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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

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E,C.
1913

WILLIAM BRENDON ANO SON. LTD., I'RINTERS, PLYMOUTH

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 wallet for
books as 4re\l 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" (1879) and "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 reviewed 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

6 Alps and Sanctuaries

over it. The fact is that about this time Butler was dallying
with visions of a rapprochement 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 Tablet's 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 Eock'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
I must give in his own words :

"One day in the autumn of i886 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 lea,rned, 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 would 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 little 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 which 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 was by no means so
obvious as a twentieth-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 Bellinzona 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. Signer
Dazio no longer reigns in Fusio ; his hotel is in other hands,
" and from the sign is gone Sibylla's name." Signer Guglielmoni
has long since fallen a victim to the rigours of the Alpine winter,
which Butler so feelingly describes. At S. Michele, however,
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 g

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 riew 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. Fasting 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
solitario (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, 1913. 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, i88r.

Table of Contents

lifTRODUCTION, BY R. A. STREATFEILD

Author's Preface to First Edition
List of Illustrations

CHAPTER
I.

Introduction
II. Faido ....

III. PRIMADENGO, C.4.LPI0GNIA, DaLPE, CORNONK, AND

Prato ....

IV. Rossura, Calonico .
V. Calonico {continued) and Giornico

'■' VI. PlORA ....

VII. S. MiCHELE AND THE MONTE PiRCHIRIANO

VIII. S. MiCHELE {continued)

IX. The North Italian Priesthood

X. S. Ambrogio and Neighbourhood .

XI. Lanzo ....

XII. Considerations on the Decline of Italian Art

XIII. Viu, 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- .

•3

PAGE

5
II

106

113

13'

141

160

169

I7S
188
198

207
228

Alps and Sanctuaries

CHAPTER

PAGE

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 . . . .

509

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 Avighana

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. glorio comba di susa

Casina DI Banda
Votive Picture
Medi/eval Tower at Lanzo
Piazza at Lanzo

Frontispiece
Title-page

PAGE

26
29
30
35
37
43
45
48
49
50
S3
56
57
64

100

103

119

121

132

1.33

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

Viu Church

FuciNE, near Viu

FAgADB of the Sanctuary of Oropa

Inner Court of Sanctuary of Oropa

Chapels at Oropa

Chapel ok 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 aU 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 Ukely 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

except Handel himself ; he is no less lofty, impassioned,
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 Shakespeare,
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 Tenderers 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 1 9

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 langoiage 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

20 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 hfe of the city. How Hke 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 o^ 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 scenery
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,

Faido 2 3

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 wiU ; 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
sesthetic 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

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 dehghtful travelling in the sledge. The sky was of

Faido 25

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 deUghtful
walks — to Piora, for example, up the Val Canaria, and to
Bedretto.

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

PEATO 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 dell' 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. Gothard 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

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.

/^^I'tyTi'*' ^c

^'■^;:^'''^'l'-'w■^:^^'7cV^^■^V^:';??f^V•4^^

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 I
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

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

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."*

Adagio.

— 9-m — f-* — ' — I — — *— ^ — ^ — I — i — I — ^

^V»2J

:|j^

r»-5-r*--<St

-''■*'*

JJA

^ p f
I I I

iil

=IT^T^"

^5q^

o. •

»jf^ f^f \ -*T»U-' M

r^44^

f r ^ f r ^

etc.

" I know that my Redeemer liveth." — " Messiah."

32 Alps and Sanctuaries

Or again : *

^^^

-^-^ ' ^ ■ *

z^mnz

-"==*

Adagio.

@g^

T=£

^2^=

\^^ nTy-^^^ .

izt

etc.

^^fc^

- f — r3~

From Calpiognia I came down to Primadengo, and
thence to Faido.

Suites de Pi^es, 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 hke 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 35

34 Alps and Sanctuaries

-*-n — ' ^'-a — a , * *- -^-M^^«-» — i — r-*-r

LuiSa^

!tt=:t

E^a^E^

Trrr^rp:

rrf^^

^lEE

raiii!:

^^=ff

3qrp;

^:q=r«=t

U>^

-^^^^r

«s *5 — sr^ I I i p I -*-P •-•

mr-^

:!_

n=fc=t^ii^

J-w-^

nl — 1_, d

-&-J: -1 , ' ' i-,-r»-J — * » J^ , i J M I ' J -H--1

y-\ — t

-< lT"

z>.c.

-t»-^-

-4-^_-«-

» ' g

K?*:

-tr

3tt

* ! ! *

=3=

And how again in some such another quiet ecstasy the
muses sing about Jove's altar in the " Allegro and
Penseroso."

Calpiognia

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 alfe 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 wUl 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

Dalpe 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 weU-beaten path which
ascends the mountains in a southerly direction. I found
the rare English fern Woodsia hyperborea growing in great

.-"'{■r '',,-» '^

I'jV.- .,H"'''il':.$''iVr

&-^.

i^'Jf-l' P^Ac^

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 alter nifolium, 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 andr 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. Gothard 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 bel faese, 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 fianura, 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 wiU 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 EngUsh 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 corfo di legno e gamba 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

4© Alps and Sanctuaries

to the groin there was a swelhng. 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 Comone 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
httle upland hamlet. The writing was in a child's scrawl,
and in hke 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 Enghsh, 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, I'll 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 ' ohfi, 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 Uttle mistake of his with another that he
made in 2'he 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
Enghsh usage. When the beautiful children with names
like Handel's 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 hke 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

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

mm^ ^s^m^^mm M

PRATO, AND VALLEY OF ST. GOTHAED

dentist's show-case in the Hampstead Road ; she doubt-
less mistook the teeth for the rehcs 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 mistmder-
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

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 cah 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.

^ ^ijuijw-^

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.

JMore 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.

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 dell'
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-
niiicent 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

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 palpably 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

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 kneeling
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 stiU 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 : —

:t=T:

■m

Grave.

Es:

^rrnzf^'

24;

=ci^^=H:

-*-qr

=i|=i=l

i=jE

^S^

►7 SI

;^^=

^^3^

ICi

-^ — ^c*

=t-q

-i-

Alps and Sanctuaries

I liked the porch almost 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 word 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 word 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

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

I 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 any, 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 —

Calonico 55

just as land which will give a poor crop, if planted with
sets 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, when
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 shows 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 whole walk is lovely, and the
Gribbiasca waterfall, the most graceful in the Val
Leventina, is just opposite.

* See Appendix A.

Alps ana 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

TENGIA, NO. I

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

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-

TENGIA, NO. 11

sant noise as though of cannonading with which we
were 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 ana 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,
b»t inuch 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

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 mkny 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 on to the ground between
Kensington and Stratford. 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'ceil. 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 are 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 perceived 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

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

f
,1.^"

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 chff 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

Cal

omco

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 curafo of Calonico was very kind to me. We
had long talks together. I could see it pained him that

CALONICO CHURCH, NO. I

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 CathoHc in CathoHc countries, and a Pro-
testant in Protestant ones. , Surely there are some things

66 Alps and Sanctuaries

which, Hke politics, are too serious to be taken quite
seriously. Surtout point de zele is not the sajdng 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 partita
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 were 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 67

they admitted a percentage of doubt. Mr. Tennyson
has said well, " There Uves more doubt "—I quote
from memory — " in honest faith, beUeve 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 Saturnaha 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 before him, and hymns chanted
discordantly. The elder 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
alj^ar, 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 shajcing 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 life
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.

Caloliico 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 fensee 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 weU 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 7 1

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 teUs no lies wittirigly 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

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 walls ; 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
could 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 which 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 the
open door of the church when the sun was in a certain
position, I could see an infinity of insect life swarming

I ■•'.N

.^ ^'^^

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 hghts.
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 aild 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 horn: 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,

yS 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.
We've 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 active
as a woman of forty, and altogether she was a very grand
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 place
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.
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 the
upper hillsides may be seen to have the sun upon them.
I walked once on a frosty winter's morning from Airolo to
Giornico, and can call to mind nothing in its way more
beautiful : everything was locked in frost^ — there was
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 7 9

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
and 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 hve 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
ill 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 iDeauty,
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

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

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 cam« 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 which 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 white 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, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he

Piora

thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I
heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majesti-
cally up and down, like 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 : — *

^-^-^ ft-m — ^-* — n-i

-•• — m-.

t=t=rt=L=t=r

Andantino,

I I * ' J I—! — 1— I ^— ! (—1-

^^^^

nsq

-,=!-i-.=-=^3

'rm-XXii:

-^ M •-

-A-=X-

L,. ^.,

:«:

=t=t

luri ^ i r ti

^ 1F^=^

r r r i t

etc.

^^^=^

* Handel's third set of organ concertos, No. 6.

Alps and Sanctuaries

By and by the cantering, galloping movement became
a trotting one, thus : —

^3=1^E

^^^=S^t=±

'J=-t=p

^ — ^

.^«^=^3i

*! # I

■»-^- m m-m-m *-»-»-

jDCiz=3C*.TC:

^^^ — r— I — r-i — r^t-

it: >-L-

i^^si^

;fc=t

aoc _j_,.i:i„

ndl^i

±^^.1^^:.^^=^-^^=

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

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 vaUey 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 aU 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-

88 Alps ana aanctuaries

speare, who owe. most to their forerunners, in spite of
the modifi.cations 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
■Kvp Kvplavov, 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-
hqspitable 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, whorn no successor
could so weU 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 woiild 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

go Alps and Sanctuaries

recovered the valley of Susa from the Saracens, and
established himself at Susa, 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 mediseval 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, which 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 andTorraneo. Claretta reUes 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 irequented 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
Cliiusa," 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,

S. Michele

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 aoove 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. Clirnbing
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

S. MICHELE, NEAR VIEW

S. MICHELE, FROM PATH TO AVIGLIANA

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

MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE SANCTUARY

sanctuary itself. Passing the small but very massive
circular ruin shown on the right hand of the sketch,
about which nothing whatever is known either as regards
its date or object, we ascend by a gentle incline to the

S. Michele 97

outer gate of the sanctuary. The battered plates of iron
that cover the wooden doors are marked with many a
bullet. Then we keep under cover for a short space,
after which we find ourselves at the foot of a long flight
of steps. Close by there is a little terrace with a wall
round it, where one can stand and enjoy a view over the
valley of the Dora to Turin.

Having ascended the steps, we are at the main en-
trance to the building — a massive Lombard doorway,
evidently the original one. In the space above the door
there have been two frescoes, an earUer and a later one,
one painted over the other, but nothing now remains
save the signature of the second painter, signed in Gothic
characters. On entering, more steps must be at once
climbed, and then the staircase turns at right angles and
tends towards the rock.

At the head of the flight shown p. 98, the natural
rock appears. The arch above it forms a recess filled
with desiccated corpses. The great pier to the left, and,
indeed, all the masonry that can be seen, has no other
object than to obtain space for, and to support, the
floor of the church itseli My drawing was taken from
about the level of the top of the archway through which
the building is entered. There comes in at this point a
third small staircase from behind ; ascending this, one
finds one's self in the window above the door, from the
balcony of which there is a marvellous panorama. I
took advantage of the window to measure the thickness
of the walls, and found them a little over seven feet thick
and built of massive granite blocks. The stones on the in-
side are so sharp and clean cut that they look as if they were
not more than;6fty years old. On the outside, the granite,
hard as it is, is much weathered, which, indeed, consider-
ing the exposed situation, is hardly to be wondered at.

Alps and Sanctuaries

Here again how the wind must howl and whistle,
and how the snow must beat in winter ! No one who
has not seen snow falling during a time when the ther-
mometer is about at zero can know how searching a thing

STEPS LEADING TO THE CHURCH. NO I

it is. How softly would it not lie upon the skulls and
shoulders of the skeletons. Fancy a dull dark January
afternoon's twilight upon this staircase, after a heavy
snow, when the soft fleece clings to the walls, having
drifted in through many an opening. Or fancy a brilliant

S. Michele

winter's moonlight, with the moon falUng upon the
skeletons after snow. And then let there be a burst of
music from an organ in the church above (I am sorry to
say they have only a harmonium ; I wish some one would
give them a fine organ). I should like the following for
example : — *

tr jcL

I . I

^^W^ t

J^-

-1-J^

tt^

j=^

. 1/1 ^1

-^r

=fe

--)— p — I.-

f^-rij

q=t

Sves.

How this would sound upon these stairs, if they would
leave the church-door open. It is said in Murray's hand-
book that formerly the corpses which are now under the

* Handel ; slow movement in the fifth grand concerto.

loo Alps and Sanctuaries

arch, used to be placed in a sitting position upon the stairs,
and the peasants would crown them with flowers. Fancy
twilight or moonlight on these stairs, with the corpses

STEPS LEADING TO THE CHURCH. NO. 2

sitting among the withered flowers and snow, and the
pealing of a great organ.

After ascending the steps that lead towards the
skeletons, we turn again sharp round to the left, and

S. Michele loi

come upon another noble flight — broad and lofty, and
cut in great measure from the living rock.

At the top of this flight there are two sets of Lombard
portals, both of them very fine, but in such darkness and
so placed that it was impossible to get a drawing of them
in detail. After passing through them, the staircase
turns again, and, as far as I can remember, some twenty
or thirty steps bring one up to the level of the top of the
arch which forms the recess where the corpses are.
Here there is another beautiful Lombard doorway,
with a small arcade on either side which I thought
English, rather than Italian, in character. An impression
was produced upon both of us that this doorway and the
arcade on either side were by a different architect from
the two lower archways, and from the inside of the church ;
or at any rate, that the details of the enrichment were
cut by a different mason, or gang of masons. I think,
however, the whole doorway is in a later style, and must
have been put in after some fire had destroyed the earlier
one.

Opening the door, which by day is always unlocked,
we found ourselves in the church itself. As I have said,
it is of pure Lombard architecture, and very good of its
kind ; I do not think it has been touched since the be-
ginning of the eleventh century, except that it has been
re-roofed and the pitch of the roof altered. At the base
of the most westerly of the three piers that divide the
nave from the aisles, there crops out a small piece of the
living rock ; this is at the end farthest from the choir.
It is not likely that Giovanni Vincenzo's church reached
east of this point, for from this point onwards towards
the choir the floor is artificially supported, and the
supporting structure is due entirely to Hugo de Mont-
boissier. The part of the original church which still

I02 Alps and Sanctuaries

remains is perhaps the wall, which forms the western
limit of the present church. This wall is not external. It
forms the eastern wall of a large chamber with frescoes.
I am not sure that this chamber does not occupy the
whole space of the original church.

There are a few nice votive pictures in the church,
and one or two very early frescoes, which are not without
interest ; but the main charm of the place is in the
architecture, and the sense at once of age and strength
which it produces. The stock things to see are the vaults
in which many of the members of the royal house of
Savoy, legitimate and illegitimate, lie buried ; they need
not, however, be seen.

I have said that the whole building is of much about
the same date, and, unless perhaps in the residential
parts, about which I can say little, has not been altered.
This is not the view taken by the author of Murray's
Handbook for North Italy, who says that " injudicious
repairs have marred the effect of the building ; " but
this writer has fallen into several errors. He talks, for
example, of the " open Lombard gallery of small circular
arches " as being " one of the oldest and most curious
features of the building," whereas it is obviously no older
than the rest of the church, nor than the keep-like con-
struction upon which it rests. Again, he is clearly in
error when he says that the " extremely beautiful circular
arch by which we pass from the staircase to the corridor
leading to the church, is a vestige of the original building."
The double round arched portals through which we pass
from the main staircase to the corridor are of exactly the
same date as the staircase itself, and as the rest of the
church. They certainly formed no part of Giovanni
Vincenzo's edifice ; for, besides being far too rich, they
are not on a level with what remains of that building, but

S. Michele

103

several feet below it. It is hard to know what the writer
means by " the original building ; " he appears to think
it extended to the present choir, which, he says, " retains
traces of an earlier age." The choir retains no such
traces. The only remains of the original church are at the
back of the west end, invisible from the inside of the
church, and at the opposite end to the choir. As for the
church being " in a plain Gothic style," it is an extremely
beautiful example of pure Lombard, of the first few years
of the eleventh century. True, the middle arch of the

GARDEN AT THE SANCTUARY OF S. MICHELE

three which divide the nave from the aisles is pointed,
whereas the two others are round, but this is evidently
done to economise space, which was here unusually
costly. There was room for more than two round arches,
but not room enough for three, so it was decided to dock
the middle arch a little. It is a she-arch — that is to say,
it has no keystone, but is formed simply by propping
two segments of a circle one against the other. It
certainly is not a Gothic arch ; it is a Lombard arch,
modified in an unusual manner, owing to its having been
built under unusual conditions.

I04 Alps and Sanctuaries

The visitor should on no account omit to ring the bell
and ask to be shown the open Lombard gallery already
referred to as running round the outside of the choir. It
is well worth walking round this, if only for the view.

The official who showed us round was very kind,
and as a personal favour we were allowed to visit the
fathers' private garden. The large arm-chairs are made
out of clipped box-trees. While on our way to the garden
we passed a spot where there was an alarming buzzing,
and found ourselves surrounded by what appeared to be
an angry swarm of bees ; closer inspection showed that
the host was a medley one, composed of wasps, huge
hornets, hive-bees, humble-bees, flies, dragon-flies, butter-
flies, and all kinds of insects, flying about a single patch
of ivy in full blossom, which attracted them so strongly
that they neglected everything else. I think some of
them were intoxicated. If this was so, then perhaps
Bacchus is called " ivy-crowned " because ivy-blossoms
intoxicate insects, but I never remember to have before
observed that ivy-blossoms had any special attraction
for insects.

