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 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 likely to have been preserved when the facciata was renovated 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 paired the original fresco was preserved; it cannot be, as I had supposed, 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 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 by 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 heavenward. 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 proclaiming 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 horse; June is a mower; July, another man reaping twenty-seven ears of corn; August, an invalid going to see his doctor; October, a man knocking down chestnuts from a tree and a woman catching them; November is hidden and destroyed by the pulpit; December is a butcher felling 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.

[At this point in the book there is a brass rubbing. It looks like: Lazarus Bouollins 1534 30 Augusti explenit 20 Amurs ...]

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 Bovollino (I need hardly say that "Bovollino" is another way of spelling "Boelini") scratched his name again some sixteen years later, as follows:-

1550 adj (?) 26 Decemb. morijm (?) Lazzaro Bovollino * 15 L - B 50

The handwriting is not so good as it was when he wrote his name before; but we observed, with sympathy, that the writer had dropped his Latin. Close by is scratched "Gullielmo Bo."

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. "1481 die Jovis viiIj 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 it "1481. 8 Febraio" and nothing more. The mistake of 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 Signor 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, {31} 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 conciliate 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 demanding 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 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 liberti da casa Triulcia per 2400 scuti."

This inscription is signed thus:-

[In the book there is a picture of four symbols]

Carlo a Marca had written his name along with three others in 1606 on another part of the frescoes. Here are the signatures:-

[Again, some symbols]

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 years 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 -

1602 { 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 curato 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 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?)

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 -

"Il parlar di li homini da bene deve valer piu che quello degli altri."

- "The word of a man of substance ought to carry 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, we 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 was 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 Englishman 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 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 circumstances 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-

[Ricordo a Mesocco]

Then came my sketch; and then -

[In the book there is some handwriting at this point—unfortunately I cannot read it]

The English of which is as follows:- "View of the church, garden, and hospice of S. Rocco, after the visitation 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 interruptions and could not have believed such damage possible; 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 filling-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 hexagonal 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. Then they said that perhaps we should like 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 surrounded 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.

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 remaining.

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 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 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 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 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," and with an inscription to the effect that it was painted for the confraternity of the most holy 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—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 Dedomenici, 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 and above the roar of cant which tries to drown it. We want a book about the unknown Italian painters in out-of- the-way Italian valleys during the times of the decadence 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 narcissus 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 facade 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 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 route 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 high enough without being too high. The South Downs are very good, and by making believe 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 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. {32}

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 themselves 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.

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:-

[At this point in the book a music score is given]

I was always wanting it to go on:-

[At this point in the book a music score is given]

But it never got beyond the first four bars. Then there was another which I noticed the first day I landed, more than twenty years since, and whose song descended by very nearly perfect semitones as follows:-

[At this point in the book a music score is given]

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, however, 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 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, beginning, 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 evening 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 excursions 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 Mendrisio; 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, but it is distinguishable over a very large part of Lombardy 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 that 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 sixteenth 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 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. Cristoforo it was not the old church, nor the frescoes, 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 want of earnestness, preserved as though it were a smile in amber.

In the Val Sesia, 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 or unbranded. It is nearly a hundred years ago since that little 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 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 sometimes smuggle a pound or two of tobacco across the Italian frontier, hiding it in the fern close to the boundary, and 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 Italian 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 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 we 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, when 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 no smuggler, but who had lived 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 furnished 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 last numbers of the "Illustrated London News" and "Morning Chronicle;" his bath and bath-towels were English, and there was a box of Huntley & Palmer's biscuits on his dressing-table. He was delighted to see some Englishmen, and showed us everything that was to be 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. Cristoforo, 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 work 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 reproduce 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, however, it was perhaps hardly less 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 against us was the Monte Generoso, very sombre, and scarred with snow-white torrents; below, the dull, sullen 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 was 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 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 Polypodium vulgare; he scraped it with his knife and gave us some to eat. It is not at all bad, and tastes very much like liquorice. 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 Ligornetto. 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 afternoon 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 continually 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 thought they were going a little 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, and the lady did not refuse a second small bicchiere. 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 eyes like the old steward in Hogarth's "Marriage a la mode." They never seemed to tire, and every fresh incident at once suggested 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 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 impression 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 l'Italia, Viva la Gioia, Viva Venere, or other such matter; they are to be had 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.

