the snow positively would not lie by reason of the wind. Here I could see a few roots of brown dried grass and moss with a tinge of yellow in it, having looked at which for a little while I would return comparatively contented. If the monotony of surface was found so depressing even in a city like Montreal, where so many interests and amusements were open, what must it be in a place like Fusio, where there are none ? The two great foes of life are the two extremes of change. Too much, that is to say too sudden change and too little change are alike fatal. That is why there is so little organic life a few feet below the surface of the earth. It gets too slow altogether and things won't stand it. Cut away for months together the incessant changes involved in the changed vibrations consequent upon looking at a surface whose colour is varied, and a monotony is induced which should be relieved by the entry of as much other change as possible to supply the place of what is lost. What a vineyard for the Church is there not in these subalpine valleys, if she would only work in it ! The beauty and sweetness of the children show what the people are by nature and prove that the raw material is splendid. Their flowers are not gayer and lovelier than their children ; but they do not get a fair chance. 302 Alps and Sanctuaries If the Church would only use her means and leisure toj teach people how to make themselves as healthy andj happy in this life as their case admits ! If she would do ' this with a single eye to facts and to the happiness of the people, cutting caste, dogma, prescription, and self- aggrandisement direct or indirect, what a hold would she not soon have upon a grateful people. Nay, if the priests would only set the example of washing, of keeping their houses clean and their bedrooms warm and light and dry, and of being at some pains with their cookery, their example would be enough without their preaching. I grant honourable exceptions, but the upland clergy are as a rule little above their flocks in regard to clean- liness of house and person ; instead of facing the many problems that surround them, they rather, I am afraid, have every desire to avoid them. They do not want their people to learn continually better and better in health and wealth how to live ; they want things to go on indefinitely as hitherto, only they hold that the people should be even more docile and obedient than they are. I may be wrong, but this is certainly the im- pression that remains with me. The priest himself must have a hard time of it in winter. We see the church steps basking in the morning sun of August. It is an easy matter then to dawdle into church and sit quiet for a while amid a droning old-world smell of cheese, ancestor, dry-rot, Alpigiano, and stale incense, and to read the plaintive epitaphing about the dear, good people ** whose souls we pray thee visit with the everlasting peace that waits on saints and angels." As the clouds come and go the gray-green cobweb- chastened light ebbs and flows over the ceiling. If a hen has laid an egg outside and has begun to cackle, Fusio Revisited 303 it is an event of magnitude. A peasant hammering his scythe, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they keep, invite the dewy-feathered sleep till the old woman comes and rings the bell for mezzo giorno. This is the sunny side of subalpine church-going, but how is it when these steps are hidden under a metre of frozen snow ? How about five o'clock on a Christmas morning, when the priest can hardly get down the steps leading from his house into the church from the fury of the wind and the driving of the fine midge-like snow ? Even when the horrors of the middle passage have been overcome and the church has been reached, surely it is a nice, cosy place for an infirm old gentleman or lady with bronchitic tendencies ! How is it conceivable that any one should keep even decently well who has to go to church in a high subalpine village at five, six, seven, eight, or in fact at any hour before about noon upon a winter morning ? And yet they go, and some of them reach good old ages. Still one would think that, if a little pains were taken, the thing might be managed so that more of them could reach better old ages. As for the priest, he will carry the last sacraments of the Church any distance, in any weather, at any hour of the night, in summer or winter, but he must have an awful time of it every now and then. So, for the matter of that, has an English country parson or doctor. Still, the Alpine roads are rougher and the snow deeper, and the pay, poor as it often is in England, is here still poorer. After a few days at Fusio, Guglielmoni took us over to Faido in the Val Leventina by the pass that we had not yet crossed — the one that goes by the Lago di Naret and Bedretto. From Faido we returned home. We 304 Alps and Sanctuaries ^ looked at nothing between the top of the St. GothardPass and Boulogne, nor did we again begin to take any interest in life till we saw the science-ridden, art-ridden, culture- ridden, afternoon-tea-ridden cliffs of old England rise upon the horizon. Appendix A Wednesbury Cocking (See p. SS) I KNOW nothing of the date of this remarkable ballad, or the source from which it comes. I have heard one who should know say, that when he was a boy at Shrewsbury school it was done into Greek hexameters, the lines (with a various reading in them) : " The colliers and nailers left work, And all to old Scroggins' went jogging ; '' being translated : ' Eyoyoi/ \oXKOTViroi Kai t€ktov€<; ai/Sp€^ eXetirov ^KpcoyivLOv jueyaXov ^rjTovi/re^ evKTLiJL€vov Sco. I have been at some pains to find out more about this translation, but have failed to do so. The ballad itself is as follows : At Wednesbury there was a cocking, A match between Newton and Scroggins ; The colliers and nailers left work, And all to old Spittle's went jogging. To see this noble sport, Many noblemen resorted ; And though they'd but little money. Yet that little they freely sported, u 305 3o6 Alps and Sanctuaries There was Jeffery and Colborn from Hampton, And Dusty from Bilston was there ; Flummery he came from Darlaston, And he was as rude as a bear. There was old Will from Walsall, And Smacker from Westbromwich come ; Blind Robin he came from Rowley, And staggering he went home. Ralph Moody came hobbling along, As though he some cripple was mocking, To join in the blackguard throng, That met at Wednesbury cocking. He borrowed a trifle of Doll, To back old Taverner's grey ; He laid fourpence-halfpenny to fourpence. He lost and went broken away. But soon he returned to the pit, For he'd borrowed a trifle more money. And ventured another large bet. Along with blobbermouth Coney. When Coney demanded his money, As is usual on all such occasions. He cried, — — thee, if thee don't hold thy rattle, 111 pay thee as Paul paid the Ephasians. The morning's sport being over. Old Spittle a dinner proclaimed. Each man he should dine for a groat, If he grumbled he ought to be , For there was plenty of beef. But Spittle he swore by his troth, That never a man should dine Till he ate his noggin of broth,. I Appendix A 307 The beef it was old and tough, Off a bull that was baited to death, Barney Hyde got a lump in his throat, That had like to have stopped his breath, The company all fell into confusion. At seeing poor Barney Hyde choke ; So they took him into the kitchen. And held him over the smoke. They held him so close to the fire, He frizzled just like a beef -steak. They then threw him down on the floor, Which had like to have broken his neck. One gave him a kick on the stomach, Another a kick on the brow, His wife said. Throw him into the stable. And hell be better just now. Then they all returned to the pit. And the fighting went forward again ; Six