I have forgotten to say anything about a beam of wood
which may be seen standing out at right angles from the
tower to the right of the main building. This I believe
to have been the gallows. Another like it may be seen at
S. Giorio, but I have not got it in my sketch of that place.
The attendant who took us round S. Michele denied that
it was the gallows, but I think it must have been. Also,
the attendant showed us one place which is called II
Salto delta hella Alda. Alda was being pursued by a
soldier ; to preserve her honour, she leaped from a
window and fell over a precipice some hundreds of feet
below ; by the intercession of the Virgin she was saved,
but became so much elated that she determined to repeat

S. Michele 105

the feat. She jumped a second time from the window,
but was dashed to pieces. We were told this as being
unworthy of actual credence, but as a legend of the
place. We said we found no great difficulty in believing
the first half of the story, but could hardly believe that
any one would jump from that window twice.*

* For documents relating to the sanctuary, see Appendix B, p. 309,

Chapter IX
The North ItaHan Priesthood

THERE is now a school in the sanctuary ; we met the
boys several times. They seemed well cared for
and contented. The priests who reside in the sanctuary
were courtesy itself ; they took a warm interest in
England, and were anxious for any information I could
give them about the monastery near Loughborough — a
name which they had much difficulty in pronouncing.
They were perfectly tolerant, and ready to extend to
others the consideration they expected for themselves.
This should not be saying much, but as things go it is
saying a good deal. What indeed more can be wished
for?

The faces of such priests as these — and I should say
such priests form a full half of the North Italian priest-
hood — are perfectly free from that bad furtive expression
which we associate with priestcraft, and which, when seen,
cannot be mistaken : their faces are those of our own
best English country clergy, with perhaps a trifle less
flesh about them and a trifle more of a not unkindly
asceticism.

Comparing our own clergy with the best North Italian
and Ticinese priests, I should say there was little to
choose between them. The latter are in a logically
stronger position, and this gives them greater courage in
their opinions ; the former have the advantage in respect

1 06

The North Italian Priesthood 107

of money, and the more varied knowledge of the world
which money will command. When I say Catholics have
logically the advantage over Protestants, I mean that
starting from premises which both sides admit, a merely
logical Protestant will find himself driven to the Church
of Rome. Most men as they grow older will, I think, feel
this, and they will see in it the explanation of the com-
paratively narrow area over which the Reformation ex-
tended, and of the gain which Catholicism has made of
late years here in England. On the other hand, reasonable
people will look with distrust upon too much reason.
The foundations of action lie deeper than reason can
reach. They rest on faith — for there is no absolutely
certain incontrovertible premise which can be laid by
man, any more than there is any investment for money
or security in the daily affairs of life which is absolutely
tmimpeachable. The funds are not absolutely safe ;
a volcano might break out under the Bank of England.
A railway journey is not absolutely safe ; one person,
at least, in several millions gets killed. We invest our
money upon faith mainly. We choose our* doctor upon
faith, for how httle independent judgment can we form
concerning his capacity ? We choose schools for our
children chiefly upon faith. The most important things
a man has are his body, his soul, and his money. It is
generally better for him to commit these interests to the
care of others of whom he can know little, rather than be
his own medical man, or invest his money on his own
judgment ; and this is nothing else than making a faith
which lies deeper than reason can reach, the basis of our
action in those respects which touch us most nearly.

On the other hand, as good a case could be made out
for placing reason as the foundation, inasmuch as it
would be easy to show that a faith, to be worth anything,

io8 Alps and Sanctuaries

must be a reasonable one — one, that is to say, which is
based upon reason. The fact is, that faith and reason are
hke desire and power, or demand and supply ; it is im-
possible to say which comes first : they come up hand in
hand, and are so small when we can first descry them,
that it is impossible to say which we first caught sight of.
All we can now see is that each has a tendency continually
to outstrip the other by a little, but by a very httle only.
Strictly they are not two things, but two aspects of one
thing ; for convenience sake, however, we classify them
separately.

It follows, therefore — but whether it follows or no,
it is certainly true — that neither faith alone nor reason
alone is a sufficient guide : a man's safety lies neither
in faith nor reason, but in temper — in the power of
fusing faith and reason, even when they appear most
mutually destructive. A man of temper will be certain in
spite of uncertainty, and at the same time uncertain in
spite of certainty ; reasonable in spite of his resting
mainly upon faith rather than reason, and full of faith
even when appealing most strongly to reason. If it is
asked. In what should a man have faith ? To what faith
should he turn when reason has led him to a conclusion
which he distrusts ? the answer is. To the current feeling
among those whom he most looks up to — looking upon
himself with suspicion if he is either among the foremost
or the laggers. In the rough, homely common sense of
the community to which we belong we have as firm ground
as can be got. This, though not absolutely infalhble, is
secure enough for practical purposes.

As I have said, Catholic priests have rather a fascination
for me — when they are not Englishmen. I should say
that the best North Italian priests are more openly
tolerant than our English clergy generally are. I re-

The North Italian Priesthood 1 09

member picking up one who was walking along a road,
and giving him a lift in my trap. Of course we fell to
talking, and it came out that I was a member of the
Church of England. " Ebbene, caro Signore," said he
when we shook hands at parting ; "mi rincresce che
Lei non crede come me, ma in questi tempi non possiamo
avere tutti i medesimi principii."*

I travelled another day from Susa to S. Ambrogio
with a priest, who told me he took in " The CathoUc
Times," and who was well up to date on English matters.
Being myself a Conservative, I found his opinions sound
on all points but one — I refer to the Irish question :
he had no sympathy with the obstructionists in Parlia-
ment, but nevertheless thought the Irish were harshly
treated. I explained matters as well as I could, and
found him very willing to listen to our side of the question.

The one thing, he said, which shocked him with the
English, was the manner in which they went about dis-
tributing tracts upon the Continent. I said no one could
deplore the practice more profoundly than myself, but
that there were stupid and conceited people in every
country, who would insist upon thrusting their opinions
upon people who did not want them. He replied that the
ItaUans travelled not a little in England, but that he was
sure not one of them would dream of offering Catholic
tracts to people, for example, in the streets of London.
Certainly I have never seen an Italian to be guilty of such
rudeness. It seems to me that it is not only toleration that
is a duty ; we ought to go beyond this now ; we should
conform, when we are among a sufficient number of those
who would not understand our refusal to do so ; any
other course is to attach too much importance at once to

* " Well, my dear sir, I am sorry you do not think as I do, but in
these days we^cannot all of us start with the tame principles."

no Alps and Sanctuaries

our own opinions and to those of our opponents. By all
means let a man stand by his convictions when the occa-
sion requires, but let him reserve his strength, unless it
is imperatively called for. Do not let him exaggerate
trifles, and let him remember that everything is a trifle
in comparison with the not giving offence to a large
number of kindly, simple-minded people. Evolution, as
we all know, is the great doctrine of modern times ; the
very essence of evolution consists in the not shocking
anything too violently, but enabling it to mistake a new
action for an old one, without " making believe " too
much.

One day when I was eating my lunch near a fountain,
there came up a moody, meditative hen, crooning plain-
tively after her wont. I threw her a crumb of bread
while she was still a good way off, and then threw more,
getting her to come a little closer and a little closer each
time ; at last she actually took a piece from my hand.
She did not quite like it, but she did it. This is the
evolution principle ; and if we wish those who differ
from us to understand us, it is the only method to proceed
upon. I have sometimes thought that some of my friends
among the priests have been treating me as I treated the
meditative hen. But what of that ? They will not kill
and eat me, nor take my eggs. Whatever, therefore,
promotes a more friendly feeling between us must be
pure gain.

The mistake our advanced Liberals make is that of
flinging much too large pieces of bread at a time, and
flinging them at their hen, instead of a little way ofE her.
Of course the hen is fluttered and driven away. Some-
times, too, they do not sufficiently distinguish between
bread and stones.

As a general rule, the common people treat the priests

The North ItaUan Priesthood 1 1 1

respectfully, but once I heard several attacking one
warmly on the score of eternal punishment. " Sara,"
said one, " per cento anni, per cinque cento, per mille o
forse per dieci mille anni, ma non sara eterna ; perche il
Dio fe un uomo forte — grande, generoso, di buon cuore."*
An Italian told me once that if ever I came upon a priest
whom I wanted to tease, I was to ask him if he knew a
place called La Torre Pellice. I have never yet had the
chance of doing this ; for, though I am fairly quick at
seeing whether I am likely to get on with a priest or no, I
find the priest is generally fairly quick too ; and I am
no sooner in a diUgence or railway carriage with an
unsympathetic priest, than he curls himself round into
a moral ball and prays horribly^ — bristling out with
collects all over like a cross-grained spiritual hedgehog.
Partly, therefore, from having no wish to go out of my
way to ihake myself obnoxious, and partly through the
opposite party being determined that I shall not get
the chance, the question about La Torre Pellice has
never come off, and I do not know what a priest would
say if the subject were introduced,- — but I did get a
talking about La Torre PeUice all the same.

I was going from Turin to Pinerolo, and found myself
seated opposite a fine-looking elderly gentleman who
was reading a paper headed, " Le Temoin, Echo des
Vallees Vaudoises " : for the Vaudois, or Waldenses,
though on the Italian side of the Alps, are French in
language and perhaps in origin. I fell to talking with
this gentleman, and found he was on his way to La Torre
Pellice, the headquarters of indigenous Italian evangeli-
cism. He told me there were about 25,000 inhabitants

* " It may be for a hundred, or for five|^ hundred years, or for a
thousand, or even ten thousand, but it will not be eternal ; for God is a
strong man — great, generous, and of large heart."

112 Alps and banctuaries

of these valleys, and that they were without exception
Protestant, or rather that they had never accepted
Catholicism, but had retained the primitive Apostolic
faith in its original purity. He hinted to me that they
were descendants of some one or more of the lost ten
tribes of Israel. The English, he told me (meaning, I
gather, the English of the England that affects Exeter
Hall), had done great things for the inhabitants of La
Torre at different times, and there were streets called the
Via Williams and Via Beckwith. They were, he said, a
very growing sect, and had missionaries and establish-
ments in all the principal cities in North Italy ; in
fact, so far as I could gather, they were as aggressive as
malcontents generally are, and, Italians though they were,
would give away tracts just as readily as we do. I did
not, therefore, go to La Torre.

Sometimes priests say things, as a matter of course,
which would make any English clergyman's hair stand
on end. At one town there is a remarkable fourteenth-
century bridge, commonly known as " The Devil's
Bridge." I was sketching near this when a jolly old
priest with a red nose came up and began a conversation
with me. He was evidently a popular character, for every
one who passed greeted him. He told me that the devil
did not really build the bridge. I said I presumed not,
for he was not in the habit of spending his time so well.

" I wish he had built it," said my friend ; " for then
perhaps he would build us some more."

" Or we might even get a church out of him," said I, a
little slyly.

" Ha, ha, ha ! we wiU convert him, and make a good
Christian of him in the end."

When will our Protestantism, or Rationalism, or what-
ever it may be, sit as lightly upon ourselves ?

Chapter X
S. Ambrogio and Neighbourhood

SINCE the opening of the railway, the old inn where
the diligences and private carriages used to stop has
been closed ; but I was made, in a homely way, ex-

INN- AT S. AMBROGIO

tremely comfortable at the Scudo di Francia, kept by
Signor Bonaudo and his wife. I stayed here over a fort-
night, during which I made several excursions.

113

114 Alps and Sanctuaries

One day I went to San Giorio, as it is always written,
though San Giorgio is evidently intended. Here there
is a ruined castle, beautifully placed upon a lull ; this
castle shows well from the railway shortly after leaving
Bussoleno station, on the right hand going towards
Turin. Having been struck with it, I went by train to
Bussoleno (where there is much that I was unwillingly
compelled to neglect), and walked back to San Giorio.
On my way, however, I saw a patch of Cima-da-Conegli-
ano-looking meadow-land on a hill some way above me,
and on this there rose from among the chestnuts what
looked like a castellated mansion. I thought it well to
make a digression to this, and when I got there, after a
lovely walk, knocked at the door, having been told by
peasants that there would be no difficulty about my
taking a look round. The place is called the Castel
Burrello, and is tenanted by an old priest who has retired
hither to end his days. I sent in my card and business
by his servant, and by-and-by he came out to me himself.

" Vous etes Anglais, monsieur ? " said he in French.

" Oui, monsieur."

" Vous etes Catholique ? "

" Monsieur, je suis de la religion de mes peres."

" Pardon, monsieur, vos ancetres etaient Catholiques
jusqu'au temps de Henri VIII."

" Mais il y a trois cent ans depuis le temps de
Henri VIII."

" Eh bien ! chacun a ses convictions ; vous ne parlez
pas contre la religion ? "

"Jamais, jamais, monsieur; j'ai un respect enorme
pour I'Eglise Catholique."

" Monsieur, faites comme chez vous ; allez ou vous
voulez ; vous trouverez toutes les portes ouvertes.
Amusez-vous bien."

San Giorio

115

He then explained to me that the castle had never been
a properly fortified place, being intended only as a
summer residence for the barons of Bussoleno, who used
to resort hither during the extreme heat, if times were
tolerably quiet. After this he left me. Taking him at
his word, I walked all roimd, but there was only a shell
remaining ; the rest of the building had evidently been
burnt, even the wing in which the present proprietor

S. GIORIO— COMBA DI SUSA

resides being, if I remember rightly, modernised. The
site, however, and the sloping meadows which the castle
crowns, are of extreme beauty.

I now walked down to San Giorio, and found a small
inn where I could get bread, butter, eggs, and good wine.
I was waited upon by a good-natured boy, the son of the
landlord, who was accompanied by a hawk that sat
always either upon his hand or shoulder. As I looked
at the pair I thought they were very much aUke, and

1 1 6 Alps and Sanctuaries

certainly they were very much in, love with one another.
After dinner I sketched the castle. While I was doing so,
a gentleman told me that a large breach in the wall was
made a few years ago, and a part of the wall found to be
hollow ; the bottom of the hollow part being unwittingly
removed, there fell through a skeleton in a full suit of
armour. Others, "whom I asked, had heard nothing of
this.

Talking of hawks, I saw a good many boys with tame
young hawks in the villages round about. There was a
tame hawk at the station of S. Ambrogio. The station-
master said it used to go now and again to the church-
steeple to catch sparrows, but would always return in an
hour or two. Before my stay was over it got in the way
of a passing train and was run over.

Young birds are much eaten in this neighbourhood.
The houses and barns, not to say the steeples of the
churches, are to be seen stuck about with what look like
terra-cotta water-bottles with the necks outwards.
Two or three may be seen in the illustration on p. 113
outside the window that comes out of the roof, on the
left-hand side of the picture. I have seen some outside
an Italian restaurant near Lewisham. They are artificial
bird's-nests for the sparrows to build in : as soon as the
young are old enough they are taken and made into a pie.
The church-tower near the Hotel de la Poste at Lanzo
is more stuck about with them than any other building
that I have seen.

Swallows and hawks are about the only birds whose
young are not eaten. One afternoon I met a boy with a
jay on his finger : having imprudently made advances
to this young gentleman in the hopes of getting acquainted
with the bird, he said he thought I had better buy it and
have it for my dinner ; but I did not fancy it. Another

S. Ambrogio 117

day I saw the padrona at the inn-door talking to a lad,
who pulled open his shirt-front and showed some twenty
or thirty nestlings in the simple pocket formed by his
shirt on the one side and his skin upon the other. The
padrona wanted me to say I should like to eat them, in
which case she would have bought them ; but one
cannot get all the nonsense one hears at home out of one's
head in a moment, and I am afraid I preached a little.
The padrona, who is one of the most fascinating women
in the world, and at sixty is still handsome, looked a little
vexed and puzzled : she admitted the truth of what I
said, but pleaded that the boys found it very hard to
gain a few soldi, and if people didn't kill and eat one
thing, they would another. The result of it all was that I
determined for the future to leave young birds to their
fate ; they and the boys must settle that matter between
themselves. If the young bird was a boy, and the boy a
young bird, it would have been the boy who was taken
ruthlessly from his nest and eaten. An old bird has no
right to have a homestead, and a young bird has no right
to exist at all, unless they can keep both homestead and
existence out of the way of boys who are in want of half-
pence. It is all perfectly right, and when we go and stay
among these charming people, let us do so as learners,
not as teachers.

I watched the padrona getting my supper ready.
With what art do not these people manage their fire. The
New Zealand Maoris say the white man is a fool : "He
makes a large fire, and then has to sit away from it ; the
Maori makes a smaU fire, and sits over it." The scheme
of an Italian kitchen-fire is that there shall always be
one stout log smouldering on the hearth, from which a
few live coals may be chipped off if wanted, and put
into the small square gratings which are used for stewing

1 1 8 Alps and Sanctuaries

or roasting. Any warming up, or shorter boiling, is
done on the Maori principle of making a small fire of
light dry wood, and feeding it frequently. They economise
everything. Thus I saw the padrona wash some hen's
eggs well in cold water ; I did not see why she should
wash them before boiling them, but presently the soup
which I was to have for my supper began to boil. Then
she put the. eggs into the soup and boiled them in it.