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 anything can be, and the quiet terrace leading to the church door will not be forgotten by those who have seen it. 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 academics, 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'oeil, 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 Italians 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 excellent 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 inside the arch, and found it to contain a representation 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 opportunity 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 themselves, 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.

How far these chapels have done all that their founders expected of them is another matter. They have undoubtedly strengthened the hands of the Church in their immediate neighbourhood, and they have given an incalculable 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 who 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 (immediately 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 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 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 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 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 Monte at Varese. From the moment of its bursting upon one on turning the corner near the seventh, or Flagellation 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 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 that beautiful Lombard work which makes so much impression upon one in the church on the Monte Pirchiriano; 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 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 climbing.

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 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 such 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 processions 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 Ladywell had given out that, instead of having service 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 a festa.

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 the 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 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 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 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." 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Giustizia, 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 turn it 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 Angera.

We stayed talking to my old friend Signor 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 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 d'Italia, 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, could 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, we heard the bells strike up as follows, from a campanile on the side of the hill:-

[At this point in the book a music score is given]

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 down 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 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 something 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 partibus, 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 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 Beata 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 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 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 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, which is very much admired, but with which I have myself no sympathy whatever. It is an Academy picture.

The cloister looking over the lake is very beautiful. In the little court down below—which also is of great beauty—there is a chapel containing a representation of the Last Supper in life-sized coloured statues as at Varallo, which has a good deal of feeling, and a fresco (?) behind it which ought to be examined, but the chapel is so dark that this is easier said than done. There is also a fresco down below in the chapel where the founder of the sanctuary is buried which should not be passed over. It is dated 1522, and is Luinesque in character. When I was last there, however, it was hardly possible to see anything, for everything was being turned topsy-turvy by the arrangements which were being made for the approaching fetes. These were very gay and pretty; they must have cost a great deal of money, and I was told that the municipality in its collective capacity was thought mean, because it had refused to contribute more than 100 francs, or 4 pounds sterling. It does seem rather a small sum certainly.

On the afternoon of Friday the 13th of August the Patriarch Monsignor Ballerini was to arrive by the three o'clock boat, and there was a crowd to welcome him. The music of Locarno was on the quay playing a selection, not from "Madame Angot" itself, but from something very like it—light, gay, sparkling opera bouffe—to welcome him. I felt as I had done when I found the matchbox in the sanctuary bedroom at Graglia: not that I minded it myself, but as being a little unhappy lest the Bishop might not quite like it.

I do not see how we could welcome a bishop—we will say to a confirmation—with a band of music at all. Fancy a brass band of some twenty or thirty ranged round the landing stage at Gravesend to welcome the Bishop of London, and fancy their playing we will say "The two Obadiahs," or that horrid song about the swing going a little bit higher! The Bishop would be very much offended. He would not go a musical inch beyond the march in "Le Prophete," nor, willingly, beyond the march in "Athalie." Monsignor Ballerini, however, never turned a hair; he bowed repeatedly to all round him, and drove off in a carriage and pair, apparently much pleased with his reception. We Protestants do not understand, nor take any very great pains to understand, the Church of Rome. If we did, we should find it to be in many respects as much in advance of us as it is behind us in others.

One thing made an impression upon me which haunted me all the time. On every important space there were advertisements of the programme, the substance of which I have already given. But hardly, if at all less noticeable, were two others which rose up irrepressible upon every prominent space, searching all places with a subtle penetrative power against which precautions were powerless. These advertisements were not in Italian but in English, nevertheless they were neither of them English—but both, I believe, American. The one was that of the Richmond Gem cigarette, with the large illustration representing a man in a hat smoking, so familiar to us here in London. The other was that of Wheeler & Wilson's sewing machines.