battles were fought on each side. And the next was to decide the main. For they were two famous cocks As ever this country bred, Scroggins's a dark-winged black. And Newton's a shift-winged red. The conflict was hard on both sides, Till Brassy's black-winged was choked ; The colliers were tarnationly vexed, And the nailers were sorely provoked. Peter Stevens he swore a great oath. That Scroggins had played his cock foul ; Scroggins gave him a kick on the head, And cried, Yea, thy soul. 3o8 Alps and Sanctuaries The company then fell in discord, A bold/ bold fight did ensue ; , — — , and bite was the word, Till the Walsall men all were subdued. Ralph Moody bit off a man's nose, And wished that he could have him slain. So they trampled both cocks to death, And they made a draw of the main. The cock-pit was near to the church. An ornament unto the town ; On one side an old coal pit. The other well gorsed around. Peter Hadley peeped through the gorse. In order to see them fight ; Spittle jobbed out his eye with a fork. And said, thee, it served thee right. Some people may think this strange, Who Wednesbury never knew ; But those who have ever been there. Will not have the least doubt it's true ; For they are as savage by nature. And guilty of deeds the most shocking ; Jack Baker whacked his own father. And thus ended, Wednesbury cocking. Appendix B Reforms Instituted at S. Michele in the year 1478 (See p. 105) THE palmiest days of the sanctuary were during the time that Rodolfo di Montebello or Mombello was abbot — that is to say, roughly, between the years 1325-60. '' His rectorate,'' says Claretta, '' was the golden age of the Abbey of La Chiusa, which reaped the glory ac- quired by its head in the difficult negotiations entrusted to him by his princes. But after his death, either lot or intrigue caused the election to fall upon those who prepared the ruin of one of the most ancient and illustrious monasteries in Piedmont."* By the last quarter of the fifteenth century things got so bad that a commission of inquiry was held under one Giovanni di Varax in the year 1478. The following extracts from the ordinances then made may not be unwelcome to the reader. The document from which they are taken is to be found, pp. 322-336 of Claretta's work. The text is evidentty in many places corrupt or misprinted, and there are several words which I have looked for in vain in all the dictionaries — Latin, Italian, and French — in the reading-room of the British Museum * " Storia diplomatica dell' antica abbazia di S. Micliele della Chiusa," by Gaudenzio Claretta. Turin, Civelli & Co. 1870. P. 116, 309 3IO Alps and Sanctuaries which seemed in the least Hkely to contain them. I should say that for this translation, I have availed myself, in part, of the assistance of a well-known mediaeval scholar, the Rev. Ponsonby A. Lyons, but he is in no way responsible for the translation as a whole. After a preamble, stating the names of the com- missioners, with the objects of the commission and the circumstances under which it had been called together, the following orders were unanimously agreed upon, to wit : — " Firstly, That repairs urgently required to prevent the building from falling into a ruinous state (as shown by the ocular testimony of the commissioners, assisted by competent advisers whom they instructed to survey the fabric), be paid for by a true tithe, to be rendered by all priors, provosts, and agents directly subject to the monastery. This tithe is to be placed in the hands of two merchants to be chosen by the bishop commen- datory, and a sum is to be taken from it for the restora- tion of the fountain which played formerly in the mon- astery. The proctors who collect the tithes are to be instructed by the abbot and commendatory not to press harshly upon the contributories by way of expense and labour ; and the money when collected is, as already said, to be placed in the hands of two suitable merchants, clients of the said monastery, who shall hold it on trust to pay it for the above-named purposes, as the reverends the commendatory and chamberlain and treasurer of the said monastery shall direct. In the absence of one of these three the order of the other two shall be sufficient. " Item, it is ordered that the mandes,"^ or customary * " Item, ordinaverimt quod fiant mandata seu ellemosinae con- suetae quae sint valloris quatuor prebendarum religiosorum omni die ut moris est." (Claretta, Storia diplomatica, p. 325.) TJie mandatum Appendix B 311 alms, be made daily to the value of what would suffice for the support of four monks. " Item, that the offices in the gift of the monastery be conferred by the said reverend the lord commen- datory, and that those which have been hitherto at the personal disposition of the abbot be reserved for the pleasure of the Apostolic See. Item, that no one do beg a benefice without reasonable cause and consonancy of justice. Item, that those who have had books, privi- leges, or other documents belonging to the monastery do restore them to the treasury within three months from the publication of these presents, under pain of excommunication. Item, that no one henceforth take privileges or other documents from the monastery without a deposit of caution money, or taking oath to return the same within three months, under like pain of excom- munication. Item, that no laymen do enter the treasury of the monastery without the consent of the prior of cloister,* nor without the presence of those who hold the keys of the treasury, or of three monks, and that those who hold the keys do not deliver them to laymen. Item, it is ordered that the places subject to the said monastery be visited every five years by persons in holy orders, and by seculars ; and that, in like manner, every five years a general chapter be held, but this period may be extended or shortened for reasonable cause ; and the generally refers to ** the washing of one another's feet," according to the mandate of Christ during the last supper. In the Benedictine order, however, with which we are now concerned, alms, in lieu of the actual washing of feet, are alone intended by the word. * The prior-claustralis, as distinguished from the prior-major, was the working head of a monastery, and was supposed never, or hardly ever, to leave the precincts. He was the vicar-major of the prior- major. The prior-major was vice-abbot when the abbot was absent, but he could not exercise the full functions of an abbot. The abbot, prior-major, and prior-claustralis may be compared loosely to the master, vice-master, and senior tutor of a large college. 312 Alps and Sanctuaries proctors-general are to be bound in each chapter to bring their procurations, and at some chapter each monk is to bring the accoimt of the fines and all other rights appertain- ing to his benefice, drawn up by a notary in public form, and undersigned by him, that they may be kept in the treasury, and this under pain of suspension. Item, that henceforth neither the office of prior nor any other benefice be conferred upon laymen. The lord abbot is in future to be charged with the expense of all new buildings that are erected within the precincts of the monastery. He is also to give four pittances or suppers to the convent during infirmary time, and six pints of wine according to the custom.