After supper I had a talk with the -padrone, who told
me I was working too hard. " Totam noctem," said he in
Latin, " lavoravimus et nihil incepimus." (" We have
laboured all night and taken nothing.") " Oh ! " he
continued, " I have eyes and ears in my head." And
as he spoke, with his right hand he drew down his lower
eyelid, and with his left pinched the pig of his ear.
" You will be ill if you go on like this." Then he laid his
hand along his cheek, put his head on one side, and shut
his eyes, to imitate a sick man in bed. On this I arranged
to go an excursion with him on the day following to a
farm he had a few miles off, and to which he went every
Friday.

We went to Borgone station, and walked across the
valley to a village called Villar Fochiardo. Thence we
began gently to ascend, passing under some noble
chestnuts. Signor Bonaudo said that this is one of the
best chestnut-growing districts in Italy. A good tree,
he told me, would give its forty francs a year. This seems
as though chestnut-growing must be lucrative, for an acre
should carry some five or six trees, and there is no outlay
to speak of. Besides the chestnuts, the land gives a still
further return by way of the grass that grows beneath
them. Walnuts do not yield nearly so much per tree as
chestnuts do. In three-quarters of an hour or so we
reached Signor Bonaudo's farm, which was called the

Casina di Banda

119

'Casina di Banda. The buildings had once been a monas-
tery, founded at the beginning of the seventeenth century
and secularised by the first Napoleon, but had been
purchased from the state a few years ago by Signor
Bonaudo, in partnership with three others, after the
passing of the Church Property Act. It is beautifully
situated some hundreds of feet above the valley, and
commands a lovely view of the Comba, as it is called, or
Combe of Susa. The accompanying sketch will give an
idea of the view looking towards Turin. The large
building on the hill is, of course, S. Michele. The very
distant dome is the Superga on the other side of Turin.

CASINA DI BANDA

The first thing Signor Bonaudo did when he got to his
farm was to see whether the water had been duly turned
on to his own portion of the estate. Each of the four
purchasers had his separate portion, and each had a
right to the water for thirty-six hours per week. Signor
Bonaudo went round with his hind at once, and saw that
the dams in the ducts were so opened or closed that his
own land was being irrigated.

Nothing can exceed the ingenuity with which the
little canals are arranged so that each part of a meadow,

I20 Alps and Sanctuaries

however undulating, shall be saturated equally. The
people are very jealous of their water rights, and indeed
not unnaturally, for the yield of grass depends in very
great measure upon the amount of irrigation which the
land can get.

The matter of the water having been seen to, we went
to the monastery,- or, as it now is, the homestead. As
we entered the farmyard we found two coWs fighting,
and a great strapping wench belabouring them in order
to separate them. " Let them alone," said the padrone ;
" let them fight it out here on the level ground." Then
he explained to me that he wished them to find out which
was mistress, and fall each of them into her proper place,
for if they fought on the rough hillsides they might easily
break each other's necks.

We walked all over the monastery. The day was
steamy with frequent showers, and thunderstorms in the
air. The rooms were dark and mouldy, and smelt rather
of rancid cheese, but it was not a bad sort of rambling
old place, and if thoroughly done up would make a
delightful inn. There is a report that there is hidden
treasure here. I do not know a single old castle or
monastery in North Italy about which no such report is
current, but in the present case there seems more than
usual ground (so the hind told me) for believing the story
to be well founded, for the monks did certainly smelt the
quartz in the neighbourhood, and as no gold was ever
known to leave the monastery, it is most likely that all
the enormous quantity which they must have made
in the course of some two centuries is still upon the
premises, if one could only lay one's hands upon it. So
reasonable did this seem, that about two years ago it was
resolved to call in a somnambulist or clairvoyant from
Turin, who, when he arrived at the spot, became seized

Casina di Banda

121

with convulsions, betokening of course that there was
treasure not far off : these convulsions increased till he
reached the choir of the chapel, and here he swooned —
falling down as if dead, and being resuscitated with
apparent difficulty. He afterwards declared that it was
in this chapel that the treasure was hidden. In spite of
all this, however, the chapel has not been turned upside
down and ransacked, perhaps from fear of offending the
saint to whom it is dedicated.

VOTIVE PICTURE

In the chapel there are a few votive pictures, but not
very striking ones. I hurriedly sketched one, but have
failed to do it justice. The hind saw me copying the
little girl in bed, and I had an impression as though he
did not quite understand my motive. I told him I had a
dear little girl of my own at home, who had been alarm-
ingly ill in the spring, and that this picture reminded me
of her. This made everything quite comfortable.

We had brought up our dinner from S. Ambrogio,

122 Alps and Sanctuaries

and ate it in what had been the refectory of the monastery.
The windows were broken, and the swallows, who had
btiilt upon the ceiling inside the room, kept flying close
to us all the time we were eating. Great mallows and
hollyhocks peered in at the window, and beyond them
there was a pretty Devonshire-looking orchard. The
noontide sun streamed in at intervals between the
showers.

After dinner we went " al cresto della coUina " — to
the crest of the hill — to use Signor Bonaudo's words,
and looked down upon S. Giorio, and the other villages
of the Combe of Susa. Nothing could be more delightful.
Then, getting under the chestnuts, I made the sketch
which I have already given. While making it I was
accosted by an under jawed man (there is an unusually
large percentage of under jawed people in the neighbour-
hood of S. Ambrogio), who asked whether my taking this
sketch must not be considered as a sign that war was
imminent. The people in this valley have bitter and
comparatively recent experience of war, and are alarmed
at anything which they fancy may indicate its recurrence.
Talking further with him, he said, " Here we have no
signori ; we need not take off our hats to any one except
the priest. We grow all we eat, we spin and weave all we
wear ; if all the world except our own valley were blotted
out, it would make no difference, so long as we remain
as we are and unmolested." He was a wild, weird,
St. John the Baptist looking person, with shaggy hair,
and an Andrea Mantegnesque feeling about him. I gave
him a pipe of English tobacco, which he seemed to relish,
and so we parted.

I stayed a week or so at another place not a hundred
miles from Susa, but I will not name it, for fear of causing
offence. It was situated high, above the valley of the

Neighbourhood of S. Ambrogio 123

Dora, among the pastures, and just about the upper limit
of the chestnuts. It offers a summer retreat, of which the
people in Turin avail themselves in considerable numbers.
The inn was a more sophisticated one than Signor
Bonaudo's house at S. Ambrogio, and there were several
Turin people staying there as well as myself, but there
were no English. During the whole time I was in that
neighbourhood I saw not a single English, French, or
German tourist. The ways of the inn, therefore, were
exclusively Italian, and I had a better opportunity of
seeing the Italians as they are among themselves than
I ever had before.

Nothing struck me more than the easy terms on which
every one, including the waiter, appeared to be with every
one else. This, which in England would be impossible,
is here not only possible but a matter of course, because
the general standard of good breeding is distinctly higher
than it is among ourselves. I do not mean to say that
there are no rude or unmannerly Italians, but that
there are fewer in proportion than there are in any other
nation with which I have acquaintance. This is not to be
wondered at, for the Italians have had a civilisation for
now some three or four thousand years, whereas all other
nations are, comparatively speaking, new countries, with
a something even yet of colonial roughness pervading
them. As the colonies to England, so is England to Italy
in respect of the average standard of courtesy and good
manners. In a new country everything has a tendency to
go wild again, man included ; and the longer civilisation
has existed in any country the more trustworthy and
agreeable will its inhabitants be. This preface is neces-
sary, as explaining how it is possible that things can be
done in Italy without offence which would be intolerable
elsewhere ; but I confess to feeling rather hopeless of

124 Alps and Sanctuaries

being able to describe what I actually saw without giving
a wrong impression concerning it.

Among the visitors was the head confidential clerk of
a well-known Milanese house, with his wife and sister.
The sister was an invalid, and so also was the husband,
but the wife was a very pretty woman and a very merry
one. The waiter was a good-looking young fellow of
about five-and-twenty, and between him and Signora
Bonvicino — for we will say this was the clerk's name —
there sprang up a violent flirtation, all open and above
board. The waiter was evidently very fond of her, but
said the most atrociously impudent things to her from
time to time. Dining under the veranda at the next
table, I heard the Signora complain that the cutlets
were burnt. So they were — very badly burnt. The
waiter looked at them for a moment — threw her a con-
temptuous glance, clearly intended to provoke war —
"Chi non ha appetito* . . ." he exclaimed, and was
moving off with a shrug of the shoulders. The Signora
recognising a challenge, rose instantly from the table,
and catching him by the nape of his neck, kicked him
deftly downstairs into the kitchen, both laughing heartily,
and the husband and sister joining. I never saw anything
more neatly done. Of course, in a few minutes some
fresh and quite unexceptionable cutlets made their
appearance.

Another morning, when I came down to breakfast, I
found an altercation going on between the same pair as
to whether the lady's nose was too large or not. It was
not at all too large. It was a very pretty little nose. The
waiter was maintaining that it was too large, and the
lady that it was not.

* " If a person has not got an appetite ..."

Neighbourhood of S. Ambrogio 125

One evening Signor Bonvicino told me that his em-
ployer had a very large connection in England, and that
though he had never been in London, he knew all about
it almost as well as if he had. The great centre of business,
he said, was in Red Lion Square. It was here his em-
ployer's agent resided, and this was a more important part
than even the city proper. I threw a drop or two of cold
water on this, but without avail. Presently I asked
what the waiter's name was, not having been able to catch
it. I asked this of the Signora, and saw a Uttle look on
her face as though she were not quite prepared to reply.
Not understanding this, I repeated my question.

" Oh ! his name is Cesare," was the answer.

" Cesare ! But that is not the name I hear you call
him by."

" WeU, perhaps not ; we generally call him Cricco,"*
and she looked as if she had suddenly remembered having
been told that there were such things as prigs, and might,
for aught she knew, be in the presence of one of these
creatures now.

Her husband came to the rescue. " Yes," said he,
" his real name is Julius Csesar, but we call him Cricco.
Cricco e un nome di paese ; parlando cosi non si offende
la religione."t

The Roman Catholic religion, if left to itself and not
compelled to be introspective, is more kindly and less
given to taking offence than outsiders generally believe.
At the Sacro Monte of Varese they sell little round tin
boxes that look like medals, and contain pictures of all
the chapels. In the lid of the box there is a short printed
account of the Sacro Monte, which winds up with the

* The waiter's nickname no doubt was Cristo, which was softened
into Cricco for the reason put forward below. — R. A. S.

f "Cricco is a rustic appellation, and thus religion is not offended."

126 Alps and Sanctuaries

words, " La religione e lo stupendo panorama tirano
numerosi ed allegri visitatori."*

Our people are much too earnest to allow that a view
could have anything to do with taking people up to the
top of a hill where there was a cathedral, or that people
could be " merry " while on an errand connected with
religion.

On leaving this place I wanted to say good-bye to
Signora Bonvicino, and could not find her ; after a time
I heard she was at the fountain, so I went and found her
on her knees washing her husband's and her own clothes,
with her pretty round arms bare nearly to the shoulder.
It never so much as occurred to her to mind being caught
at this work.

Some months later, shortly before winter, I returned
to the same inn for a few days, and found it somewhat
demoralised. There had been grand doings of some sort,
and, though the doings were over, the moral and material
debris were not yet quite removed. The famiglia Bon-
vicino was gone, and so was Cricco. The cook, the new
waiter, and the landlord (who sings a good comic song
upon occasion) had all drunk as much wine as they could
carry ; and later on I found Veneranda, the one-eyed
old chambermaid, lying upon my bed fast asleep. I
afterwards heard that, in spite of the autumnal weather,
the landlord spent his night on the grass under the chest-
nuts, while the cook was found at four o'clock in the
morning lying at full length upon a table under the
veranda. Next day, however, all had become normal
again.

Among our fellow-guests during this visit was a
fiery-faced eructive butcher from Turin. A difference of

* " Religion and the magnificent panorama attract numerous and
merry visitors."

Neighbourhood of S. Ambrogio 127

opinion having arisen between him and his wife, I told
the Signora that I would rather be wrong with her than
right with her husband. The lady was delighted.

" Do you hear that, my dear ? " said she. " He says
he had rather be wrong with me than right with you.
Isn't he a naughty man ? "

She said that if she died her husband was going to
marry a girl of fifteen. I said : " And if your husband
dies, ma'am, send me a dispatch to London, and I will
come and marry you myself." They were both delighted
at this.

She told UB the thunder had upset her and frightened
her.

"Has it given you a headache ? "

She replied : No ; but it had upset her stomach. No
doubt the thunder had shaken her stomach's confidence
in the soundness of its opinions, so as to weaken its
proselytising power. By and by, seeing that she ate a
pretty good dinner, I inquired :

" Is your stomach better now, ma'am ? "

And she said it was. Next day my stomach was bad
too.

I told her I had been married, but had lost my wife
and had determined never to marry again till I could
find a widow whom I had admired as a married woman.

Giovanni, the new waiter, explained to me that the
butcher was not really bad or cruel at all. I shook my
head at him and said I wished I could think so, but
that his poor wife looked very ill and unhappy.

The housemaid's name was La Rosa Mistica.

The landlord was a favourite with all the guests.
Every one patted him on the cheeks or the head, or
chucked him under the chin, or did something nice and
friendly at him. He was a little man with a face like a

128 Alps and Sanctuaries

russet pippin apple, about sixty-five years old, but made
of iron. He was going to marry a third wife, and six
young women had already come up from S. Ambrogio
to be looked at. I saw one of them. She was a Visigoth-
looking sort of person and wore a large wobbly-brimmed
straw hat ; she was about forty, and gave me the im-
pression of being familiar with labour of all kinds. He
pressed me to give my opinion of her, but I sneaked out
of it by declaring that I must see a good deal more of the
lady than I was ever likely to see before I could form an
opinion at all.

On coming down from the sanctuary one afternoon I
heard the landlord's comic song, of which I have spoken
above. It was about the musical instruments in a band :
the trumpet did this, the clarinet did that, the flute went
tootle, tootle, tootle, and there was an appropriate
motion of the hand for every instrument. I was a little
disappointed with it, but the landlord said I was too
serious and the only thing that would cure me was to
learn the song myself. He said the butcher had learned
it already, so it was not hard, which indeed it was not.
It was about as hard as :

The battle of the Nile
I was there all the while
At the battle of the Nile.

I had to learn it and sing it (Heaven help me, for I
have no more voice than a mouse !), and the landlord said
that the motion of my little finger was very promising.

The chestnuts are never better than after harvest,
when they are heavy-laden with their pale green hedgehog-
like fruit and alive with people swarming among their
branches, pruning them while the leaves are still good
winter food for cattle. Why, I wonder, is there such an

Neighbourhood of S. Ambrogio 129

especial charm about the pruning of trees ? Who does
not feel it ? No matter what the tree is, the poplar of
France, or the brookside willow or oak coppice of England,
or the chestnuts or mulberries of Italy, all are interesting
when being pruned, or when pruned just lately. A
friend once consulted me casually about a picture on
which he was at work, and complained that a row of
trees in it was without sufficient interest. I was fortunate
enough to be able to help him by saying : " Prune them
freely and put a magpie's nest in one of them," and the
trees became interesting at once. People in trees always
look well, or rather, I should say, trees always look
well with people in them, or indeed with any living thing
in them, especially when it is of a kind that is not com-
monly seen in them ; and the measured lop of the bill-
hook and, by and by, the click as a bough breaks and
the lazy crash as it falls over on to the ground, are as
pleasing to the ear as is the bough-bestrewn herbage to
the eye.

To what height and to what slender boughs do not
these hardy climbers trust themselves. It is said that the
coming man is to be toeless. I will venture for it that he
will not be toeless if these chestnut-pruning men and
women have much to do with his development. Let the
race prune chestnuts for a couple of hundred generations
or so, and it will have little trouble with its toes. Of
course, the pruners fall sometimes, but very rarely. I
remember in the Val Mastallone seeing a votive picture
of a poor lady in a short petticoat and trousers trimmed
with red round the bottom who was falling head foremost
from the top of a high tree, whose leaves she had been
picking, and was being saved by the intervention of two
saints who caught her upon two gridirons. Such acci-
dents, however, and, I should think, such interventions,

130 Alps and Sanctuaries

are exceedingly rare, and as a rule the peasants venture
freely into places which in England no one but a sailor or
a steeple-jack would attempt.

And so we left this part of Italy, wishing that more
Hugo de Montboissiers had committed more crimes and
had had to expiate them by building more sanctuaries.

Chapter XI
Lanzo

FROM S. Ambrogio we went to Turin, a city so well
known that I need not describe it. The Hotel
Europa is the best, and, indeed, one of the best hotels
on the continent. Nothing can exceed it for comfort and
good cookery. The gallery of old masters contains some
great gems. Especially remarkable are two pictures of
Tobias and the angel, by Antonio PoUaiuolo and Sandro
Botticelli ; and a magnificent tempera painting of the
Crucifixion, by Gaudenzio Ferrari — one of his very finest
works. There are also several other pictures by the same
master, but the Crucifixion is the best.

From Turin I went alone to Lanzo, about an hour and
a half's railway journey from Turin, and found a com-
fortable inn, the Hotel de la Poste. There is a fine four-
teenth-century tower here, and the general effect of the
town is good.

One morning while I was getting my breakfast, English
fashion, with some cutlets to accompany my bread and
butter, I saw an elderly Italian gentleman, with his hand
up to his chin, eyeing me with thoughtful interest. After
a time he broke silence.