As the Patriarch drove off in the carriage the man in the hat smoking the Richmond Gem cigarette leered at him, and the woman working Wheeler & Wilson's sewing machine sewed at him. During the illuminations the unwonted light threw its glare upon the effigies of saints and angels, but it illumined also the man in the black felt hat and the woman with the sewing machine; even during the artificial apparition of the Virgin Mary herself upon the hill behind the town, the more they let off fireworks the more clearly the man in the hat came out upon the walls round the market-place, and the bland imperturbable woman working at her sewing machine. I thought to myself that when the man with the hat appeared in the piazza the Madonna would ere long cease to appear on the hill.

Later on, passing through the town alone, when the people had gone to rest, I saw many of them lying on the pavement under the arches fast asleep. A brilliant moon illuminated the market-place; there was a pleasant sound of falling water from the fountain; the lake was bathed in splendour, save where it took the reflection of the mountains—so peaceful and quiet was the night that there was hardly a rustle in the leaves of the aspens. But whether in moonlight or in shadow, the busy persistent vibrations that rise in Anglo-Saxon brains were radiating from every wall, and the man in the black felt hat and the bland lady with the sewing machine were there—lying in wait, as a cat over a mouse's hole, to insinuate themselves into the hearts of the people so soon as they should wake.

Great numbers came to the festivities. There were special trains from Biasca and all intermediate stations, and special boats. And the ugly flat-nosed people came from the Val Verzasca, and the beautiful people came from the Val Onsernone and the Val Maggia, and I saw Anna, the curate's housekeeper, from Mesocco, and the old fresco painter who told me he should like to pay me a visit, and suggested five o'clock in the morning as the most appropriate and convenient time. The great procession contained seven or eight hundred people. From the balcony of the Hotel della Corona I counted as well as I could and obtained the following result:-

Women 120 Men with white shirts and red capes 85 Men with white shirts and no capes (?) The music from Intra 30 Men with white shirts and blue capes 25 Men with white shirts and no capes 25 Men with white shirts and green capes 12 Men with white shirts and no capes 36 The music of Locarno 30 Girls in blue, pink, white and yellow, red, white 50 Choristers 3 Monks 6 Priests 66 Canons 12 His Excellency Paolo Angelo Ballerini, Patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt, escorted by the firemen, and his private cortege of about 20 25 Government ushers (?) The Grand Council, escorted by 22 soldiers and 6 policemen 28 The clergy without orders 30 583

In the evening, there, sure enough, the apparition of the Blessed Virgin was. The church of the Madonna was unilluminated and all in darkness, when on a sudden it sprang out into a blaze, and a great transparency of the Virgin and child was lit up from behind. Then the people said, "Oh bel!"

I was myself a little disappointed. It was not a good apparition, and I think the effect would have been better if it had been carried up by a small balloon into the sky. It might easily have been arranged so that the light behind the transparency should die out before the apparition must fall again, and also that the light inside the transparency should not be reflected upon the balloon that lifted it; the whole, therefore, would appear to rise from its own inherent buoyancy. I am confident it would have been arranged in this way if the thing had been in the hands of the Crystal Palace people.

There is a fine old basilicate church dedicated to S. Vittore at the north end of Locarno. It is the mother church of these parts and dates from the eighth or ninth century. The frescoes inside the apse were once fine, but have been repainted and spoiled. The tower is much later, but is impressive. It was begun in 1524 and left incomplete in 1527, probably owing to the high price of provisions which is commemorated in the following words written on a stone at the top of the tower inside

1527 Furm. [fromento—corn] cost lib. 6. Segale [barley] lib. 5. Milio [millet] lib. 4.

I suppose these were something like famine prices; at any rate, a workman wrote this upon the tower and the tower stopped.



CHAPTER XXV—Fusio



We left Locarno by the conveyance which leaves every day at four o'clock for Bignasco, a ride of about four hours. The Ponte Brolla, a couple of miles out of Locarno, is remarkable, and the road is throughout (as a matter of course) good. I sat next an old priest, an excellent kindly man, who talked freely with me, and scolded me roundly for being a Protestant more than once.