* Furthermore, he is to keep beds in the monas- tery for the use of guests, and other monks shall return these beds to the chamberlain on the departure of the guests, and it shall be the chamberlain's business to attend to this matter. Item, delinquent monks are to be punished within the monastery and not without it. Item, the monks shall not presume to give an order for more than two days' board at the expense of the monastery, in the inns at S. Ambrogio, during each week, and they shall not give orders for fifteen days unless they have relations on a journey staying with them, or nobles, or persons * " Item, quod dominus abbas teneatur dare quatuor pitancias seu cenas conventui tempore infirmariae, et quatuor sextaria vini ut con- suetum est " (Claretta, Storia diplomatica, p. 326). The " infirmariae generales " were stated times during which the monks were to let blood — " Stata nimirum tempora quibus sanguis monachis minuebatur, seu vena secabatur." (Ducange.) There were five " minutiones generales " in each year — namely, in September, Advent, before Lent, after Easter, and after Pentecost. The letting of blood was to last three days ; after the third day the patients were to return to matins again, and on the fourth they were to receive absolution. Bleeding was strictly forbidden at any other than these stated times, unless for grave illness. During the time of blood-letting the monks stayed in the infirmary, and were provided with supper by the abbot. During the actual operation the brethren sat all together after orderly fashion in a single room, amid silence and singing of psalms, Appendix B 313 above suspicion, and the same be understood as applying to officials and cloistered persons.* '' Item, within twelve months from date the monks are to be at the expense of building an almshouse in S. Ambrogio, where one or two of the oldest and most respected among them are to reside, and have their portions there, and receive those who are in religion. Item, no monk is to wear his hair longer than two fingers broad, f Item, no hounds are to be kept in the monastery for hunting, nor any dogs save watch-dogs. Persons in religion who come to the monastery are to be enter- tained there for two days, during which time the cellarer is to give them bread and wine, and the pittancerj pittance. '' Item, women of bad character, and indeed all women, are forbidden the monk's apartments without the prior's license, except in times of indulgence, or such as are noble or above suspicion. Not even are the women * " Item, quod religiosi non audeant in Sancto Ambrosio videlicet in hospiciis concedere ultra duos pastos videlicet officiariis singulis hebdomadis claustrales non de quindecim diebus nisi forte aliquae personae de eorum parentela transeuntes aut nobiles aut tales de quibus verisimiliter non habetur suspicio eos secum morari faciant, et sic intelligatur de officiariis et de claustralibus " (Claretta, Storia diplomatica, p. 326). t The two fingers are the barber's, who lets one finger, or two, or three, intervene between the scissors and the head of the person whose hair he is cutting, according to the length of hair he wishes to remain. X " Cellelarius teneatur ministrare panem et vinum et pittanciarius pittanciam " (Claretta, Stor. dip., p. 327). Pittancia is believed to be a corruption of " pietantia." " Pietantiae modus et ordo sic con- scripti . . . observentur. In primis videlicet, quod pietantiarius qui pro tempore fuerit omni anno singulis festivitatibus infra scriptis duo ova in brodio pipere et croco bene condito omnibus et singulis fratribus. . . tenebitur ministrare." (DecretumproMonasterioDobirluc, A.D. 1374, apud Ducange.) A " pittance " ordinarily was served to two persons in a single dish, but there need not be a dish neces^^arily, for a piece of raw cheese or four eggs would be a pittance. The pittancer was the official whose business it was to serve out their pittances to each of the monks. Practically he was the maitre d' hotel of the estab- lishment. 314 Alps and Sanctuaries from San Pictro. or any suspected women, to be ad- mitted without the prior's permission. '' The monks are to be careful how they hold con- verse with suspected women, and are not to be found in the houses of such persons, or they will be punished. Item, the epistle and gospel at high mass are to be said by the monks in church, and in Lent the epistle is to be said by one monk or sub-deacon. '' Item, two candelabra are to be kept above the altar when mass is being said, and the lord abbot is to provide the necessary candles. '' Any one absent from morning or evening mass is to be pimished by the prior, if his absence arises from negligence. *' The choir, and the monks residing in the monas- tery, are to be provided with books and a convenient breviary* .... according to ancient custom and statute, nor can those things be sold which are necessary or useful to the convent. '' Item, all the religious who are admitted and enter the monastery and religion, shall bring one alb and one amice, to be delivered into the hands of the treasurer and preserved by him for the use of the church. " The treasurer is to have the books that are in daily use in the choir re-bound, and to see that the capes which are unsewn, and all the ecclesiastical vestments under his care are kept in proper repair. He is to have the custody of the plate belonging to the monastery, and to hold a key of the treasury. He is to furnish in each * Here the text seems to be corrupt. Appendix B 315 year an inventory of the property of which he has charge, and to hand the same over to the lord abbot. He is to make one common pittance* of bread and wine on the day of the feast of St. Nicholas in December, according to custom ; and if it happens to be found necessary to make a chest to hold charters, &c., the person whose busi- ness it shall be to make this shall be bound to make it. '' As regards the office of almoner, the almoner shall each day give alms in the monastery to the faithful poor — to wit, barley bread to the value of twopence current money, and on Holy Thursday he shall make an alms of threepencef to all comers, and shall give them a plate of beans and a drink of wine. Item, he is to make alms four times a year — that is to say, on Christ- mas Day, on Quinquagesima Sunday, and at the feasts of Pentecost and Easter ; and he is to give to every man a small loaf of barley and a grilled pork chop, J the third of a pound in weight. Item, he shall make a pittance to the convent on the vigil of St. Martin of bread, wine, and mincemeat dumplings, § — that is to say, for each person two loaves and two . . . || of vvi c and some leeks, — and he is to lay out sixty shillings (?) in fish and seasoning, and all the servants are to have a ration of dumplings ; and in the morning he is to give them a dumpling cooked in oil, and a quarter of a loaf, and some wine. Item, he * That is to say, he is to serve out rations of bread and wine to every one. t " Tres denarios." t " Unam carbonatam porci." I suppose I have translated this correctly ; I cannot find that there is any substance known as " car- bonate of pork." § " Rapiolla " I presume to be a translation of " raviolo," or " raviuolo," which, as served at San Pietro at the present day, is a small dumpling containing minced meat and herbs, and either boiled or baked according to preference. II " Luiroletos." This word is not to be found in any dictionary : litre (?). 