" Ed il latte," he said, " serve per la suppa."*

I said that that was the view we took of it. He thought
it over a while, and then feelingly exclaimed —

* " And the milk [in your coffee] does for you instead of soup."

•31

132 Alps and Sanctuaries

" Oh bel ! "

Soon afterwards he left me with the words —

" La ! dunque ! cerrea ! chow ! stia bene."

MEDI^.VAL rOWER AT LANZO

" La " is a very common close to an Italian conversa-
tion. I used to be a little afraid of it at first. It sounds
rather like saying, " There, that's that. Please to bear

Lanzo

in mind that I talked to you very nicely, and let you bore
me for a long time ; I think I have now done the thing
handsomely, so you'll be good enough to score me one and
let me go." But I soon fotmd out that it was quite a
friendly and civil way of saying good-bye.

.D^ijuia. S.itJ/fr--

PIAZZA AT LANZO

The " dunque " is softer ; it seems to say, " I cannot
bring myself to say so sad a word as ' farewell,' but we
must both of us know that the time has come for us to
part, and so "

" Cerrea " is an abbreviation and corruption of " di
sua Signoria," — "by your highness's leave." "Chow"

134 Alps and Sanctuaries

I have explained already. " Stia bene " is simply
" farewell."

The principal piazza of Lanzo is nice. In the upper
part of the town there is a large school or coUege. One
can see into the school through a grating from the road.
I looked down, and saw that the boys had cut their names
all over the desks, just as English boys would do. They
were very merry and noisy, and though there was a
priest standing at one end of the room, he let them do
much as they liked, and they seemed quite happy. I
heard one boy shout out to another, " Non c' e pericolo,"
in answer to something the other had said. This is
exactly the " no fear " of America and the colonies.
Near the school there is a field on the slope of the hill
which commands a view over the plain. A woman was
mowing there, and, by way of making myself agreeable, I
remarked that the view was fine. " Yes, it is," she an-
swered ; " you can see all the trains."

The baskets with which the people carry things in this
neighbourhood are of a different construction from any
I have seen elsewhere. They are made to fit all round the
head like something between a saddle and a helmet,
and at the' same time to rest upon the shoulders — the
head being, as it were, ensaddled by the basket, and the
weight being supported by the shoulders as well as by the
head. Why is it that such contrivances as this should
prevail in one valley and not in another ? If, one is
tempted to argue, the plan is a convenient one, why does
it not spread further ? If inconvenient, why has it spread
so far ? If it is good in the valley of the Stura, why is it
not also good in the contiguous vE^lley of the Dora ?
There must be places where people using helmet-made
baskets live next door to people who use baskets that
are borne entirely by back and shoulders. Why do not

Lanzo 135

the people in one or other of these houses adopt their
neighbour's basket ? Not because people are not amen-
able to conviction, for within a certain radius from the
source of the invention they are convinced to a man.
Nor again is it from any insuperable objection to a change
of habit. The Stura people have changed their habit^ —
possibly for the worse ; but if they have changed it for
the worse, how is it they do not find it out and change
again ?

Take, again, the fane Gnssino, from which the neigh-
bourhood of Turin has derived its nickname of il Grissi-
notto. It is made in long sticks, rather thicker than a
tobacco pipe, and eats crisp like toast. It is almost
universally preferred to ordinary bread by the inhabitants
of what was formerly Piedmont, but beyond these limits
it is rarely seen. Why so ? Either it is good or not good.
If not good, how has It prevailed over so large an area ?
If good, why does it not extend its empire ? The Reforma-
tion is another case in point : granted that Protestantism
is illogical, how is it that so few within a given area can
perceive it to be so ? The same question arises in respect
of the distribution of many plants and animals ; the
reason of the limits which some of them .cannot pass,
being, indeed, perfectly clear, but as regards perhaps the
greater number of them, undiscoverable. The upshot
of it is that things do not in practice find their perfect
level any more than water does so, but are liable to
disturbance by way of tides and local currents, or storms.
It is in his power to perceive and profit by these irregu-
larities that the strength or weakness of a commercial
man will be apparent.

One day I made an excursion from Lanzo to a place,
the name of which I cannot remember, but which is not
far from the Groscavallo glacier. Here I found several

136 Alps and Sanctuaries

Italians staying to take the air, and among them one
young gentleman, who told me he was writing a book
upon this neighbourhood, and was going to illustrate it
with his own drawings. This naturally interested me,
and I encouraged him to tell me more, which he was
nothing loth to do. He said he had a passion for drawing,
and was making rapid progress ; but there was one
thing that held him back — the not having any Conte

STUDY BY AN ITALIAN AMATEUR. NO. I

chalk : if he had but this, all his difficulties would vanish.
Unfortunately I had no Conte chalk with me, but I asked
to see the drawings, and was shown about twenty, all of
which greatly pleased me. I at once proposed an ex-
change, and have thus become possessed of the two which
I reproduce here. Being pencil drawings, and not done
with a view to Mr. Dawson's process, they have suffered
somewhat in reproduction, but I decided to let them
suffer rather than attempt to copy them. What can be

Lanzo

more absolutely in the spirit of the fourteenth century
than the drawings given above ? They seem as though
done by some fourteenth-century painter who had risen
from the dead. And to show that they are no rare acci-
dent, I will give another (p. 138), also done by an entirely
self-taught Italian, and intended to represent the castle
of Laurenzana in the neighbourhood of Potenza.

If the reader will pardon a digression, I will refer to a

STUDY BY AN ITALIAN AMATEUR. NO. 2

more important example of an old master born out of due
time. One day, in the cathedral at Varallo, I saw a
picture painted on linen of which I could make nothing.
It was not old and it was not modern. The expression
of the Virgin's face was lovely, and there was more
individuality than is commonly found in modern Italian
work. Modern Italian colour is generally either cold and
dirty, or else staring. The colour here was tender, and
reminded me of fifteenth-century Florentine work. The

138 Alps and Sanctuaries

folds of the drapery were not modern ; there was a sense
of effort about them, as though the painter had tried to
do them better, but had been unable to get them as free
and flowing as he had wished. Yet the picture was not
old ; to all appearance it might have been painted a
matter of ten years ; nor again was it an echo — it was a
sound : the archaism was not affected ; on the contrary.

STUDY BY A SELF-TAUGHT ITALIAN

there was something which said, as plainly as though the
living painter had spoken it, that his somewhat con-
strained treatment was due simply to his having been
puzzled with the intricacy of what he saw, and giving
as much as he could with a hand which was less advanced
than his judgments By some strange law it comes about
that the imperfection of men who are at this stage of any
art is the only true perfection ; for the wisdom of the wise

Dedomenici of Rossa 139

is set at naught, and the foohshness of the simple is
chosen, and it is out of the mouths of babes and suckhngs
that strength is ordained.

Unable to arrive at any conclusion, I asked the sacris-
tan, and was told it was by a certain Dedomenici of
Rossa, in the Val Sesia, and that it had been painted some
forty or fifty years ago. I expressed my surprise, and the
sacristan continued : " Yes, but what is most wonderful
about him is that he never left his native valley, and
never had any instruction, but picked up his art for
himself as best he could."

I have been twice to Varallo since, to see whether I
should change my mind, but have not done so. If
Dedomenici had been a Florentine or Venetian in the
best times, he would have done as well as the best ;
as it is, his work is remarkable. He died about 1840,
very old, and he kept on improving to the last. His last
work — at least I was told upon the spot that it was his
last — is in a little roadside chapel perched high upon a
rock, and dedicated, if I remember rightly, to S. Michele,
on the path from Fobello in the Val Mastallone to Tapon-
accio. It is a Madonna and child in clouds, with two fuU-
length saints standing beneath — all the figures life-size.
I came upon this chapel quite accidentally one evening,
and, looking in, recognised the altar-piece as a Dedome-
nici. I inquired at the next village who had painted it,
and was told, " un certo Dedomenici da Rossa." I
was also told that he was nearly eighty years old when he
painted this picture. I went a couple of years ago to
reconsider it, and found that I remained much of my
original opinion. I do not think that any of my readers
who care about the history of Italian art will regret
having paid it a visit.

Such men are more common in Italy than is believed.

140 Alps and Sanctuaries

There is a fresco of the Crucifixion outside the Campo
Santo at Fusio, in the Canton Ticino, done by a local
artist, which, though far inferior to the work of Dedo-
menici, is still remarkable. The painter evidently knows
nothing of the rules of his art, but hfe has made Christ
on the cross bowing His head towards the souls in purga-
tory, instead of in the conventional fine frenzy to which
we are accustomed. There is a storm which has caught
and is sweeping the drapery round Christ's body. The
angel's wings are no longer white, but many coloured as
in old times, and there is a touch of humour in the fact
that of the six souls in purgatory, four are women and
only two men. The expression on Christ's face is very
fine, but otherwise the drawing co.uld not well be more
imperfect than it is.

Chapter XII

Considerations on the Decline of
Italian Art

THOSE who know the Italians will see no sign of
decay about them. They are the. quickest witted
people in the world, and at the same time have much
more of the old Roman steadiness than they are generally
credited with. Not only is there no sign of degeneration,
but, as regards practical matters, there is every sign of
health and vigorous development. The North Italians
are more like Englishmen, both in body and mind, than
any other people whom I know ; I am continually
meeting Italians whom I should take for Englishmen if
I did not know their nationality. They have all our
strong points, but they have more grace and elasticity
of mind than we have.

Priggishness is the sin which doth most easily beset
middle-class and so-called educated Englishmen : we
call it purity and culture, but it does not much matter
what we call it. It is the almost inevitable outcome of a
university education, and will last as long as Oxford and
Cambridge do, but not much longer.

Lord Beaconsfield sent Lothair to Oxford ; it is with
great pleasure that I see he did not send Endymion.
My friend Jones called my attention to this, and we noted
that the growth observable throughout Lord Beacons-
field's life was continued to the end. He was one of those

141

142 Alps and Sanctuaries

who, no matter how long he Hved, would have been
always growing : this is what makes his later novels so
much better than those of Thackeray or Dickens. There
was something of the child about him to the last. Earnest-
ness was his greatest danger, but if he did not quite over-
come it (as who indeed can ? It is the last enemy that
shall be subdued), he managed to veil it with a fair
amount of success. As for Endymion, of course if Lord
Beaconsfield had thought Oxford would be good for him,
he could, as Jones pointed out to me, just as well have
killed Mr. Ferrars a year or two later. We feel satisfied,
therefore, that Endymion's exclusion from a university
was carefully considered, and are glad.

I will not say that priggishness is absolutely unknown
among the North Italians ; sometimes one comes upon a
young Italian who wants to learn German, but not often.
Priggism, or whatever the substantive is, is as essentially
a Teutonic vice as holiness is a Semitic characteristic ;
and if an Italian happens to be a prig, he will, like Tacitus,
invariably show a hankering after German institutions.
The idea, however, that the Italians were ever a finer
people than they are now, will not pass muster with those
who know them.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that modern
Italian art is in many respects as bad as it was once
good. I will confine myself to painting only. The modern
Italian painters, with very few exceptions, paint as badly
as we do, or even worse, and their motives are as poor
as is their painting. At an exhibition of modern Italian
pictures, I generally feel that there is hardly a picture
on the walls but is a sham^ — that is to say, painted not
from love of this particular subject and an irresistible
desire to paint it, but from a wish to paint an academy
picture, and win money or applause.

Decline of Italian Art 143

The same holds good in England, and in all other
countries that I know of. There is very httle tolerable
painting anywhere. In some kinds, indeed, of black
and white work the present age is strong. The illustra-
tions to " Punch," for example, are often as good as
anything that can be imagined. We know of nothing
like them in any past age or country. This is the one
kind of art — and it is a very good one — in which we excel
as distinctly as the age of Phidias excelled in sculpture.
Leonardo da Vinci would never have succeeded in
getting his drawings accepted at 85 Fleet Street, any
more than one of the artists on the staff of " Punch "
could paint a fresco which should hold its own against
Da Vinci's Last Supper. Michael Angelo again and Titian
would have failed disastrously at modern illustration.
They had no more sense of humour than a Hebrew
prophet ; they had no eye for the more trivial side
of anything round about them. This aspect went in at
one eye and out at the other — and they lost more than
ever poor Peter Bell lost in the matter of primroses. I
never can see what there was to find fault with in that
young man.

Fancy a street-Arab by Michael Angelo. Fancy even
the result which would have ensued if he had tried to put
the figures into the illustrations of this book. I should
have been very sorry to let him try his hand at it. To
him a priest chucking a small boy under the chin was
simply non-existent. He did not care for it, and had
therefore no eye for it. If the reader will turn to the
copy of a fresco of St. Christopher on p. 209, he will see
the conventional treatment of the rocks on either side the
saint. This was the best thing the artist could do, and
probably cost him no little trouble. Yet there were rocks
all around him — little, in fact, else than rock in those

144- Alps and Sanctuaries

days ; and the artist could have drawn them well enough
if it had occurred to him to try and do so. If he could
draw St. Christopher, he could have drawn a rock ; but
he had an interest in the one, and saw nothing in the
other which made him think it worth while to pay
attention to it. What rocks were to him, the common
occurrences of everyday life were to those who are gener-
ally held to be the giants of painting. The result of
this neglect to kiss the soil — of this attempt to be always
soaring — is that these giants are for the most part now
very uninteresting, while the smaller men who preceded
them grow fresher and more delightful yearly. It was
not so with Handel and Shakespeare. Handel's

" Ploughman near at hand, whistling o'er the furrowed land,"

is intensely sympathetic, and his humour is admirable
whenever he has occasion for it.

Leonardo da Vinci is the only one of the giant Italian
masters who ever tried to be humorous, and he failed
completely r so, indeed, must any one if he tries to be
humorous. We do not want this ; we only want them
not to shut their eyes to by-play when it comes in their
way, and if they are giving us an account of what they
have seen, to tell us something about this too. I believe
the older the world grows, the better it enjoys a joke.
The mediaeval joke generally was a heavy, lumbering
old thing, only a little better than the classical one.
Perhaps in those days life was harder than it is now, and
people if they looked at it at all closely dwelt upon its
soberer side. Certainly in humorous art, we may claim
to be not only frincipes, but facile princifes. Neverthe-
less, the Italian comic journals are, some of them, ad-
mirably illustrated, though in a style quite different from
our own ; sometimes, also, they are beautifully coloured.

Decline of Italian Art

145

As regards painting, the last rays of the sunset of
genuine art are to be found in the votive pictures at
Locarno or Oropa, and in many a wayside chapel. In
these, religious art still lingers as a living language,
however rudely spoken. In these alone is the story told,
not as in the Latin and Greek verses of the scholar, who
thinks he has succeeded best when he has most concealed
his natural manner of expressing himself, but by one who
knows what he wants to say, and says it in his mother-
tongue, shortly, and without
caring whether or not his words
are in accordance with acade-
mic rules. I regret to see
photography being introduced
for votive purposes, and also
to detect in some places a
disposition on the part of the
authorities to be a little
ashamed of these pictures and
to place them rather out of
sight.

Sometimes in a little country
village, as at Doera near
Mesocco, there is a modern
fresco on a chapel in which the old spirit appears, with
its absolute indifference as to whether it was ridiculous
or no, but such examples are rare.

Sometimes, again, I have even thought I have detected
a ray of sunset upon a milkman's window-blind in
London, and once upon an undertaker's, but it was too
faint a ray to read by. The best thing of the kind
that I have seen in London is the picture of the lady
who is cleaning knives with Mr. Spong's patent knife-
cleaner, in his shop window nearly opposite Day &

PARADISO ! PARADISO !

146 Alps and Sanctuaries

Martin's in Holborn. It falls a long way short, how-
ever, of a good Italian votive picture ; but it has the
advantage of moving.

I knew of a little girl once, rather less than four years
old, whose uncle had promised to take her for a drive in
a carriage with him, and had failed to do so. The child
was found soon afterwards on the stairs weeping, and
being asked what was the matter, replied, " Mans is all
alike." This is Giottesque. I often think of it as I look
upon Italian votive pictures. The meaning is so sound
in spite of the expression being so defective — if, indeed,
expression can be defective when it has so well conveyed
the meaning.

I knew, again, an old lady whose education had been
neglected in her youth. She came into a large fortune,
and at some forty years of age put herself under the best
masters. She once said to me as follows, speaking very
slowly and allowing a long time between each part of the
sentence ; — " You see," she said, " the world, and all
that it contains, is wrapped up in such curious forms,
that it is only by a knowledge of human nature, that we
can rightly tell what to say, to do, or to admire." I
copied the sentence into my note-book immediately on
taking my leave. It is like an academy picture.

But to return to the Italians. The question is, how
has the deplorable falling-off in Italian painting been
caused ? And by doing what may we again get Bellinis
and Andrea Mantegnas as in old time ? The fault does
not lie in any want of raw material : the drawings I
have already given prove this. Nor, again, does it lie
in want of taking pains. The modern Italian painter
frets himself to the full as much as his predecessor did —
if the truth were known, probably a great deal more. It
does not lie in want of schooling or art education. For

Decline of Italian Art

147

the last three hundred years, ever since the Carracci
opened their academy at Bologna, there has been no lack
of art education in Italy. Curiously enough, the date
of the opening of the Bolognese Academy coincides as
nearly as may be with the complete decadence of Italian
painting.