3 1 6 Alps and Sanctuaries shall give another pittance on the feast of St. James — to wit, a good sheep and some cabbages* with seasoning. " Item, during infirmary time he must provide four meat suppers and two pintsj (?) of wine, and a pittance of mincemeat dumplings during the rogation days, as do the sacristan and the butler. He is also to give each monk one bundle of straw in every year, and tc keep a servant who shall bring water from the spring for the service of the mass and for holy water, anc light the fire for the barber, and wait at table, and do all else that is reasonable and usual ; and the said almoner shall also keep a towel in the church for drying the hands, and he shall make preparation for the mandes on Holy Thursday, both in the monastery and in the cloister. Futhermore, he must keep beds in the hospital of S. Ambrogio, and keep the said hospital in such condition that Christ's poor may be received there in orderly and godly fashion ; he must also maintain the chapel of St. Nicholas, and keep the chapel of St. James in a state of repair, and another part of the building contiguous to the chapel. Item, it shall devolve upon the chamberlain to pay yearly to each of the monks of the said monastery of St. Martin who say mass, except r those of them who hold office, the sum of six florins and] six groats, J and to the treasurer, precentor, and surveyor, §j * " Caulos cabutos cum salsa " (choux cabotes ?). t " Sextaria." J " Grosses." § " Operarius, i.e. Dignitas in Collegiis Canonicorum et Monasteriis,"! cui operibus publicis vacare incumbit . . . Latius interdum patebantl operarii munera siqiiidem ad ipsum spectabat librorum et ornamen- torum provincia." (Ducange.) " Let one priest and two laymen be elected in every year, who shall be called operarii of the said Church of St. Lawrence, and shall have the care of the whole fabric of the church itself . . . but it shall also pertain to them to receive all the moneys belonging to the said church, and to be at the charge of all necessary repairs, whether of the building itself or of the ornaments." (Statuta j Eccl. S. Laur. Rom. apud Ducange.) Appendix B 317 to each one of them the same sum for their clothing, and to each of the young monks who do not say mass four florins and six groats. And in every year he is to do one O* for the greater prioratef during Advent. Those who have benefices and who are resident within the monastery, but whose benefice does not amount to the value of their clothes, are to receive their clothes according to the existing custom. ''Item, the pittancer shall give a pittance of cheese and eggs to each of the monks on every day from the feast of Easter to the feast of the Holy Cross in Septem- ber — to wit, three quarters of a pound of cheese ; but when there is a principal processional duplex feast, each monk is to have a pound of cheese per diem, except on fast days, when he is to have half a pound only. Also on days when there is a principal or processional feast, each one of them, including the hebdomadary, is to have five eggs. Also, from the feast of Easter to the octave of St. John the Baptist the pittancer is to serve out old cheese, and new cheese from the octave^ of St. John the Baptist to the feast of St. Michael. From the feast of St. Michael to Quinquagesima the cheese is to be of medium quality. From the feast of the Holy Cross in September until Lent the pittancer must serve out to each monk three quarters of a pound of cheese, if it is a feast of twelve lessons, and if it is a feast of three lessons, whether a week-day or a vigil, the pittancer is to give each monk but half a pound of cheese. He is also to give all the monks during Advent nine pounds of wax extra allowance, and it is not proper that the pittancer should weigh out cheese for any one on a Friday * O. The seven antiphons which were sung in Advent were called O's. (Ducange.) t " Pro prioratu majori." I have been unable to understand what is here intended. 3 1 8 Alps and Sanctuaries unless it be a principal processional or duplex feast, or a principal octave. It is also proper, seeing there is no fast from the feast of Christmas to the octave of the Epiphany, that every man should have his three quarters of a pound of cheese per diem. Also, on Christmas and Easter days the pittancer shall provide five dumplings per monk per diem, and one plate of sausage meat,* and he shall also give to each of the servants on the said two days five dumplings for each several day ; and the said pittancer on Christmas Day and on the day of St. John the Baptist shall make a relish, | or seasoning, and give to each monk one good glass thereof, that is to say, the fourth part of onej . . for each monk — to wit, on the first, second, and third day of the feast of the Nativity, the Circumcision, the Epiphany, and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin ; and the pittancer is to put spice in the said relish, and the cellarer is to provide wine and honey, and during infirmary time those who are being bled are to receive no pittance from the pittancer. Further, from the feast of Easter to that of the Cross of September, there is no fast except on the prescribed vigils ; each monk, therefore, should always have three quarters of a pound of cheese after celebration on a week-day until the above-named day. Further, the pittancer is to provide for three mandes in each week during the whole year, excepting Lent, and for each mande he is to find three pounds of cheese. From the feast of St. Michael to that of St. Andrew he is to provide for an additional mande in each week. Item, he is to pay the prior of * " Carmingier." f " Primmentum vel salsam." % " Biroleti." I have not been able to find the words " carmingier/' " primmentum," and " biroletus " in any dictionary. " Biroletus " is probably the same as " luiroletus " which we have met with above, and the word is misprinted in one or both cases. Appendix B 319 the cloister six florins for his fine* . . . and three florins to the . . , ,t and he should also give five eggs fer diem to the hebdomadary of the high altar, except in Lent. Further, he is to give to the woodman, the baker, the keeper of the church, the servants of the Infirmary, the servant at the Eleemosynary, and the stableman, to each of them, one florin in every year. Item, any monks who leave the monastery before vespers when it is not a fast, shall lose one quarter of a pound of cheese, even though they return to the monastery after vespers ; but if it is a fast day, they are to lose nothing. Item, the pittancer is to serve out mashed beans to the servants of the convent during Lent as well as to those who are in religion, and at this season he is to provide the prior of the cloister and the hebdomadary with bruised cicerate ;J but if any one of the same is hebdomadary, he is only to receive one portion. If there are two celebrating high mass at the high altar, each of them is to receive one plate of the said bruised cicerate. *' As regards the office of cantor, the cantor is to intone the antiphon ' ad benedictus ad magnificat ' at terce,§ and at all other services, and he is himself to intone the antiphons or provide a substitute who can intone them ; and he is to intone the psalms according to custom. Also if there is any cloistered person who has begun his week of being hebdomadary, and falls into such sickness * " Item, priori claustrali pro sua dupla sex florinos." " Dupla " tias the meaning " mulcta " assigned to it in Ducange among others, aone of which seem appropriate here. The translation as above, hiowever, is not satisfactory. t " Pastamderio." I have been unable to find this word in any dictionary. The text in this part is evidently full of misprints and [corruptions. X '* Ciceratam fractam." This word is not given in any dictionary. 3icer is a small kind of pea, so cicerata fracta may perhaps mean something like pease pudding. § Terce. A service of the Roman Church. 320 Alps and Sanctuaries that he cannot celebrate the same, the cantor is to say or celebrate three masses. The cantor is to lead all the monks of the choir at matins, high mass, vespers, and on all other occasions. On days when there is a processional duplex feast, he is to write down the order of the office ; that is to say, those who are to say the invitatory,* the lessons, the epistle of the gospel f and those who are to wear copes at high mass and at vespers. The cantor must sing the processional hymns which are sung on entering the church, but he is exempt from taking his turn of being hebdomadary by reason of his intoning the offices ; and he is to write down the names of those who celebrate low masses and of those who get them said by proxy ; and he is to report these last to the prior that they may be punished. The cantor or his delegate is to read in the refectory during meal times and during infirmary time, and he who reads in the refectory is to have a quart [?] of bread, as also are the two junior monks who wait at table. The cantor is to instruct the boys in the singing of the office and in morals, and is to receive their portions of bread, wine and pittance, and besides all this he is to receive one florin for each of them, and he is to keep them decently ; and the prior is to certify himself upon this matter, and to see to it that he victuals them properly and gives them their food. '' The sacristan is to provide all the lights of the church whether oil or wax, and he is to give out small candles to the hebdomadary, and to keep the eight lamps that burn both night and day supplied with oil. He is to keep the lamps in repair and to buy new ones * " Invitatorium." Ce nom est donne a un verset qui se chante ou se recite au commencement de I'office de matines. II varie selon les fetes et meme les feries. Migne. Encyclopedie Theologique. t " Epistolam Evangelii." There are probably several misprints here. Appendix B 321 if the old are broken, and he is to provide the incense. He is to maintain the covered chapel of St. Nicholas, and the whole church except the portico of the same ; and the lord abbot is to provide sound timber for doors and other necessaries. He is to keep the frames* of the bells in repair, and also the ropes for the same, and during Lent he is to provide two pittances of eels to the value of eighteen groats for each pittance, and one other pittance of dumplings and seasoning during rogation time, to wit, five dumplings cooked in oil for each person, and one quart of bread and wine, and all the house domestics and serving men of the convent who may be present are to have the same. At this time all the monks are to have one quarter of a pound of cheese from the sacristan. And the said sacristan should find the convent two pittances during infirmary time and two pintsf of wine, and two suppers, one of chicken and salt meat, with white chestnuts, inasmuch as there is only to be just so much chicken as is sufficient. Item, he is to keep the church clean. Item, he has to pay to the keeper of the church one measure of barley, and eighteen groats for his clothes yearly, and every Martinmas he is to pay to the cantor sixty soldi, and he shall place aj ... or boss § in the choir during Lent. Also he must do one O in Advent and take charge of all the ornaments of the altars and all the relics. Also on high days and when there is a procession he is to keep the paschal candle before the altar, as is customary, but on other days he shall keep a burning lamp only, and when the candle is burning the lamp may be extinguished. * " Monnas." Word not to be found. t " Sextaria." J Word missing in the original. § " Borchiam." Word not to be found. Borchia in Italian is a kind of ornamental boss. ■ 322 Alps and Sanctuaries *' As touching the office of infirmarer, the infirmarer is to keep the whole convent fifteen days during infirmary time, to wit, the one-half of them for fifteen days and the other half for another fifteen days, except that on the first and last days all the monks will be in the infirmary. Also when he makes a pittance he is to give the monks beef and mutton,* sufficient in quantity and quality, and to receive their portions. The prior of the cloister, cantor, and cellarer may be in the infirmary the whole month. And the infirmarer is to keep a servant, who shall go and buy meat three times a week, to wit, on Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays, but at the expense of the sender, and the said servant shall on the days following prepare the meat at the expense of the infirmarer ; and he shall salt it and make seasoning as is customary, to wit, on all high days and days when there is a processional duplex feast, and on other days. On the feast of St. Michael he shall serve out a seasoning made of sage and onions ; but the said servant shall not be bound to go and buy meat during Advent, and on Septuagesima and Quinquagesima Sundays he shall serve out seasoning. Also when the infirmarer serves out fresh meat, he is to provide fine salt. Also the said servant is to go and fetch medicine once or oftener when necessary, at the expense of the sick person, and to visit him. If the sick person requires it, he can have aid in the payment of his doctor, and the lord abbot is to pay for the doctor and medicines of all cloistered persons. " On the principal octaves the monks are to have seasoning, but during the main feasts they are to have seasoning upon the first day only. The infirmarer is not bound to do anything or serve out anything on * " Teneatur dare religiosis de carnibus bovinis et montonis decenter." Appendix B 323 days when no flesh is eaten. The cellarer is to do this, and during the times of the said infirmaries, the servants of the monastery and convent are to be, as above, on the same footing as those who are in religion, that is to say, half of them are to be bled during one fifteen days, and the other half during the other fifteen days, as is customary. '' Item, touching the office of cellarer, it is ordered that the cellarer do serve out to the whole convent bread, wine, oil, and salt ; as much of these two last as any one may require reasonably, and this on all days excepting when the infirmarer serves out kitchen meats, but even then the cellarer is to serve his rations to the hebdomadary. Item, he is to make a pittance of dumplings with season- ing to the convent on the first of the rogation days ; each monk and each servant is to have five dumplings un- cooked with his seasoning, and one cooked with [oil ?] and a quart of bread and wine, and each monk is to have one quarter of a pound of cheese. Item, upon Holy Thursday he is to give to the convent a pittance of leeks and fish to the value of sixty soldi, and . . . .* Item, another pittance upon the first day of August ; and he is to present the convent with a good sheep and cabbages with seasoning. Item, in infirmary time he is to provide two pittances, one of fowls and the other of salt meat and white chestnuts, and he is to give two pints of wine. Item, in each week he is to give one flagon [Pj.f Item, the cellarer is to provide napkins and plates at meal times in the refectory, and he is to find the bread for making seasoning, and the vinegar for the mustard ; and he is to do an O in Advent, and in Lent he is to provide white chestnuts, and cicerate all the year. From the feast of St. Luke to the octave * " Foannotos." Word not to be found. t " Laganum." m 324 Alps and Sanctuaries of St. Martin he is to provide fresh chestnuts, to wit, on feasts of twelve lessons ; and on dumpling days he is to find the oil and flour with which to make the dumplings. " Item, as to the office of surveyor, it is ordered that the surveyor do pay the master builder and also the wages of the day labourers ; the lord abbot is to find all the materials requisite for this purpose. Item, the surveyor is to make good any plank or post or nail, and he is to repair any hole in the roofs which can be repaired easily, and any beam or piece of boarding. Touching the aforesaid materials it is to be understood that the lord abbot furnish beams, boards, rafters, scantling, tiles, and anything of this description ;* the said surveyor is also to renew the roof of the cloister, chapter, refectory, dormitory, and portico ; and the said surveyor is to do an O in Advent. " Item, concerning the ofiice of porter. The porter is to be in charge of the gate night and day, and if he go outside the convent, he must find a sufficient and trust- worthy substitute ; on every feast day he isf . . , to lose none of his provender ; and to receive his clothing in spring as though he were a junior monk ; and if he is in holy orders, he is to receive clothing money ; and to have his pro rata portions in all distributions. Item, the said porter shall enjoy the income derived from S. Michael of Canavesio ; and when a monk is received into the monastery, he shall pay to the said porter five good sous ; and the said porter shall shut the gates of the convent at sunset, and open them at sunrise.'' The rest of the document is little more than a resume * " EnreduUas hujusmodi " [et res uUas hujusmodi ?]