BY AN ITALIAN SCHOOLBOY

This is an example of the way in which Italian boys
begin their art education now. The drawing which I
reproduce here was given me by the eminent sculptor,
Professor Vela, as the work of a lad of twelve years old,
and as doing credit alike to the school where the lad was
taught and to the pupil himself.*

* Butler said of this drawing that it was " the hieroglyph of a lost
soul."— R. A. S.

148 Alps and Sanctuaries

So it undoubtedly does. It shows as plainly the recep-
tiveness and docility of the modern Italian, as the
illustrations given above show his freshness and naivete
when left to himself. The drawing is just such as we try
to get our own young people to do, and few English ele-
mentary schools in a small country town would succeed in
turning out so good a one. I have nothing, therefore, but
praise both for the pupil and the teacher ; but about the
system which makes such teachers and such pupils com-
mendable, I am more sceptical. That system trains boys
to study other people's works rather than nature, and, as
Leonardo da Vinci so well says, it makes them nature's
grandchildren and not her children. The boy who did the
drawing given above is not likely to produce good work in
later life. He has been taught to see nature with an old
man's eyes at once, without going through the embryonic
stages. He has never said his " mans is all alike," and by
twenty will be painting like my old friend's long academic
sentence. All his individuality has been crushed out of him.

I will now give a reproduction of the frontispiece
to Avogadro's work on the sanctuary of S. Michele,
from which I have already quoted ; it is a very pretty
and effective piece of work, but those who are good
enough to turn back to p. 93, and to believe that I
have drawn carefully, will see how disappointing Avo-
gadro's frontispiece must be to those who hold, as most
of us wiU, that a draughtsman's first business is to put
down what he sees, and to let prettiness take care of
itself. The main features, indeed, can still be traced,
but they have become as transformed and lifeless as
rudimentary organs. Such a frontispiece, however, is
the almost inevitable consequence of the system of
training that will make boys of twelve do drawings like
the one given on p. 147.

Decline of Italian Art 149

If half a dozen young Italians could be got together
with a taste for drawing like that shown by the authors
of the sketches on pp. 136, 137, 138 ; if they had power
to add to their number ; if they were allowed to see
paintings and drawings done up to the year a.d. 1510,
and votive pictures and the comic papers ; if they were
left with no other assistance than this, absolutely free to
please themselves, and could be persuaded not to try
and please any one else, I believe that in fifty years we

AVOGADRO'S VIEW OF S. MICHELE

should have all that was ever done repeated with fresh
naivete, and as much more delightfully than even by the
best old masters, as these are more delightful than any-
thing we know of in classic painting. The young plants
keep growing up abundantly every day — ^look at Bas-
tianini, dead not ten years since — but they are browsed
down by the academies. I remember there came out a
book many years ago with the title, " What becomes of all
the clever little children ? " I never saw the book, but
the title is pertinent.

150 Alps and Sanctuaries

Any man who can write, can draw to a not incon-
siderable extent. Look at the Bayeux tapestry ; yet
Matilda probably never had a drawing lesson in her life.
See how well prisoner after prisoner in the Tower of
London has cut this or that out in the stone of his prison
wall, without, in all probability, having ever tried his
hand at drawing before. Look at my friend Jones, who
has several illustrations in this book. The first year he
went abroad with me he could hardly draw at all. He
was no year away from England more than three weeks.
How did he learn ? On the old principle, if I am not
mistaken. The old principle was for a man to be doing
something which he was pretty strongly bent on doing,
and to get a much younger one to help him. The younger
paid nothing for instruction, but the elder took the work,
as long as the relation of master and pupil existed between
them. I, then, was making illustrations for this book,
and got Jones to help me. I let him see what I was doing,
and derive an idea of the sort of thing I wanted, and then
left him alone — beyond giving him the same kind of small
criticism that I expected from himself — ^but I appropriated
his work. That is the way to teach, and the result was
that in an incredibly short time Jones could draw.
The taking the work is a sine qua non. If I had not been
going to have his work, Jones, in spite of all his quick-
ness, would probably have been rather slower in learn-
ing to draw. Being paid in money is nothing like so
good.

This is the system of apprenticeship versus the academic
system. The academic system consists in giving people
the rules for doing things. The apprenticeship system
consists in letting them do it, with just a trifle of super-
vision. " For all a rhetorician's rules," says my great
namesake, " teach nothing, but to name his tools ; "

Decline of Italian Art 151

and academic rules generally are much the same as the
rhetorician's. Some men can pass through academies
unscathed, but they are very few, and in the main the
academic influence is a baleful one, whether exerted in a
university or a school. While young men at universities
are being prepared for their entry into life, their rivals
have already entered it. The most university and
examination ridden people in the world are the Chinese,
and they are the least progressive.

Men should learn to draw as they learn conveyancing :
they should go into a painter's studio and paint on his
pictures. I am told that half the conveyances in the
country are drawn by pupils ; there is no more mystery
about painting than about conveyancing — not half in
fact, I should think, so much. One may ask. How can the
beginner paint, or draw conveyances, till he has learnt
how to do so ? The answer is. How can he learn, without
at any rate trying to do ? If he likes his subject, he will
try : if he tries, he will soon succeed in doing something
which shaU open a door. It does not matter what a man
does ; so long as he does it with the attention which
affection engenders, he will come to see his way to some-
thing else. After long waiting he will certainly find one
door open, and go through it. He wiU say to himself that
he can never find another. He has found this, more by
luck than cunning, but now he is done. Yet by and by he
will see that there is one more small, unimportant door
which he had overlooked, and he proceeds through this
too. If he remains now for a long while and sees no other,
do not let him " fret ; doors are hke the kingdom of
heaven, they come not by observation, least of all do they
come by forcing : let them just go on doing what comes
nearest, but doing it attentively, and a great wide door
will one day spring into existence where there had been

I 5 2 Alps and Sanctuaries

no sign of one but a little time previously. Only let him
be always doing something, and let him cross himself
now and again, for belief in the wondrous efficacy of
crosses and crossing is the corner-stone of the creed of the
evolutionist. Then after years — but not probably till
after a great many — doors will open up all round, so
many and so wide that the difficulty will not be to
find a door, but rather to obtain the means of even
hurriedly surveying a portion of those that stand in-
vitingly open.

I know that just as good a case can be made out for the
other side. It may be said as truly that unless a student
is incessantly on the watch for doors he will never see
them, and that unless he is incessantly pressing forward
to the kingdom of heaven he will never find it — so that
the kingdom does come by observation. It is with this
as with everything else — there must be a harmonious
fusing of two principles which are in flat contradiction to
one another.

The question whether it is better to abide quiet and
take advantage of opportunities that come, or to go
further afield in search of them, is one of the oldest which
living beings have had to deal with. It was on this
that the first great schism or heresy arose in what was
heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The schism
still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects — animals
and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search
of prey is formulated in animals ; the other — that it is
better on the whole to stay at home and profit by what
comes — in plants. Some intermediate forms still record
to us the long struggle during which the schism was not
yet complete.

If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression
further, I would say that it is the plants and not we

Decline of Italian Art 153

who are the heretics. There can be no question about
this ; we are perfectly justified, therefore, in devouring
them. Ours is the original and orthodox belief, for
protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable ; it
is much more true to say that plants have descended
from animals than animals from plants. Nevertheless,
like many other heretics, plants have thriven very fairly
well. There are a great many of them, and as regards
beauty, if not wit — of a limited kind indeed, but still wit — •
it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advan-
tage. The views of plants are sadly narrow ; all dissenters
are narrow-minded ; but within their own bounds they
know the details of their business sufficiently well — as well
as though they kept the most nicely-balanced system of
accounts to show them their position. They are eaten,
it is true ; to eat them is our bigoted and intolerant
way of trying to convert them : eating is only a
violent mode of proselytising or converting ; and we do
convert them — to good animal substance, of our own way
of thinking. But then, animals are eaten too. They
convert one another, almost as much as they convert
plants. And an animal is no sooner dead than a plant will
convert it back again. It is obvious, however, that no
schism could have been so long successful, without having
a good deal to say for itself.

Neither party has been quite consistent. Who ever
is or can be ? Every extreme — every opinion carried
to its logical end — will prove to be an absurdity. Plants
throw out roots and boughs and leaves ; this is a kind of
locomotion ; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since
pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what
may be called travelling ; a man of consistent character
will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril without
regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled com-

154 Alps and Sanctuaries

promise. On the other hand, many animals are sessile,
and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in
the main liers-in-wait. It may appear, however, on the
whole, like reopening a settled question to uphold the
principle of being busy and attentive over a srnall area,
rather than going to and fro over a larger one, for a
mammal like man, but I think most readers will be with
me in thinking that, at any rate as regards art and litera-
ture, it is he who does his small immediate work most
carefully who will find doors open most certainly to him,
that will conduct him into the richest chambers.

Many years ago, in New Zealand, I used sometimes
to accompany a dray and team of bullocks who would
have to be turned loose at night that they might feed.
There were no hedges or fences then, so sometimes I
could not find my team in the morning, and had no clue
to the direction in which they had gone. At first I
used to try and throw my soul into the bullocks' souls,
so as to divine if possible what they would be likely to
have done, and would then ride off ten miles in the wrong
direction. People used in those days to lose their bullocks
sometimes for a week or fortnight — when they perhaps
were all the time hiding in a gully hard by the place
where they were turned out. After some time I changed
my tactics. On losing my bullocks I would go to the
nearest accommodation house, and stand occasional
drinks to travellers. Some one would ere long, as a general
rule, turn up who had seen the bullocks. This case does
not go quite on all fours with what I have been saying
above, inasmuch as I was not very industrious in my
limited area ; but the standing drinks and inquiring
was being as industrious as the circumstances would
allow.

To return, universities and academies are an obstacle

Decline of Italian Art 155

to the finding of doors in later life ; partly because they
push their young men too fast through doorways that
the universities have provided, and so discourage the
habit of being on the look-out for others ; and partly
because they do not take pains enough to make sure
that their doors are bond fide ones. If, to change the
metaphor, an academy has taken a bad shilling, it is
seldom very scrupulous about trying to pass it on. It
will stick to it that the shilling is a good one as long as
the police will let it. I was very happy at Cambridge ;
when I left it I thought I never again could be so happy
anywhere else ; I shall ever retain a most kindly recollec-
tion both of Cambridge and of the school where I passed
my boyhood ; but I feel, as I think most others must in
middle life, that I have spent as much of my maturer
years in unlearning as in learning.

The proper course is for a boy to begin the practical
business of life many years earlier than he now commonly
does. He should begin at the very bottom of a profession ;
if possible of one which his family has pursued before him
— for the professions will assuredly one day become
hereditary. The ideal railway director will have begun
at fourteen as a railway porter. He need not be a porter
for more than a week or ten days, any more than he need
have been a tadpole more than a short time ; but he
should take a turn in practice, though briefly, at each of
the lower branches in the profession. The painter should
do just the same. He should begin by setting his em-
ployer's palette and cleaning his brushes. As for the
good side of universities, the proper preservative of this
is to be found in the club.

If, then, we are to have a renaissance of art, there
must be a complete standing aloof from the academic
system. That system has had time enough. Where

156 Alps and Sanctuaries

and who are its men ? Can it point to one painter who
can hold his own with the men of, say, from 1450 to
1550 ? Academies will bring out men who can paint
hair very like hair, and eyes very like eyes, but this is
not enough. This is grammar and deportment ; we want
wit and a kindly nature, and these cannot be got from
academies. As far as mere technique is concerned, almost
every one now can paint as well as is in the least desirable.
The same mutatis mutandis holds good with writing as
with painting. We want less word-painting and fine
phrases, and more observation at first-hand. Let us
have a periodical illustrated by people who cannot draw,
and written by people who cannot write (perhaps,
however, after all, we have some), but who look and
think for themselves, and express themselves just as they
please, — and this we certainly have not. Every con-
tributor should be at once turned out if he or she is
generally believed to have tried to do something which
he or she did not care about trying to do, and anything
should be admitted which is the outcome of a genuine
liking. People are always good company when they are
doing what they really enjoy. A cat is good company
when it is purring, or a dog when it is wagging its tail.

The sketching clubs up and down the country might
form the nucleus of such a society, provided all pro-
fessional men were rigorously excluded. As for the old
masters, the better plan would be never even to look at
one of them, and to consign Raffaelle, along with Plato,
Marcus Aurehus Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, and two
others, neither of them Englishmen, to limbo, as the
Seven Humbugs of Christendom.

While we are about it, let us leave off talking about
" art for art's sake." Who is art, that it should have a
sake ? A work of art should be produced for the pleasure

Decline of Italian Art 157

it gives the producer, and the pleasure he thinks it will
give to a few of whom he is fond ; but neither money nor
people whom he does not know personally should be
thought of. Of course such a society as I have proposed
would not remain incorrupt long. " Everything that
grows, holds in perfection but a httle moment." The
members would try to imitate professional men in spite
of their rules, or, if they escaped this and after a while
got to paint well, they would become dogmatic, and a
rebellion against their authority would be as necessary
ere long as it was against that of their predecessors :
but the balance on the whole would be to the good.

Professional men should be excluded, if for no other
reason yet for this, that they know too much for the
beginner to be en rapport with them. It is the beginner
who can help the beginner, as it is the child who is the
most instructive companion for another child. The
beginner can understand the beginner, but the cross
between him and the proficient performer is too wide
for fertility. It savours of impatience, and is in fiat
contradiction to the first principles of biology. It does a
beginner positive harm to look at the masterpieces of
the great executionists, such as Rembrandt or Turner.

If one is climbing a very high mountain which will tax
all one's strength, nothing fatigues so much as casting
upward glances to the top ; nothing encourages so much
as casting downward glances. The top seems never to
draw nearer ; the parts that we have passed retreat
rapidly. Let a water-colour student go and see the
drawing by Turner, in the basement of our National
Gallery, dated 1787. This is the sort of thing for him,
not to copy, but to look at for a minute or two now and
again. It will show him nothing about painting, but it
may serve to teach him not to overtax his strength,

158 Alps and Sanctuaries

and will prove to him that the greatest masters in paint-
ing, as in everything else, begin by doing work which is
no way superior to that of their neighbours. A collection
of the earliest known works of the greatest men would be
much more useful to the student than any number of
their maturer works, for it would show him that he need
not worry himself because his work does not look clever,
or as silly people say, " show power."

The secrets of success are affection for the pursuit
chosen, a flat refusal to be hurried or to pass anything as
understood which is not understood, and an obstinacy
of character which shall make the student's friends
find it less trouble to let him have his own way than to
bend him into theirs. Our schools and academies or
universities are covertly, but essentially, radical institu-
tions and abhorrent to the genius of Conservatism. Their
sin is the true radical sin of being in too great a hurry, and
of believing in short cuts too soon. But it must be
remembered that this proposition, like every other, wants
tempering with a slight infusion of its direct opposite.

I said in an early part of this book that the best test to
know whether or no one likes a picture is to ask one's self
whether one would like to look at it if one was quite sure
one was alone. The best test for a painter as to whether
he likes painting his picture is to ask himself whether he
should like to paint it if he was quite sure that no one
except himself, and the few of whom he was very fond,
would ever see it. If he can answer this question in the
affirmative, he is all right ; if he cannot, he is all wrong. I
will close these remarks with an illustration which will
show how nearly we can approach the early Florentines
even now — when nobody is looking at us. I do not know
who Mr. Pollard is. I never heard of him till I came across
a cheap lithograph of his Funeral of Tom Moody in the

Decline of Italian Art

159

parlour of a village inn. I should not think he ever was
an R.A., but he has approached as nearly as the difference
between the geniuses of the two countries will allow,
to the spirit of the painters who painted in the Campo
Santo at Pisa. Look, again, at Garrard, at the close of the

t^itE^t-k^l*

FUNERAL OF TOM MOODY

last century. We generally succeed with sporting or
quasi-sporting subjects, and our cheap coloured coaching
and hunting subjects are almost always good, and often
very good indeed. We like these things : therefore we
observe them ; therefore we soon become able to express
them. Historical and costume pictures we have no
genuine love for ; we do not, therefore, go beyond re-
peating commonplaces concerning them.

I must reserve other remarks upon this subject for
another occasion.

Chapter XI II
Viii, Fucine, and S. Ignazio

1MUST now return to my young friend at Groscavallo.
I have published his drawings without his permission,
having unfortunately lost his name and address, and
being unable therefore to apply to him. I hope that,
should they ever meet his eye, he will accept this apology
and the assurance of my most profound consideration.

Delighted as I had been with his proposed illustrations,
I thought J had better hear some of the letterpress, so I
begged him to read me his MS. My time was short, and
he began at once. The few introductory pages were very
nice, but there was nothing particularly noticeable about
them ; when, however, he came to his description of the
place where we now were, he spoke of a beautiful young
lady as attracting his attention on the evening of his
arrival. It seemed that she was as much struck with him
as he with her, and I thought we were going to have a
romance, when he proceeded as follows : " We perceived
that we were sympathetic, and in less than a quarter of
an hour had exchanged the most solemn vows that we
would never marry one another." " What ? " said I,
hardly able to believe my ears, " will you kindly read
those last words over again? " He did so, slowly and
distinctly ; I caught them beyond all power of mistake,
and they were as I have given them above : — " We
perceived that we were sympathetic, and in less than a

160

Viii and Neighbourhood i6i

quarter of an hour had exchanged the most solemn vows
that we would never marry one another." While I was
rubbing my eyes and

S. IGNAZIO, NEAR LANZO

making up my mind
whether I had stumbled
upon a great satirist or no,
I heard a voice from
below — " Signor Butler,
Signer Butler, la vettura
e pronta." I had there-
fore to leave my doubt
unsolved, but all the time as we drove down the
valley I had the words above quoted ringing in my head.
If ever any of my readers come across the book itself —
for I should hope it will be published — I should be

very grateful to them if
they will direct my atten-
tion to it.

Another day I went to
Ceres, and returned .on
foot via S. Ignazio. S. Ig-
nazio is a famous sanctuary
on the very top of a
mountain, like that of
Sammichele ; but it is late,
the St. Ignatius being
St. Ignatius Loyola, and
not the apostolic father. I
got my dinner at a village
inn at the foot of the mountain, and from the window
caught sight of a fresco upon the wall of a chapel a few
yards off. There was a companion to it hardly less
interesting, but I had not time to sketch it. I do not
knew what the one I give is intended to represent.

FRESCO NEAR CERES

1 62 Alps and Sanctuaries

St. Ignatius is upon a rock, and is pleased with something,
but there is nothing to show what it is, except his attitude,
which seems to say, " Senza far fatica," — " You see I
can do it quite easily," or, " There is no deception."
Nor do we easily gather what it is that the Roman

i'^'X . , ~ A' r-

VIU CHURCH

centurion is saying to St. Ignatius. I cannot make
up my mind whether he is merely warning him to beware
of the reaction, or whether he is a little scandalised.

From this village I went up the mountain to the sanctu-
ary of S. Ignazio itself, which looks well from the distance.

Viu and Neighbourhood 163

and commands a striking view, but contains nothing of
interest, except a few nice votive pictures.

From Lanzo I went to Viii, a summer resort largely
frequented by the Turinese, but rarely visited by English
people. There is a good inn at Viii — the one close to
where the public conveyance stops — and the neighbour-
hood is enchanting. The little village on the crest of the
hill in the distance, to the left of the church, as shown
on the preceding page, is called the Colma di S. Giovanni,
and is well worth a visit. In spring, before the grass is cut,
the pastures must be even better than when I saw them
in August, and they were then still of almost incredible
beauty.

I went to S. Giovanni by the directest way — descending,
that is, to the level of the Stura, crossing it, and then
going straight up the mountain. I returned by a slight
detour so as to take the village of Fucine, a frazione of
Viu a little higher up the river. I found many picturesque
bits ; among them the one which I give on the next page.
It was a grand festa ; first they had had mass, then there
had been the funzioni, which I never quite understand, and
thenceforth till sundown there was a public ball on the
bowling ground of a little inn on the Viii side of the bridge.
The principal inn is on the other side. It was here I went
and ordered dinner. The landlady brought me a minestra,
or hodge-podge soup, full of savoury vegetables, and
very good ; a nice cutlet fried in bread-crumbs, bread and
butter ad libitum, and half a bottle of excellent wine.
She brought all together on a tray, and put them down
on the table. " It'll come to a franc," said she, " in all,
but please to pay first." I did so, of course, and she was
satisfied. A day or two afterwards I went to the same
inn, hoping to dine as well and cheaply as before ; but
I think they must have discovered that I was Suforestiere

164 Alps and Sanctuaries

inglese in the meantime, for they did not make me pay
first, and charged me normal prices.

What pretty words they have ! While eating my dinner

i'-VWife'i

k'/JMS

FUCINE, NEAR VIU

I wanted a small plate and asked for it. The landlady
changed the word I had used, and told a girl to bring me a
tondino. A tondino is an abbreviation of rotondino, a

Viu and Neighbourhood 165

" little round thing." A plate is a tondo, a small plate a
tondino. The delicacy of expression which their diminutives
and intensitives give is untranslateable. One day I was
asking after a waiter whom I had known in previous
years, but who was iU. I said I hoped he was not badly
off. " Oh dear, no," was the answer ; " he has a discreta
posizionina " — " a snug little sum put by." " Is the
road to such and such a place difficult ? " I once inquired.
" Un tantino," was the answer. " Ever such a very
little," I suppose, is as near as we can get to this. At
one inn I asked whether I could have my linen back from
the wash by a certain time, and was told it was im-
-possihilissimo. I have an Italian friend long resident
in England who often introduces English words when
talking with me in Italian. Thus I have heard him say
that such and such a thing is tanto cheapissimo. As for
their gestures, they are inimitable. To say nothing of
the pretty Uttle way in which they say " no," by moving
the forefinger backwards and forwards once or twice,
they have a hundred movements to save themselves the
trouble of speaking, which say what they have to say
better than any words can do. It is delightful to see an
Italian move his hand in such way as to show you
that you have got to go round a corner. Gesture is easier
both to make and to understand than speech is. Speech
is a late acquisition, and in critical moments is commonly
discarded in favour of gesture, which is older and moie
habitual.

I once saw an Italian explaining something to another
and tapping his nose a great deal. He became more and
more confidential, and the more confidential he became,
the more he tapped, till his finger seemed to become
glued to, and almost grow into his nose. At last the
supreme moment came. He drew the finger down.

1 66 Alps and Sanctuaries

pressing it closely against his lower lip, so as to drag it all
down and show his gums and the roots of his teeth.
" There," he seemed to say, " you now know all : con-
sider me as turned inside out : my mucous membrane
is before you."

At Fucine, and indeed in all the valleys hereabout,
spinning-wheels are not uncommon. I also saw a woman
sitting in her room with the door opening on to the
street, weaving linen at a hand-loom. The woman and
the hand-loom were both very old and rickety. The
first and the last specimens of anything, whether animal
or vegetable organism, or machine, or institution, are
seldom quite satisfactory. Some five or six years ago
I saw an old gentleman sitting outside the St. Lawrence
Hall at Montreal, in Canada, and wearing a pigtail,
but it was not a good pigtail ; and when the Scotch baron
killed the last wolf in Scotland, it was probably a weak,
mangy old thing, capable of little further mischief.

Presently I walked a mile or two up the river, and
met a godfather coming along with a cradle on his
shoulder ; he was followed by two women, one carrying
some long wax candles, and the other something wrapped
up in a piece of brown paper ; they were going to get the
child christened at Fucine. Soon after I met a priest,
and bowed, as a matter of course. In towns or places
where many foreigners come and go this is unnecessary,
but in small out-of-the-way places one should take one's
hat off to the priest. I mention this because many
Enghshmen do not know that it is expected of them, and
neglect the accustomed courtesy through ignorance.
Surely, even here in England, if one is in a small country
village, off one's beat, and meets the clergyman, it is
more polite than not to take off one's hat.

Viii is one of the places from which pilgrims ascend

Viu and Neighbourhood 167

the Rocca Melone at the beginning of August. This
is one of the naost popular and remarkable pilgrimages
of North Italy ; the Rocca Melone is 11,000 feet high,
and forms a peak so sharp, that there is room for little
else than the small wooden chapel which stands at the
top of it. There is no accommodation whatever, except
at some rough barracks (so I have been told) some
thousands of feet below the summit. These, I was in-
formed, are sometimes so crowded that the people doze
standing, and the cold at night is intense, unless under
the shelter just referred to ; yet some five or six thousand
pilgrims ascend on the day and night of the festa —
chiefly from Susa, but also from all parts of the valleys
of the Dora and the Stura. They leave Susa early in the
morning, camp out or get shelter in the barracks that
evening, reaching the chapel at the top of the Rocca
Melone next day. I have not made the ascent myself,
but it would probably be worth making by one who did not
mind the fatigue.

I may mention that thatch is not uncommon in the
Stura valley. In the Val Mastailone, and more especially
between Civiasco (above Varallo) and Orta, thatch is
more common still, and the thatching is often very
beautifully done. Thatch in a stone country is an indica-
tion of German, or at any rate Cisalpine descent, and is
among the many proofs of the extent to which German
races crossed the Alps and spread far down over Piedmont
and Lombardy. I was more struck with traces of German
influence on the path from Pella on the Lago d'Orta,
to the Colma on the way to Varallo, than perhaps any-
where else. The churches have a tendency to have pure
spires — a thing never seen in Italy proper ; chpped yews
and box-trees are common ; there are lime-trees in the
churchyards, and thatch is the rule, not the exception.

1 68 Alps and Sanctuaries '

At Rimella in the Val Mastallone, not far off, German is
still the current language. As I sat sketching, a woman
came up to me, and said, " Was machen sie ? " as a
matter of course. Rimella is the highest village in its
valley, yet if one crosses the saddle at the head of the
valley, one does not descend upon a German-speaking
district ; one descends on the Val Anzasca, where Italian
is universally spoken. Until recently German was the
language of many other villages at the heads of valleys,
even though these valleys were themselves entirely sur-
rounded by Italian-speaking people. At Alagna in the
Val Sesia, German is still spoken.

Whatever their origin, however, the people are now
thoroughly Italianised. Nevertheless, as I have already
said, it is strange what a number of people one meets
among them, whom most people would unhesitatingly
pronounce to be English if asked to name their nation-
ahty.

Chapter XIV
Sanctuary of Oropa

FROM Lanzo I went back to Turin, where Jones
again joined me, and we resolved to go and see the
famous sanctuary of Oropa near Biella. Biella is about
three hours' railway journey from Turin. It is reached
by a branch line of some twenty miles, that leaves the
main line between Turin and Milan at Santhia. Except
the view of the Alps, which in clear weather cannot be
surpassed, there is nothing of very particular interest
between Turin and Santhia, nor need Santhia detain the
traveller longer than he can help. Biella we found to con-
sist of an upper and a lower town — the upper, as may be
supposed, being the older. It is at the very junction of the
plain and the mountains, and is a thriving place, with
more of the busy air of an English commercial town than
perhaps any other of its size in North Italy. Even in
the old town large rambling old palazzi have been con-
verted into factories, and the click of the shuttle is heard
in unexpected places.

We were unable to find that Biella contains any re-
markable pictures or other works of art, though they are
doubtless to be found by those who have the time to look
for them. There is a very fine campanile near the post-
office, and an old brick baptistery, also hard by ; but the
church to which both campanile and baptistery belonged,

169

lyo Alps and Sanctuaries

has, as the author of " Round about London " so well
says, been " utterly restored ; " it cannot be uglier than
what we sometimes do, but it is quite as ugly. We found
an Italian opera company in Biella ; peeping through
a grating, as many others were doing, we watched the
company rehearsing " La forza del destino," which was
to be given later in the week.

The morning after our arrival, we took ' the daily
diligence for Oropa, leaving Biella at eight o'clock.
Before we were clear of the town we could see the long
line of the hospice, and the chapels dotted about near
it, high up in a valley at some distance off ; presently we
were shown another fine building some eight or nine
miles away, which we were told was the sanctuary of
Graglia. About this time the pictures and statuettes
of the Madonna began to change their hue and to become
black — for the sacred image of Oropa being black, all the
Madonnas in her immediate neighbourhood are of the
same complexion. Underneath some of them is written,
" Nigra sum sed sum formosa," which, as a rule, was more
true as regards the first epithet than the second.

It was not market-day, but streams of people were
coming to the town. Many of them were pilgrims return-
ing from the sanctuary, but more were bringing the
produce of their farms, or the work of their hands for sale.
We had to face a steady stream of chairs, which were
coming to town in baskets upon women's heads. Each
basket contained twelve chairs, though whether it is
correct to say that the basket contained the chairs —
when the chairs were all, so to say, froth running over
the top of the basket — is a point I cannot settle. Cer-
tainly we had never seen anything like so many chairs
before, and felt almost as though we had surprised nature
in the laboratory wherefrom she turns out the chair

Sanctuary of Oropa 171

supply of the world. The road continued through a suc-
cession of villages almost running into one another for
a long way after Biella was passed, but everywhere we
noticed the same air of busy thriving industry which we
had seen in Biella itself. We noted also that a pre-
ponderance of the people had light hair, while that of the
children was frequently nearly white, as though the in-
fusion of German blood was here stronger even than
usual. Though so thickly peopled, the country was of
great beauty. Near at hand were the most exquisite
pastures close shaven after their second mowing, gay with
autumnal crocuses, and shaded with stately chestnuts ;
beyond were rugged mountains, in a combe on one of
which we saw Oropa itself now gradually nearing ;
behind and below, many villages with vineyards and
terraces cultivated to the highest perfection ; further
on, Biella already distant, and beyond this a " big stare,"
as an American might say, over the plains of Lombardy
from Turin to Milan, with the Apennines from Genoa to
Bologna hemming the horizon. On the road immediately
before us, we still faced the same steady stream of chairs
flowing ever Biella-ward.

After a couple of hours the houses became more rare ;
we got above the sources of the chair-stream ; bits of
rough rock began to jut out from the pasture ; here and
there the rhododendron began to show itself by the
roadside ; the chestnuts left off along a line as level as
though cut with a knife ; stone-roofed cascine began to
abound, with goats and cattle feeding near them ; the
booths of the religious trinket-mongers increased ; the
blind, halt, and maimed became more importunate,
and the foot-passengers were more entirely composed of
those whose object was, or had been, a visit to the
sanctuary itself. The numbers of these pilgrims—

172 Alps and Sanctuaries

generally in their Sunday's best, and often comprising the
greater part of a family — were so great, though there was
no special festa, as to testify to the popularity of the
institution. They generally walked barefoot, and carried
their shoes and stockings ; their baggage consisted of a
few spare clothes, a little food, and a pot or pan or two
to cook with. Many of them looked very tired, and had

FAQADE OF THE SANCTUARY OF OROPA

evidently tramped from long distances — indeed, we saw
costumes belonging to valleys which could not be less
than two or three days distant. They were almost in-
variably quiet, respectable, and decently clad, sometimes
a little merry, but never noisy, and none of them tipsy.
As we travelled along the road, we must have fallen in
with several hundreds of these pilgrims coming and
going ; nor is this likely to be an extravagant estimate,
seeing that the hospice can make up more than five

Sanctuary of Oropa 173

thousand beds. By eleven we were at the sanctuary
itself.

Fancy a quiet upland valley, the floor of which is
about the same height as the top of Snowdon, shut in by
lofty mountains upon three sides, while on the fourth the
eye wanders at will over the plains below. Fancy finding
a level space in such a valley watered by a beautiful
mountain stream, and nearly filled by a pile of collegiate
buildings, not less important than those, we will say,
of Trinity College, Cambridge. True, Oropa is not in the
least like Trinity, except that one of its courts is large,
grassy, has a chapel and a fountain in it, and rooms all
round it ; but I do not know how better to give a rough
description of Oropa than by comparing it with one
of our largest English colleges.

The buildings consist of two main courts. The first
comprises a couple of modern wings, connected by the
magnificent facade of what is now the second or inner
court. This fagade dates from about the middle of the
seventeenth century ; its lowest storey is formed by an
open colonnade, and the whole stands upon a raised
terrace from which a noble flight of steps descends into the
outer coTurt.

Ascending the steps and passing under the colonnade,
we found ourselves in the second or inner court, which
is a complete quadrangle, and is, we were told, of rather
older date than the facade. This is the quadrangle
which gives its collegiate character to Oropa. It is
surrounded by cloisters on three sides, on to which the
rooms in which the pilgrims are lodged open — those at
least that are on the ground-floor, for there are three
storeys. The chapel, which was dedicated in the year
1600, juts out into the court upon the north-east side.
On the north-west and south-west sides are entrances

174 Alps and Sanctuaries

through which one may pass to the open country. The
grass, at the time of our visit, was for the most part
covered with sheets spread out to dry. They looked
very nice, and, dried on such grass and in such an air,
they must be delicious to sleep on. There is, indeed,
rather an appearance as though it were a perpetual

INNER COURT OF SANCTUARY OF OKOPA

washing-day at Oropa, but this is not to be wondered at
considering the numbers of comers and goers ; besides,
people in Italy do not make so much fuss about trifles
as we do. If they want to wash their sheets and dry'
them, they do not send them to Ealing, but lay them out
in the first place that comes handy, and nobody's bones
are broken.

Chapter XV

Oropa {continued)

ON the east side of the main block of buildings there
is a grassy slope adorned with chapels that contain
figures illustrating scenes in the history of the Virgin.
These figures are of terra-cottar for the most part life-
size, and painted up to nature. In some cases, if I
remember rightly, they have hemp or flax for hair, as at
Varallo, and throughout realism is aimed at as far as
possible, not only in the figures, but in the accessories.
We have very little of the
same kind in England. In the
Tower of London there is an
effigy of Queen Elizabeth
going to the city to give
thanks for the defeat of the
Spanish Armada. This looks
as if it might have been the
work of some one of the Valse-

sian sculptors. There are also the figures that strike the
quarters of Sir John Bennett's city clock in Cheapside. The
automatic movements of these last-named figures would
have struck the originators of the Varallo chapels with
envy. They aimed at realism so closely that they would as-
suredly have had recourse to clockwork in some one or two
of their chapels ; I cannot doubt, for example, that they
would have eagerly welcomed the idea of making the cock

175

CHAPELS AT OROPA

176 Alps and Sanctuaries

crow to Peter by a cuckoo-clock arrangement, if it had
been presented to them. This opens up the whole question
of realism versus conventionalism in art — a subject
much too large to be treated here.