. t " In processionibus deferre et de sua prebenda nihil perdat vesti- arium vere suum salvatur eidem sicut uni monacuUo." Appendix B 325 of what has been given, and common form to the effect that nothing in the foregoing is to override any orders made by the Holy Apostohc See which may be preserved in the monastery, and that the rights of the Holy See are to be preserved in all respects intact. If doubts arise concerning the interpretation of any clause they are to be settled by the abbot and two of the senior monks. Author's Index Abruptness of introduction the measure of importance, 196 Absolute, we would have an absolute standard if we could, 196 Absolutely, nothing is anything, 196 Academies and their influence, 146-59, 226, 248 Academy picture, the desire to paint an, 142 Ciseri's, at Locarno, 271 Accidentals, a maze of meta- physical, 23 Action, foundations of, lie deeper than reason, 107 Adaptation and illusion, 44 Adipose cushion of Italy, 92 Advertisements, American, at Locarno, 273 iEstheticism, culture, earnestness, and intenseness, all methods of trying to conceal weakness, 192 Affection a sine qua non for success, 158 Agape and gnosis, 17 Airolo, 25 Alcohol and imagination, 46 Alda, II Salto della bella, 104 All things to all men, 66 Allen, Grant, 69 Almoner, the, of S. Michele, 315 Alone, should we like to see a picture when we are, 23, 158 Alpi and monti, difference be- tween, 35 Alpine roads, the steps by which they have advanced, 59 Alps, narrowness of the, 61 Altar cloth, a fine embroidered, 256 Altar-piece at Morbio Superiore, 237 Amateurs, wanted a periodical written and illustrated by, 156 Amber, a smile in, 235 Ambrogio, S., and neighbour- hood, 113 American advertisements at Lo- carno, 273 Ancestors, to have been begotten of good ones for many genera- tions, 252 Andermatt, 24 Andorno, 186 Angel, drawing an, dow^n, 42 Angera, 258 Animals and plants, cause of their divergence, 153 Ants near Faido, 38 — and bees, stationary civilisa- tion of, 195 — and their nests, 288 Anzone, the sad torrent of, 220 Apparition, artificial, of the B.V.M., 275 Appliances, creatures and their, 283 Apprenticeship v. the academic system, 150 Arona, 265 Art for art's sake, 156 — Italian, causes of its decline, 141 — moral effect of, 252 Asbestos on pass between Fusio and Dalpe, 285 Asplenium alternifolium, 37 Ass dressed in sacerdotal robes, 67 326 Index 327 Aureggio, 177 Aurora Borealis like pedal notes in Handel's bass, 83 Avalanches at Mesocco, 222 Avogadro, 148 B.A. degree should be assimi- lated to M.A., 186 Baby, death of a, bells rung for, 266 Bach as good a musician as Handel, 17 Badgers' fat, 289 Balaclava, a stuffed Charge of, 251 Ballerini, Mgr., Patriarch of Alex- andria, 268, 272 Banda, Casina di, 119 Bank of England note, Italian language on, 19 Barelli, Signor, at Bisbino, 239 Barley, mode of drying, 29 Barratt, Mrs., of Langar, 198 Baskets, helmet-shaped, near Lanzo, 134 Bastianini, 149 Bayeux tapestry, 150 Beaconsfield, Lord, 23, 141, 142 Bears, 75, 223 Beds, good, their moral influence, 184, 186 Bees, stationary civilisation of, 195 Beethoven on Handel, 18 Beginners in art, how to treat them, 155 Bell, Peter, and his primrose, 38, 143 Bellini, the, when, where, and how to get their like again, 146 Bellinzona, 198 Bells, 45, 265, 294 Bergamo, Colleone chapel at, 231 Berkeley, Bishop, and his tar- water, 64 Bernardino, Padre, his inscrip- tion on my drawing, 220 Bernardino, San, 223 Biasca, 85 Biella, 169 Bignasco, 278 Bigotry, eating a mode of, 153 Birds, 116 — their names, 291 — their singing, 230 Bisbino, Monte, 233 Bishop, Boy, 67 — welcomed with a brass band, 272 Bleeding times, 312 Blinds, milkmen's and under- takers', 145 Blood, circulation of, like people, 20 Bodily mechanism, a town like, 20 Body, soul, and money, 107 Boelini, family of, 213 Bologna, Academy at, 147 Bonvicino, the famiglia, 124 Borromeo, S. Carlo, room in which he was born, 263 Botticelli, Sandro, on landscape painting, 45 Box-trees, clipped, 104, 167 Brebbia, church at, 258 Bridge, the first, 59 Brigand, right to free a, con- ferred upon Graglia, 189, 193 British Museum and Oropa, 183, 185 Buckley, Miss Arabella, 69 Bullocks, how I lost my, 154 Burrello, Castel, 114 Bussoleno, 114 Butcher, the eructive, 126 Cadagno, Lake of, 81 Cader Idris, an Archbishop on, 89 Calanca, Sta. Maria in, 202, 223 Calonico, 55 Calpiognia, 29, 35 Cama, the aesthetic dog at, 202 Cambridge, a modest proposal to make an Oropa of, 186 Campello, 76 Campo Santo at Calpiognia, 30 at Mesocco, 204 at Pisa, 159 Campolungo, Alpe di, 42, 284 Canaries, their song unpleasant, 231 Cantine, a day at the, 243 ;28 Index ^ Canvas of life turned upside down, 68 "Carbonate of pork," 315 Carracci, the, 147 Casina di Banda, 119 Castelletto, 265 Cavagnago, 76 Cenere, Monte, narcissuses on, 228 Ceres, 161 Cerrea, 133 Chalk, Conte, the Italian for whom this was the one thing needful, 136 Chalk eggs. 43 Chamois, foot of, 283 Change, repudiation of desire for sudden, 186 — importance of, depends on the rate of introduction, 196 — either the circumstances or the sufferer will, 196 Changes, sweeping, to be felt hereafter as vibrations, 60 Cheapissimo, 165 Cheese and the alpi, 289 Cherries, 33, 35, 46 Chestnuts, 118 Chicory and seed onions, weary utterness in, 227 Children, subalpine, 301 — what becomes of the clever, 149 Chinese, the examination-ridden, 151 Chironico, 75 " Chow," 52 Church-going, subalpine, 303 Circulation of people like blood, 20 Ciseri, his picture at Locarno, 271 Civilisation, antiquity of Italian, 124 — stationary, of ants and bees, 195 Class distinction inevitable, 195 Classification only possible through sense of shock, 63 Clergy, our English, and S. Michele priests, 106 Cloisters at Locarno, 271 — at Oltrona, 258 Club, the, the true uaiversity, ^55 Cocking, Wednesbury, 55, 305 Collects, unsympathetic priest bristling with, iii CoUeone, Medea, 231 Colma di San Giovanni, 163 Comba di Susa, 119 ^ Comfort as a moral influence, Bj 185 ■ Comic song, the landlord's, 128 Common sense, the safest guide, 108 Consistent, who ever is ? 