As I have said, the founders of these Italian chapels
aimed at realism. Each chapel was intended as an
illustration, and the desire was to bring the whole scene
more vividly before the faithful by combining the picture,
the statue, and the effect of a scene upon the stage in a
single work of art. The attempt would be an ambitious
one, though made once only in a neighbourhood, but
in most of the places in North Italy where anything of
the kind has been done, the people have not been content
with a single illustration ; it has been their scheme to
take a mountain as though it had been a book or wall and
cover it with illustrations. In some cases- — as at Orta,
whose Sacro Monte is perhaps the most beautiful of all
as regards the site itself — the failure is complete, but in
some of the chapels at Varese and in many of those at
Varallo, great works have been produced which have
not yet attracted as much attention as they deserve.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether there is a more
remarkable work of art in North Italy than the Crucifixion
chapel at Varallo, where the twenty-five statues, as well
as the frescoes behind them, are (with the exception of
the figure of Christ, which has been removed) by Gau-
denzio Ferrari. It is to be wished that some one of these
chapels — both chapel and sculptures — were reproduced
at South Kensington.

Varallo, which is undoubtedly the most interesting
sanctuary in North Italy, has forty-four of these illustra-
tive chapels ; Varese, fifteen ; Orta, eighteen ; and
Oropa, seventeen. No one is allowed to enter them,
except when repairs are needed ; but when these are

Oropa 1 7 7

going on, as is constantly the case, it is curious to look
through the grating into the somewhat darkened interior,
and to see a Hving figure or two among the statues ; a
httle motion on the part of a single figure seems to
communicate itself to the rest and make them all more
animated. If the living figure does not move much,
it is easy at first to mistake it for a terra-cotta one. At
Orta, some years since, looking one evening into a chapel
when the light was fading, I was surprised to see a saint
whom I had not seen before ; he had no glory except
what shone from a very red nose ; he was smoking a
short pipe, and was painting the Virgin Mary's face.
The touch was a finishing one, put on with dehberation,
slowly, so that it was two or three seconds before I
discovered that the interloper was no saint.

The figures in the chapels at Oropa are not as good
as the best -of those at Varallo, but some of them are
very nice notwithstanding. We liked the seventh
chapel the best — the one which illustrates the sojourn of
the Virgin Mary in the temple. It contains forty-four
figures, and represents the Virgin on the point of com-
pleting her education as head girl at a high-toned academy
for young gentlewomen. All the young ladies are at
work making mitres for the bishop, or working slippers
in Berlin wool for the new curate, but the Virgin sits on
a dais above the others on the same platform with the
venerable lady-principal, who is having passages read
out to her from some standard Hebrew writer. The
statues are the work of a local sculptor, named Aureggio,
who lived at the end of the seventeenth and beginning
of the eighteenth century.

The highest chapel must be a couple of hundred feet
above the main buildings, and from near it there is an
excellent bird's-eye view of the sanctuary and the small

178 Alps and Sanctuaries

plain behind ; descending on to this last, we entered the
quadrangle from the north-west side and visited the
chapel in which the sacred image of the Madonna is con-
tained. We did not see the image itself, which is only
exposed to public view on great occasions. It is believed
to have been carved by St. Luke the Evangelist. I
must ask the reader to content himself with the following
account of it which I take from Marocco's work upon
Oropa : —

" That this statue of the Virgin is indeed by St. Luke
is attested by St. Eusebius, a man of eminent piety and
no less enlightened than truthful. St. Eusebius dis-
covered its origin by revelation ; and the store which he
set by it is proved by his shrinking from no discomforts
in his carriage of it from a distant country, and by his
anxiety to put it in a place of great security. His desire,
indeed, was to keep it in the spot which was most near
and dear to him, so that he might extract from it the
higher incitement to devotion, and more sensible comfort
in the midst of his austerities and apostolic labours.

" This truth is further confirmed by the quality of the
wood from which the statue is carved, which is commonly
believed to be cedar ; by the Eastern character of the
work ; by the resemblance both of the lineaments and
the colour to those of other statues by St. Luke ; by the
tradition of the neighbourhood, which extends in an un-
broken and well-assured line to the time of St. Eusebius
' himself ; by the miracles that have been worked here
by its presence, and elsewhere by its invocation, or even
by indirect contact with it ; by the miracles, lastly,
which are inherent in the image itself,* and which endure

* " Dalle meraviglie finalmente che sono inerenti al simulacro
stesso." — Cenni storico-artistici intorno al santuario di Oropa. (Prof.
Maurizio Marocco. Turin, Milan, 1866, p. 329.)

Oropa 179

to this day, such as is its immunity from all worm and
from the decay which would naturally have occurred in
it through time and damp — more especially in the feet,
through the rubbing of religious objects against them.

" The authenticity of this image is so certainly and
clearly established, that all supposition to the contrary
becomes inexplicable and absurd. Such, for example,
is a hypothesis that it should not be attributed to the
Evangelist, but to another Luke, also called ' Saint,'
and a Florentine by birth. This painter lived in the
eleventh century — that is to say, about seven centuries
after the image of Oropa had been known and venerated !
This is indeed an anachronism.

" Other difficulties drawn either from the ancient
discipline of the Church, or from St. Luke the Evangelist's
profession, which was that of a physician, vanish at once
when it is borne in mind — firstly, that the cult of holy
images, and especially of that of the most blessed Virgin,
is of extreme antiquity in the Church, and of apostolic
origin as is proved by ecclesiastical writers and monuments
found in the catacombs which date as far back as the
first century (see among other authorities, Nicolas, " La
Vergine vivente nella Chiesa," lib. iii. cap. iii. § 2) ;
secondly, that as the medical profession does not exclude
that of artist, St. Luke may have been both artist and
physician ; that he did actually handle both the brush
and the scalpel is established by respectable and very
old traditions, to say nothing of other arguments which
can be found in impartial and learned writers upon such
matters."

I will only give one more extract. It runs : —

i8o Alps and Sanctuaries

" In 1855 a celebrated Roman portrait-painter, after
having carefully inspected the image of the Virgin Mary
at Oropa, declared it to be certainly a work of the first
century of our era."*

I once saw a common cheap china copy of this Madonna
announced as to be given away with two pounds of tea,
in a shop near Hatton Garden.

The church in which the sacred image is kept is interest-
ing from the pilgrims who at all times frequent it, and
from the collection of votive pictures which adorn its
walls. Except the votive pictures and the pilgrims
the church contains little of interest, and I will pass
on to the constitution and objects of the establish-
ment.

The objects are — i. Gratuitous lodging to all comers
for a space of from three to nine days as the rector
may think fit. 2. A school. 3. Help to the sick and
poor. It is governed by a president and six members,
who form a committee. Four members are chosen by
the communal council, and two by the cathedral chapter
of Biella. At the hospice itself there reside a director,
with his assistant, a surveyor to keep the fabric in repair,
a rector or dean with six priests, called cappellani, and a
medical man. " The government of the laundry," so
runs the statute on this head, " and analogous domestic
services are entrusted to a competent number of ladies
of sound constitution and good conduct, who live together
in the hospice under the direction of an inspectress, and
are called daughters of Oropa."

The bye-laws of the establishment are conceived in a
kindly genial spirit, which in great measure accounts for
its unmistakeable popularity. We understood that the
poorer visitors, as a general rule, avail themselves of the

* Marocco, p. 331.

Oropa

i8i

gratuitous lodging, without making any present when
they leave, but in spite of this it is quite clear that they
are wanted to come, and come they accordingly do.
It is sometimes difficult to lay one's hands upon the
exact passages which convey an impression, but as we
read the bye-laws which are posted up in the cloisters,
we found ourselves continually smiling at the manner
in which almost anything that looked like a prohibition
could be removed with the consent of the director. There
is no rule whatever about visitors attending the church ;
all that is required of them is that they do not interfere
with those who do. They must not play games of chance,
or noisy games ; they must not make much noise of
any sort after ten o'clock at night (which corresponds
about with midnight in England) . They should not draw
upon the walls of their rooms, nor cut the furniture.
They should also keep their rooms clean, and not cook in
those that are more expensively furnished. This is about
all that they must not do, except fee the servants, which
is most especially and particularly forbidden. If any one
infringes these rules, he is to be admonished, and in case
of grave infraction or continued misdemeanour he may
be expelled and not readmitted.

Visitors who are lodged in the better-furnished apart-
ments can be waited upon if they apply at the office ;
the charge is twopence for cleaning a room, making the
bed, bringing water, &c. If there is more than one bed
in a room, a penny must be paid for every bed over the
first. Boots can be cleaned for a penny, shoes for a half-
penny. For carrying wood, &c., either a halfpenny or a
penny will be exacted according to the time taken.
Payment for these services must not be made to the
servant, but at the office.

The gates close at ten o'clock at night, and open at

1 82 Alps and Sanctuaries

sunrise, " but if any visitor wishes to make Alpine
excursions, or has any other sufficient reason, he should
let the director know." Families occupying many rooms
must — when the hospice is very crowded, and when they
have had due notice — manage to pack themselves into a
smaller compass. No one can have rooms kept for him.
It is to be strictly " first come, first served." No one
must sublet his room. Visitors must not go away without
giving up the key of their room. Candles and wood may
be bought at a fixed price.

Any one wishing to give anything to the support of
the hospice must do so only to the director, the official
who appoints the apartments, the dean or the caffellani,
or to the inspectress of the daughters of Oropa, but they
must have a receipt for even the smallest sum ; alms-
boxes, however, are placed here and there, into which the
smaller offerings may be dropped (we imagine this means
anything under a franc).

The poor will be fed as well as housed for three days
gratuitously — provided their health does not require a
longer stay ; but they must not beg on the premises of
the hospice ; professional beggars will be at once handed
over to the mendicity society in Biella, or even perhaps
to prison. The poor for whom a hydropathic course is
recommended, can have it under the regulations made
by the committee — that is to say, if there is a vacant
place.

There are trattorie and cafes at the hospice, where
refreshments may be obtained both good and cheap.
Meat is to be sold there at the prices current in Biella ;
bread at two centimes the chilogramma more, to pay
for the cost of carriage.

Such are the bye-laws of this remarkable institution.

Few except the very rich are so under-worked that

Oropa 183

two or three days of change and rest are not at times
a boon to them, while the mere knowledge that there is a
place where repose can be had cheaply and pleasantly
is itself a source of strength. Here, so long as the visitor
wishes to be merely housed, no questions are asked ;
no one is refused admittance, except for some obviously
sufficient reason ; it is like getting a reading ticket for the
British Museum, there is practically but one test — that
is to say, desire on the part of the visitor — the coming
proves the desire, and this suffices. A family, we will
say, has just gathered its first harvest ; the heat on the
plains is intense, and the malaria from the rice grounds
little less than pestilential ; what, then, can be nicer
than to lock up the house and go for three days to the
bracing mountain air of Oropa ? So. at daybreak off they
all start, trudging, it may be, their thirty or forty miles,
and reaching Oropa by nightfall. If there is a weakly one
among them, some arrangement is sure to be practicable
whereby he or she can be helped to follow more leisurely,
and can remain longer at the hospice. Once arrived, they
generally, it is true, go the round of the chapels, and make
some slight show of pilgrimage, but the main part of their
time is spent in doing absolutely nothing. It is sufficient
amusement to them to sit on the steps, or lie about under
the shadow of the trees, and neither say anything nor do
anything, but simply breathe, and look at the sky and at
each other. We saw scores of such people just resting
instinctively in a kind of blissful waking dream. Others
saunter along the walks which have been cut in the woods
that surround the hospice, or if they have been pent up in
a town and have a fancy for climbing, there are mountain
excursions, for the making of which the hospice affords
excellent headquarters, and which are looked upon with
every favour by the authorities,

184 Alps and Sanctuaries

It must be remembered also that the accommodation
provided at Oropa is much better than what the people
are, for the most part, accustomed to in their own homes,
and the beds are softer, more often beaten up, and
cleaner than those they have left behind them. Besides,
they have sheets — -and beautifully clean sheets. Those
who know the sort of place in which an Italian peasant is
commonly content to sleep, will understand how much
he must enjoy a really clean and comfortable bed,
especially when he has not got to pay for it. Sleep, in
the circumstances of comfort which most readers will be
accustomed to, is a more expensive thing than is com-
monly supposed. If we sleep eight hours in a London
hotel we shall have to pay from 4d. to 6d. an hour, or
from id. to i|d. for every fifteen minutes we lie in bed ;
nor is it reasonable to believe that the charge is excessive,
when we consider the vast amount of competition which
exists. There is many a man the expenses of whose
daily meat, drink, and clothing are less than what an
accountant would show us we, many of us, lay out nightly
upon our sleep. The cost of really comfortable sleep-
necessaries cannot, of course, be nearly so great at
Oropa as in a London hotel, but they are enough to put
them beyond the reach of the peasant under ordinary
circumstances, and he relishes them all the more when
he can get them.

But why, it may be asked, should the peasant have
these things if he cannot afford to pay for them ; and
why should he not pay for them if he can afford to do so ?
If such places as Oropa were common, would not lazy
vagabonds spend their lives in going the rounds of them,
&c., &c. ? Doubtless if there were many Oropas, they
would do more harm than good, but there are some things
which answer perfectly well as rarities or on a small

Oropa 1 8 5

scale, out of which all the virtue would depart if they
were common or on a larger one ; and certainly the im-
pression left upon our, minds by Oropa was that its effects
were excellent.

Granted the sound rule to be that a man should pay
for what he has, or go without it ; in practice, how-
ever, it is found impossible to carry this rule out strictly.
Why does the nation give A. B., for instance, and all
comers a large, comfortable, well-ventilated, warm room
to sit in, with chair, table, 'reading-desk, &c., all more
commodious than what he may have at home, without
making him pay a sixpence for it directly from year's
end to year's end ? The three or nine days' visit to
Oropa is a trifle in comparison with what we can all of us
obtain in London if we care about it enough to take a very
small amount of trouble. True, one cannot sleep in the
reading-room of the British Museum — not all night, at
least — ^but by day one can make a home of it for years
together except during cleaning times, and then it is
hard if one cannot get into the National Gallery or South
Kensington, and be warm, quiet, and entertained without
paying for it.

It wiU be said that it is for the national interest that
people should have access to treasuries of art or know-
ledge, and therefore it is worth the nation's while to pay
for placing the means of doing so at their disposal ; granted,
but is not a good bed one of the great ends of knowledge,
whereto it must work, if it is to be accounted knowledge
at all ? and is it not worth a nation's while that her
children should now and again have practical experience
of a higher state of things than the one they are accus-
tomed to, and a few days' rest and change of scene and
air, even though she may from time to time have to pay
something in order to enable them to do so ? There

1 86 Alps and Sanctuaries

can be few books which do an averagely-educated Enghsh-
man so much good, as the ghmpse of comfort which he
gets by sleeping in a good bed in a well-appointed room
does to an Italian peasant ; such a glimpse gives him
an idea of higher potentialities in connection with him-
self, and nerves him to exertions which he would not
otherwise make. On the whole, therefore, we con-
cluded that if the British Museum reading-room was in
good economy, Oropa was so also ; at any rate, it seemed
to be making a large number of very nice people quietly
happy — and it is hard to say more than this iii favour of
any place or institution.

The idea of any sudden change is as repulsive to us as
it will be to the greater number of my readers ; but if
asked whether we thought our English universities would
do most good in their present condition as places of so-
called education, or if they were turned into Oropas,
and all the educational part of the story totally sup-
pressed, we inclined to think they would be more popular
and more useful in this latter capacity. We thought
also that Oxford and Cambridge were just the places,
and contained all the appliances and endowments almost
ready made for constituting two splendid and truly
imperial cities of recreation — universities in deed as
well as in name. Nevertheless, we should not venture
to propose any further actual reform during the present
generation than to carry the principle which is already
admitted as regards the M.A. degree a trifle further, and
to make the B.A. degree a mere matter of lapse of time
and fees — leaving the Little Go, and whatever corresponds
to it at Oxford, as the final examination. This would be
enough for the present.

There is another sanctuary about three hours' walk
over the mountain behind Oropa, at Andorno, and

Oropa 187

dedicated to St. John. We were prevented by the weather
from visiting it, but understand that its objects are much
the same as those of the institution I have just described.
I will now proceed to the third sanctuary for which the
neighbourhood of Biella is renowned.

Chapter XVI
Graglia

THE sanctuary of Graglia is reached in about two
hours from Biella. There are daily diligences. It is
not so celebrated as that of Oropa, nor does it stand so
high above the level of the sea, but it is a remarkable
place and well deserves a visit. The restaurant is perfect
— the best, indeed, that I ever saw in North Italy, or, I
think, anywhere else. I had occasion to go into the
kitchen, and could not see how anything could beat it
for the most absolute cleanliness and order. Certainly I
never dined better than at the sanctuary of Graglia ; and
one dines all the more pleasantly for doing so on a lovely
terrace shaded by trellised creepers, and overlooking
Lombardy.