153 Contradictory principles, there must be a harmonious fusing of, 152 Converting things by eating them, 153 Corpses, desiccated, at S. Michele, 97 Cousins, my, the lower animals, 69 Cows fighting in farmyard, 120 Cricco, 125 Cristoforo, S., church of, at Mesocco, 208 at Castello, 234 Crossing, efficacy of, 152 — unexpected results of, 55 — useless if too wide, 157 Crucifixion, fresco at Fusio, 140 Culture and priggishness, 141 — a mode of concealing weakness, 192 Current feeling, the safest guide, 108 Cutlets, burnt, and the waiter, 124 Dalpe, 38 Dante a humbug, 156 Darwin, Charles, no place for meeting, 69 Darwin, Erasmus, 23, 153 Dazio, Signor Pietro, of Fusio, 279 Death, no man can die to himself, 277 Deceit a necessary alloy of truth, 289 Dedomenici da Eossa, 137-9 Demand and supply, 108 D 'Enrico, the brothers, 189 Dentist's show-case mistaken for relics, 43 Indc} 329 Deportment, good technique re- sembles, 156 Desire and power, 108 Development of power to know our own likes and dislikes, 22 Devil's Bridge, 23 Diatonic scale, and song of birds in New Zealand, 232 Dirt, eating a peck of moral, 71 Disgvazia and misfortune, 58 D'Israeli, Isaac, quotations from, 67 Dissenters all narrow-minded, 153 Distribution of plants and animals often inexplicable, 133 Diversion of mental images, 54 Doera, fresco at, 145, 221 Dogs, 156, 202, 260, 313 Doing, the only mode of learning, 151 Doors, how they open in time, 151 Doubt, " There lives more doubt in honest faith," 67 Downs, the South, like Monte Generoso, 230 Draughtsman, first business of a, 148 Drawing, the old manner of teaching, 150 Dream, my, at Lago di Cadagno, 82 Drunkenness and imagination, 46 Dunque, 133 Duso, Agostino, his fresco at Sta. Maria in Calanca, 225 Earnestness, 142, 192 Eating, a mode of bigotry, 153 Echo at Graglia, 192 Edelweiss, 291 Electricity and Alpine roads, 60 Elephant brays a third, 233 " Elongated '' honey, 293 Embryonic stages, the artist must go through, 148 Endymion, Lord Beaconsfield's, 23, 141 English as tract-distributors, 65 — language, its ultimate su- premacy, 41 English priests and Italian, 106 — why introspective, 18 Equilibrium only attainable at the cost of progress, 195 Eritis, a panic concerning, 204 Eternal punishment, iii, 196 Eusebius, St., 178 Evolution and illusion, 43 — essence of, consists in not shocking too much, no Extreme, every, an absurdity, 153 Faido, 22 Faith, doubt lives in honest, 67 — more assured in the days of spiritual Saturnalia, 68 — foundations of our system based on, 107, 277 — and reason, 108 — catholic, of protoplasm, 152 — a mode of impudence, 283 Falsehood turning to truth, 71 Famine prices at Locarno, 276 Feeling, current, the safest guide, 108 Fertile, rich and poor rarely fertile inter se, 195 Fires, how Italians manage their, 117 Fishmonger choosing a bloater, 23 Flats and sharps, a maze of meta- physical, 23 Fleet Street, beauties of, 19 Flowers, names of, 291 Fossil-soul, 234 Foundations of action lie deeper than reason, 107 — of a durable system laid on faith, 277 Francis, St., and Insurance Co.'s plate, 191 Friction, which prevents the un- duly rapid growth of inventions, 60 Fucine, 166 Fun, Italian love of, 243 Fusing and confusing of ideas and structures, 44 — faith and reason, necessity of, X08 330 Ind Fusing the harmonious, of two contradictory principles, 152 Fusio, 140, 277 Gallows at S. Michele, 104 Garnets, 285 Garrard, 159 Generations, more than one neces- sary for great things, 87, 188 Generoso, Monte, 229 German influences in Italian valleys, 167 Gesture older and easier than speech, 165 Giacomo, San, 223 Giorio, San, 113 Giornico, 73 Giovanni, San, Colma di, 163 Gladstone, Mr., advised to go to the Grecian pantomime, 68 Gnats, daily swallowing of, 69 Gnosis and Agape, 17 God not an gry with the plover for lying, and likes the spider, 70 Goethe a humbug, 156 Gogin, Charles, 204 Gold at the Casina di Banda, 120 Gothard, St., scenery of the pass, 22 — crossing in winter, 24 — the old road, 38 Graglia, 188 Grammar and good technique, 156 Grecian pantomime, Mr. Glad- stone recommended to see, 68 Gribbio, 76 Griffin at Temple Bar, 20 Grissino, pane, 135 Groesner, G. W., his picture at S. Maria in Calanca, 225 Groscavallo Glacier, 135 Guglielmoni, 284, 287-92, 298 Habit, the oldest commonly re- sorted to at a pinch, 165 Hair, no monk to wear his hair more than two fingers broad, 313 Handel and Shakespeare, 17 — and Italy, 19 — how I said he was a Catholic, 69 ex Handel, his ploughman and his J humour, 144 — his paganism and his religious| fervour, 191 — the Varese chapels like a set of I variations by, 252 — quotations from his music, 31, 34, 83, 84, 99, 200, 282 Harlington, inscription at, 234 Hawks, tame, 116 Hay-making at Piora, 81 Hedgehog, a spiritual, 1 1 1 Hen, the meditative, no — and chalk eggs, 43- Heresy and heretics, 152 Hieroglyph of a lost soul, 147 Holidays like a garden, 69 Holiness a Semitic characteristic, 142 Honey, the "elongation" of, 293 J Hooghe, P. de, 267 Humbugs, the seven, 156 Humour, Italian love of, 243 — Leonardo da Vinci's, 144 Huxley, 69 Ignazio, S., 161 Illusion and evolution, 43 — and fusion, 54 Images, mental diversion of the, 54 — worship of, 251 Imagination and bells, Leonardo da Vinci on, 45 Immortality, 23, 277 Imperfection the only true per- fection, 138 Impossibilissimo , 165 Impudence a mode of faith, 284 — the chamois continues to live through, 284 Inconsistency of plants and ani- mals, 153 Infirmary times, 316 Institution, the Royal, why we go to, 68 Insurance Office, plate of, and St. Francis, 191 Intenseness a mode of weakness, 192 Interaction of reason and faith, 108 Ind ex 331 Inundations and the ruscelli, 219 Inventions, 59, 134 Irrigation, 119 Israelites, the Vaudois the lost ten tribes of, 112 Issime, bells at, 297 Italians, their resemblance to Englishmen, 141, 168 Ivy blossoms, intoxicating effect of, on insects, 104 Jay, a tame, 116 John-the-Baptist-looking man, 122 Joke, the mediaeval, 144 Jones, H. F., as my collaborator, 92 — on Lord Beaconsfield and Endymion, 142 — how he learned to draw, 150 — and the dog at Cama, 202 — and the fresco of S. Cristoforo at Mesocco, 209 — on the writing by Lazarus Borollinus, 213 Jutland and Scheria, 41 Kettle, sparks smouldering on, a sign of rain, 239 Kicking the waiter downstairs, 124 Kindliness v. grammar and de- portment, 156 Kitchen at Angera, 263 Knowing our own likes and dis- likes, difficulty of, 22 Knowledge, a good bed one of the main ends of, 186 Ld, 132 Lamb and perpetual spring, 62 Lankester, Prof. Ray, 69 Larks and Wordsworth, 231 Latin and Greek verses and art, 145 Learning via doing, 151 Leg, old woman's, at Dalpe, 39 — S. Rocco's, 297 Lesbia and her passer, 231 Liberals throw too large pieces of bread at their hen, no Ligornetto, 243 Likes and dislikes hard to dis- cover, 22 Liking and trying, 151 Lilies, 55, 285 Locarno, 268 Locke, his essay on the under- standing, 44 Locomotion of plants, 153 London, 19 Loom at Fucine, 166 Lothair sent to a University. 141 Ludgate Hill Station, 20 Lugano, 228 Luke, St., his statue of the Virgin, 178 Lukmanier Pass, 24, 28 Lying, a few remarks on, 69 M.A. degree should be assimilated to the B.A. degree, 186 Mairengo, 28 " Mans is all alike," 146 Mantegnesque man at the Casina di Banda, 122 Maoris on white men's fires, 117 Marcus Aurelius a humbug, 156 Marigold blossoms used to colour risotto, 227 Marmots, 285, 288 Martello, Pietro Giuseppe, 189 Master and pupil, true relations between, 150 Matchbox, a frivolous, at Gra- glia, 194 Matilda and the Bayeux tapestry, 150 Megatherium fossil bores us, 235 " Membrane, my mucous, is be- fore you," 166 Mendelssohn, staying a long time before things, 24 Mendrisio, 228 Merriment an essential feature of the old feast, 191 Mesocco, 207 Michael Angelo would have failed for " Punch," 143 Michele, S., 86 Microscope, a mental, wanted, 22 Milton and Fleet Street, 20 332 Index Milton and Handel, 191 " Minga far tutto," 244 Mirrors, frescoes of Death with, at Soazza, 204 Misfortune and disgrace, 58 Mistakes, essence of evolution lies in power to make, no — and plasticity, 44 Misunderstanding, essay on human, 44 Monks less sociable than priests, 71 — at S. Michele, 106 Montboissier, Hugo de, 87 Monti and alpi, difference be- tween, 35 Montreal Mountain, 301 Moody, Tom, funeral of, 159 Morbio Superiore, 237 Mozart on Handel, 18 Murray's Handbook, mistakes on S. Michele, 102 Music at Locarno, 272 — at Varese, 257 Names of birds, 291 — of flowers, 291 — scratched on walls, 213, 235 Narcissuses on Monte Cenere, 228 National Gallery, an art professor at the, 203 Nativity, a stuffed, 251 Negri, Cav. Avvocato, 41 Nemesis, an intellectual sop to, 67 Nests, artificial, 116 New Zealand, song of birds in, 232 Nicolao, S., church of, at Giornico, 73 — chapel of, on Monte Bisbino, 242 above Sommazzo, 247 Nightingale does not use the diatonic scale, 231 Nose, the man who tapped his, 165 — the man with red, among the saints at Orta, 177 — dispute about a lady's, 124 Noses, saints with pink, 254 Novice, the, to whom I played Handel, 69 "Obadiahs, The two," welcoming a bishop with, 272 Oltrona, 258 Onions, seed, and chicory, their weary utterness, 227 Opportunity, lying in wait for, 152 Oratories, Ticinese, 42 Orchids that imitate flies, 70 Oropa, 169 Orta, 167, 177 Osco, 28 Oxford and Cambridge, proposal to make Oropas of them, 186 Paganism of Handel, Milton, and the better part of Catholicism, 191 Pagliotto at Varese, 256 Painting, the giants of, unin- teresting, 144 — not more mysterious than con- veyancing, 151 Pantheism lurking in rhubarb, 64 Parrot at Mesocco, 207 Passer solitario, 230 Paul, St., letting in the thin edge of the wedge, 66 — and seasonarianism, 68 Peccia, 278 Pella, 167 Periodical, wanted a, by pure amateurs, 156 Photography used in votive pictures, 145 Pick-me-up, a spiritual, 55 Pietro, San, 92 Pinerolo, in Piora, 77 Piotta, 26 Piottino, Monte, 26 Pirchiriano, Monte, 88 Plants and animals, causes of their divergence, 153 Plato a humbug, 156 Plover, the, a liar, 69 Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 131 Pollard, Mr., 158 Poly podium vulgar e, 242 Porches, timber, 28 i "Pork, carbonate of," 315 Index 333 Posizionina, una discreta, 165 Postilions, St. Gothard, 24 Potatoes easily bored, 55 Prato, 42 Present, the only comfortable time to live in, 61 Priggishness, 70, 141 Prigs, " she had heard there were such things," 125 Primadengo, 33 Primrose Hill and the Arch- bishops of Canterbury and York, 89 Procaccini, the brothers, 248 Professions should be hereditary, 155 Progress and equilibrium, each have their advantages, 195 Propositions want tempering with their contraries, 158 Proselytising by eating, 153 Protestantism less logical than Catholicism, 106 — more logical than Catholicism, 192 Protestants do not try to under- stand Catholicism, 273 Protoplasm, the catholic faith of, 152 Pruning of trees, 129 Pulmonary complaints in sub- alpine villages, 290 " Punch," the illustrations to, 143 Punishment, eternal, denied by an Italian, iii we would have it so if we could, 196 Purgatory, fresco at Fusio, 140 Quarrel, pleasure of laying aside a, 69 — why the subalpine people quarrel so little, 223 Quietism v. going about in search of prey, 152 Quinto, 26, 46, 77 Quirico, S., chapel of, 261 Raffaelle a humbug, 156 Railway director, the ideal, his education, 155 Rascane, 29 Rationalism, when will it sit lightly on us ? 112 Reason and faith, 108 — insufficient alone, 108 — - and the chamois's foot, 283 Recreation and regeneration, 54 — cities of, 186 Red Lion Square said by an Italian to be the centre of London business, 125 Reformation, the, confined to a narrow area, 135 Relics, dentist's show-case mis- taken for, 43 Rembrandt, Sir W. Scott on, 77 Renaissance, the standing aloof from academic principles a sine qua non for a genuine, 155 Revolutions felt hereafter as mere vibrations, 60 Rhinoceros grunts a fourth, 233 Rhubarb, reflections upon, 62 Richmond Gem cigarette, ad- vertisement of, 273 Risotto, marigolds for colouring, 227 Ritom, Lago, 79 Roads, Alpine, 59 Rocca Melone, 167 Rocco, San, and his leg, 297 Rocks, conventional treatment of, in fresco, 143 Romanes, Mr., 69 Ronco, 77 Rosherville Gardens and Varese, 256 Rossa, Dedomenici da, 137-9 Rossura, 49 Royal Institution, why we go to the, 68 Ruins, all, are frauds, 261 Sacramental wafers, how the novice taught me to make, 69 Sagno, 238 Saints a feeble folk at Varese, 253 Sambucco, Val di, 281, 291 Sanitary conditions of the alpi, 290 of Fusio, 299 334 Index Saturnalia, spiritual, 68 Scheria and Jutland, 41 Schools, our, are covertly radical, 158 Scott, Sir W., on Rembrandt, 77 Seasonarianism and St. Paul, 68 Seasons, the, like species, 63 Semitic characteristic, holiness a, 142 Shakespeare and Handel, 17, 185 Shock, a sine qua non for con- solation and for evolution, 54 — our perception of a, our sole means of classifying, 63 Signorelli, Signor, 264 Skeletons at S. Michele, 97 Sketching clubs, their place in a renaissance of art, 156 Sleep, cost of, 184 '' Smile, a, in amber, 235 Smuggling on Monte Bisbino, 238 Soazza, 198 Sommazzo, 247 Soot, sparks clinging to, a sign of rain, 239 Soul, hieroglyph of a lost, 147 Soul-fossil, 234 Sparrow, the solitary, 230 Sparrows, tame, at Anger a, 260 Species like the seasons, 63 Speculation founded on illusion, 44 Speech not so old as gesture, 165 Spider, the, a liar, but God likes it, 70 Spiders are liers-in-wait, 152 Spinning-wheels at Fucine, 166 Spiral tunnels, 58 Spires near the Lake of Orta, 167 Sporting pictures, 159 Spring, perpetual, and lamb, 62 Spurs at the Tower of London, 215 Stomach affected by thunder, 127 Structures, fusion and confusion of, 44 Stura Valley, 167 Success due mainly to affection, 158 Sunday at Rossura, 51 Supply and demand, io8 Switzerland, German, I have done with, 28 Tabachetti, 189 Tacitus hankered after German institutions, and was a prig, 142 Tanner, extract from ledger of, 235 Tanzio, II, 189 Tar-water, Bishop Berkeley's, 64 Technique and grammar, 156 T^moin, Le, a Vaudois news- paper, III Tempering, all propositions want, with their contraries, 152 Tengia, ss Tennyson, misquotation from, 67 Thatch, an indication of German influence, 167 Theism in Bishop Berkeley's tar- water, 64 Thunder, its effect on the stomach, 127 Ticino carries mud into the Lago Maggiore, 220 " Tira giii," 42 Titian would not have done for " Punch," 143 Toeless men, 129 Tom, Lago, 78^ ^^ Tondino, 164 Torre Pellice, iii Torrents, deification of, 220 Tower of London, prisoners' carv- ings in, 150 figure of Queen Elizabeth in, 175 spurs in, 215 Trees, pruning of, 129 Tremorgio, Lago di, 79 Trinity College, Cambridge, and Oropa, 173 Triulci, family of, at Mesocco, 214 Trojan War, duration of, 198 Trout in the Lago Ritom, 79 Truth, deceit a necessary alloy for, 289 Tunnels, spiral, 58 Turin, picture gallery at, 131 Turner, J. M. W., 157, 198 Tyndall, Professor, 69 Index 335 Undertakers' blinds and art, 145 Universities and priggishness, 141 — few pass through them un- scathed, 151 — an obstacle to the finding of doors, 155 — covertly radical, 158 — proposal to make Oropas of them, 186 Varallo, 176 Varese, 176, 249 Vela, Professor, and his son, 243 Velotti, Nicolao, 188 Verdabbio, 223 Vibrations, revolutions in our social status felt as, 60 Vinci, Leonardo da, on bells, 45 would have failed for " Punch," 143 and Nature's grandchildren 148 — ■ — ^ and anatomy, 216 Viii, 160 Vogogna, 265 Votive pictures, 121, 145, 180, 271 Wafers, sacramental, how the novice taught me to make, 69 Waitee, 41 Waiter, the, at S. Pietro, 124 Walnuts, 118 Waterloo Bridge, view from, 20 Waterspouts at Mesocco, 219 Wednesbury Cocking, 55, 305 West, Benjamin, his picture of Christ healing the sick, 72 Will, Lord Beaconsfield on, 23 Wine-cellars, a day at the, 243 Winter, crossing the St. Gothard Pass in, 24 — in Ticino valley, 78 — at Fusio, 299- — at Montreal, 300 Woodsia hyperborea, 37 Wordsworth and larks, 231 Yawning of a parrot, 207 Yew-trees, clipped, 167 York, Archbishop of, and Scafell, Zdle, surtout point de, 66, 68 THE END ^^^ A <<:^ A ^^^^ ^" .-, ^^ 0' .-^J^/, Oo Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide ■N 'J^^^k^:^^* '" Treatment Date: DEC - nntu <^^ o ^«^o^ .0 ^^ 2001 "^^ .^i^^ok:- ^^ ->P PreservationTechnologies ^ ♦ -r^?^^". <^ <-^ ♦' A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO^ ^--s^ ^^^^ Vk/j^^m.-* .^ V^. Ill Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Tosvnship. PA 16066 (724)779-2111 y ^ -,-;^^,^ ,-. UJ ^°-'^. s^ .-i^A-. %,«.* :^, \/ ,^, *.^^^* <^. .^ V .^ °<^ -^^ ■ ^ <*' 51-^- • <"• • • < ■0^ •/• -/^ - •^- ""° .^° ... V "'• .^^^-^ ... °^ n %^^fm' ^ o j|". -^-0^ '\. " * • - ° ' A° :^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 009 062 965 7