I find from a small handbook by Signor Giuseppe
Muratori, that the present institution, like that of S.
Michele, and almost all things else that achieve success,
was founded upon the work of a predecessor, and became
great not in one, but in several generations. The site
was already venerated on account of a chapel in honour
of the Vergine addolorafa which had existed here from
very early times. A certain Nicolao Velotti, about the
year 1616, formed the design of reproducing Mount
Calvary on this spot, and of erecting perhaps a hundred
chapels with terra-cotta figures in them. The famous

Graglia i8g

Valsesian sculptor, Tabachetti, and his pupils, the brothers
Giovanni and Antonio (commonly called " Tanzio "),
D' Enrico of Riva in the Val Sesia, all of whom had recently
been working at the sanctuary of Varallo, were invited
to Gragha, and later on, another eminent native of
the Val Sesia, Pietro Giuseppe Martello. These artists
appear to have done a good deal of work here, of which
nothing now remains visible to the public, though it
is possible that in the chapel of S. Carlo and the closed
chapels on the way to it, there
may be some statues lying neg-
lected which I know nothing
about. I was told of no such
work, but when I was at
Graglia I did not know that
the above-named great men
had ever worked there, and ^"^'"''^ °^ '■ ''^^^° ^^ °''^''"*
made no inquiries. It is quite possible that all the work
they did here has not perished.

The means at the disposal of the people of Graglia
were insufficient for the end they had in view, but sub-
scriptions came in freely from other quarters. Among
the valuable rights, liberties, privileges, and immunities
that were conferred upon the institution, was one which
in itself was a source of unfailing and considerable
revenue, namely, the right of, setting a robber free once
in every year ; also, the authorities there were allowed
to sell all kinds of wine and eatables (robe mangiative)
without paying duty upon them. As far as I can under-
stand, the main work of Velotti's is the chapel of S.
Carlo, on the top of a hill some few hundred feet above
the present establishment. I give a sketch of this chapel
here, but was not able to include the smaller chapels
which lead up to it.

I go Alps and Sanctuaries

A few years later, one Nicolao Garono built a small
oratory at Campra, which is nearer to Biella than Graglia
is. He dedicated it to S. Maria della Neve— to St. Mary
of the Snow. This became more frequented than GragHa
itself, and the feast of the Virgin on the 5th August
was exceedingly popular. Signer Muratori says of
it :—

" This is the popular feast of Graglia, and I can re-
member how but a few years since it retained on a small
scale all the features of the sacre campestri of the Middle
Ages. For some time past, however, the stricter customs
which have been introduced here no less than in other
Piedmontese villages have robbed this feast (as how
many more popular feasts has it not also robbed ?) of
that original and spontaneous character in which a
jovial heartiness and a diffusive interchange of the
affections came welling forth from all abundantly. In
spite of all, however, and notwithstanding its decline,
the feast of the Madonna is even now one of those rare
gatherings — the only one, perhaps, in the neighbourhood
of Biella — to which the pious Christian and the curious
idler are alike attracted, and where they will alike find
appropriate amusement."*

How Miltonic, not to say Handelian, is this attitude
towards the Pagan tendencies which, it is clear, pre-

* " Questa e la festa popolare di Graglia, e pochi anni addietro
ancora ricordava in miniatura le feste popolari delle sacre campestri del
medio evo. Da qualche anno in qua, il costume piii severe die s'
introdusse in questi paesi non meno che in tutti gli altri del Piemonte,
tolse non poco del carattere originale di questa come di tante altre
festivita popolesche, nelle quali erompeva spontanea da tutti i cuori la
diffusiva vicendevolezza degli afietti, e la sincera giovalita dei senti-
menti. Ci6 non pertanto, malgrado si fatta decadenza la festa della
Madonna di Campra 6 ancor al presente una di quelle rare adunanze
sentimentali, unica forse nel Biellese, alle quali accorre volentieri e
ritrova pascolo appropriate il cristiano divoto non meno che il curioso
viaggiatore." (Del Santuario di Graglia notizie istoriche di Giuseppe
Muratori. Torino, Stamperia reale, 1848, p. 18.)

Graglit

191

dominated at the festa of St. Mary of the Snow. In
old days a feast was meant to be a time of actual merri-
ment — a praising " with mirth, high cheer, and wine."*
Milton felt this a little, and Handel much. To them an
opportunity for a little paganism is like the scratching
of a mouse to the princess who had been born a cat.
Off they go after it — more especially Handel — under
some decent pretext no doubt, but as fast, nevertheless,
as their art can carry them. As for Handel, he had not
only a sympathy for paganism, but for the shades and
gradations of paganism. What, for example, can be a
completer contrast than between the polished and
refined Roman paganism in Theodora, f the rustic
paganism of " Bid the maids the youths provoke " in
Hercules, the magician's or sorcerer's paganism of the
blue furnace in " Chemosh no more,":j: or the Dagon
choruses in Samson — to say nothing of a score of other
examples that might be easily adduced ? Yet who can
doubt the sincerity and even fervour of either Milton's
or Handel's religious convictions ? The attitude assumed
by these men, and by the better class of Romanists,
seems to have become impossible to Protestants since
the time of Dr. Arnold.

I once saw a church dedicated to St. Francis. Outside
it, over the main door, there was a fresco of the saint
receiving the stigmata ; his eyes were upturned in a
fine ecstasy to the illuminated spot in the heavens whence
the causes of the stigmata were coming. The church was
insured, and the man who had affixed the plate of the
insurance office had put it at the precise spot in the sky
to which St. Francis's eyes were turned, so that the plate

* Samson Agonistes.

t "Venus laughing from the skies.'

X Jephthcih.

192 Alps and Sanctuaries

appeared to be the main cause of his ecstasy. Who
cared ? No one ; until a carping EngHshman came to
the place, and thought "it incumbent upon him to be
scandalised, or to pretend to be so ; oh this the autho-
rities were made very uncomfortable, and changed the
position of the plate. Granted that the Englishman
was right ; granted, in fact, that we are more logical ;
this amounts to saying that we are more rickety, and
must walk more supported by cramp-irons. All the
" earnestness," and " intenseness," and " sestheticism,"
and " culture " (for they are in the end one) of the
present day, are just so many attempts to conceal
weakness.

But to return. The church of St. Mary of the Snow
at Campra was incorporated into the Graglia institution
in 1628. There was originally no connection between
the two, and it was not long before the later church became
more popular than the earlier, insomuch that the work at
Graglia was allowed to fall out of repair. On the death of
Velotti the scheme languished, and by and by, instead of
building more chapels, it was decided that it would be
enough to keep in repair those that were already built.
These, as I have said, are the chapels of S. Carlo, and the
small ones which are now seen upon the way up to it,
but they are all in a semi-ruinous state.

Besides the church of St. Mary of the Snow at Campra,
there was another which was an exact copy of the Santa
Casa di Loreto, and where there was a remarkable echo
which would repeat a word -of ten syllables when the
wind was quiet. This was exactly on the site of the
present sanctuary. It seemed a better place for the con-
tinuation of Velotti's work than the one he had himself
chosen for it, inasmuch as it was where Signer Muratori
so well implies a centre of devotion ought to be, namely,

Graglia 193

in " a milder climate, and in a spot which offers more
resistance to the inclemency of the weather, and is better
adapted to attract and retain the concourse of the
faithful."

The design of the present church was made by an
architect of the name of Arduzzi, in the year 1654, and
the first stone was laid in 1659. In 1687 the right of
liberating a bandit every year had been found to be pro-
ductive of so much mischief that it was discontinued, and
a yearly contributipn of two hundred lire was substituted.
The church was not completed until the second half of the
last century, when the cupola was finished mainly through
the energy of a priest. Carlo Giuseppe Gastaldi of Netro.
This poor man came to his end in a rather singular way.
He was dozing for a few minutes upon a scaffolding, and
being awakened by a sudden noise, he started up, lost
his balance, and fell over on to the pavement below.
He died a few days later, on the 17th of October, either
1787 or 1778, I cannot determine which, through a
misprint in Muratori's account.

The work was now virtually finished, and the buildings
were much as they are seen now, except that a third
storey was added to the hospice about the year 1840.
It is in the hospice that the apartments are in which
visitors are lodged. I was shown all over them, and found
them not only comfortable but luxurious — decidedly
more so than those of Oropa ; there was the same
cleanliness everywhere which I had noticed in the
restaurant. As one stands at the windows or on the
balconies and looks down on to the tops of the chestnuts,
and over these to the plains, one feels almost as if one
could fly out of the window like a bird ; for the slope of
the hills is so rapid that one has a sense of being already
suspended in mid- air.

194 Alps and Sanctuaries

I thought I observed a desire to attract Enghsh
visitors in the pictures which I saw in the bedrooms.
Thus there was "A view of the black lead mine in
Cumberland," a coloured English print of the end of the
last century or the beginning of this, after, I think,
Loutherbourg, and in several rooms there were English
engravings after Martin. The English will not, I think,

SANCTUARY OF GRAGLIA

regret if they yield to these attractions. They will find
the air cool, shady walks, good food, and reasonable
prices. Their rooms will not be charged for, but
they will do well to give the same as they would
have paid at an hotel. I saw in one room one of
those flippant, frivolous, Lorenzo de' Medici match-
boxes on which there was a gaudily-coloured nymph
in high-heeled boots and tights, smoking a cigarette.
Feeling that I was in a sanctuary, I was a little surprised

Graglia 195

that such a matchbox should have been tolerated. I
suppose it had been left behind by some guest. I should
myself select a matchbox with the Nativity, or the
Flight into Egypt upon it, if I were going to stay a week
or so at Graglia. I do not think I can have looked sur-
prised or scandahsed, but the worthy official who was
with me could just see that there was something on my
mind. " Do you want a match ? " said he, immediately
reaching me the box. I helped myself, and the matter
dropped.

There were many fewer people at Graglia than at
Oropa, and they were richer. I did not see any poor
about, but I may have been there during a slack time.
An impression was left upon me, though I cannot say
whether it was well or ill founded, as though there were a
tacit understanding between the establishments at Oropa
and Graglia that the one was to adapt itself to the poorer,
and the other to the richer classes of society ; and this
not from any sordid motive, but from a recognition of the
fact that any great amount of intermixture between the
poor and the rich is not found satisfactory to either one
or the other. Any wide difference in fortune does prac-
tically amount to a specific difference, which renders the
members of either species more or less suspicious of those
of the other, and seldom fertile inter se. The well-to-do
working-man can help his poorer friends better than we
can. If an educated man has money to spare, he will
apply it better in helping poor educated people than those
who are more strictly called the poor. As long as the
world is progressing, wide class distinctions are inevitable ;
their discontinuance will be a sign that equilibrium has
been reached. Then human civilisation will become as
stationary as that of ants and bees. Some may say it
will be very sad when this is so ; others, that it will be

196 Alps and Sanctuaries

a good thing ; in truth, it is good either way, for progress
and equihbrium have each of them advantages and dis-
advantages which make it impossible to assign superiority
to either ; but in both cases the good greatly overbalances
the evil ; for in both the great majority will be fairly
well contented, and would hate to live under any other
system.

Equilibrium, if it is ever reached, will be attained very
slowly, and the importance of any change in a system
depends entirely upon the rate at which it is made. No
amount of change shocks — or, in other words, is important
— if it is made sufficiently slowly, while hardly any change
is too small to shock if it is made suddenly. We may
go down a ladder of ten thousand feet in height if
we do so step by step, while a sudden fall of six or
seven feet may kill us. The importance, therefore,
does not lie in the change, but in the abruptness of
its introduction. Nothing is absolutely important or
absolutely unimportant, absolutely good or absolutely
bad.

This is not what we like to contemplate. The instinct
of those whose religion and culture are on the surface
only is to conceive that they have found, or can find, an
absolute and eternal standard, about which they can be as
earnest as they choose. They would have even the pains
of hell eternal if they could. If there had been any means
discoverable by which they could torment themselves
beyond endurance, we may be sure they would long since
have found it out ; but fortunately there is a stronger
power which bars them inexorably from their desire,
and which has ensured that intolerable pain shall last
only for a very little while. For either the circumstances
or the sufferer will change after no long time. If the
circumstances are intolerable, the sufferer dies : if they

Graglia 197

are not intolerable, he becomes accustomed to them,
and will cease to feel them grievously. No matter what
the burden, there always has been, apd always must be,
a way for us also to escape.

Chapter XVII
Soazza and the Valley of Mesocco

I REGRET that I have not space for any of the sketches
I took at BeUinzona, than which few towns are more
full of admirable subjects. The Hotel de la Ville is an
excellent house, and the town is well adapted for an
artist's headquarters. Turner's two water-colour drawings
of BeUinzona in the National Gallery are doubtless very
fine as works of art, but they are not like BeUinzona,
the spirit of which place (though not the letter) is better
represented by the background to Basaiti's Madonna and
child, also in our gallery, supposing the castle on the hill
to have gone to ruin.

At BeUinzona a man told me that one of the two towers
was built by the Visconti and the other by Julius Caesar,
a hundred years earlier. So, poor old Mrs. Barratt at
Langar could conceive no longer time than a hundred
years. The Trojan war did not last ten years, but ten
years was as big a lie as Homer knew.

Almost all days in the subalpine valleys of North
Italy have a beauty with them of some kind or another,
but none are more lovely than a quiet gray day just at
the beginning of autumn, when the clouds are drawing
lazily and in the softest fleeces over the pine forests high
up on the mountain sides. On such days the mountains
are very dark till close up to the level of the clouds ; here,

198

Soazza and Valley of Mesocco 1 99

if there is dewy or rain-besprinkled pasture, it tells of a
luminous silvery colour by reason of the light which the
clouds reflect upon it ; the bottom edges of the clouds
are also light through the reflection upward from the
grass, but I do not know which begins this battledore and
shuttlecock arrangement. These things are like quarrels
between two old and intimate friends ; one can never
say who begins them. Sometimes on a dull gray day
like this, I have seen the shadow parts of clouds take a
greenish-ashen-coloured tinge from the grass below
them.

On one of these most enjoyable days we left Bellin-
zona for Mesocco on the S. Bernardino road. The air
was warm, there was not so much as a breath of wind,
but it was not sultry : there had been rain, and the grass,
though no longer decked with the glory of its spring
flowers, was of the most brilliant emerald, save where
flecked with delicate purple by myriads of autumnal
crocuses. The level ground at the bottom of the valley
where the Moesa runs is cultivated with great care. Here
the people have gathered the stones in heaps round any
great rock which is too difiicult to move, and the whole
mass has in time taken a mulberry hue, varied with gray
and russet lichens, or blobs of velvety green moss. These
heaps of stone crop up from the smooth shaven grass,
and are overhung with barberries, mountain ash, and
mountain elder with their brilliant scarlet berries —
sometimes, again, with dwarf oaks, or alder, or nut,
whose leaves have just so far begun to be tinged as to
increase the variety of the colouring. The first sparks
of autumn's yearly conflagration have been kindled,
but the fire is not yet raging as in October ; soon after
which, indeed, it will have burnt itself out, leaving
the trees as it were charred, with here and there

200 Alps and Sanctuaries

a live coal of a red leaf or two still smouldering upon
them.

As yet lingering mulleins throw up their golden spikes
amid a profusion of blue chicory, and the gourds run along
upon the ground like the fire mingled with the hail in
" Israel in Egypt." Overhead are the umbrageous
chestnuts loaded with their prickly harvest. Now and
again there is a manure heap upon the grass itself, and
lusty wanton gourds grow out from it along the ground
like vegetable octopi. If there is a stream it will run
with water limpid as air, and as full of dimples as " While
Kedron's brook " in " Joshua " : —

:t2-

-fe^

letd

Wliile Kedron's brook to Jor-dan's stream its sil - ver tri - bute

_ ^ J^ .^ ^^ ^^— ^ -

EEHEE

:*===

i^z

-^»^-.

MBS:?:Ete

'-r*- z:

:t±±=±ti

^^^ .»-f » '

5"fah ^

it^-t

Q m — o- *-p — — m'P — ■' 1 I m — ^^—^ S >-•-> 1

if' - ■

pays ; Or while the glo-riou.s sun shall beam on Canaan golden

-m-^-

Soazza and Valley of Mesocco 201

■-•-*—» m 1 — ) 1 1 I ■ I ~ r - i »m -ft&B-T— II

■ — i-»-*»-m-*m-» ^ —m — ^— '— i m 1 m ' ** j — I— ^H - —< — 1 1

•- -^-^

How quiet and f\ill of rest does everything appear
to be. There is no dust nor glare, and hardly a sound
save that of the unfailing 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 Viii. It is of incredible beauty in the mornings and
afternoons of brilhant 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 : —

=#Ett:

iE3E3z

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 lufino —
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

204 Alps and Sanctuaries

ruin of Mesocco on another rock or hill which rises in the
middle of the vaUey.

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 are, ye shall be."

Soazza and Valley of Mesocco 205

on which we waste so many years, and how completely we
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 with, but it is longer and more
grandiose generally.

Soazza is fuU 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 Umit 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. Cristoforo, 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
/~V 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 thefacciata 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
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 heaven-
ward. l^Iext 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 11

horse ; June is a mower ; July, another man reaping

FRESCO AT MESOCCO — MARCH

twenty-seven ears of corn ; August, an invahd going to

FRESCO AT MESOCCO — APRIL

212 Alps ana oanctuanes

see his doctor ; October, a man knocking down chestnuts

FRESCO AT MESOCCO— MAY

from a tree and a woman catching them ; November is

FRESCO AT MESOCCO — AUGUST

Mesocco 213

hidden and destroyed by the pi^lpit ; December is a
butcher feUing 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 BovoUinus, but
by another who signs A. T.

i^i^r j I%.ii/ph4==' -^M^

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 " Bovollino " is another way of spelling " Boe-

214 Alps and Sanctuaries

lini ") scratched his name again some sixteen years later,

as follows : — ,. ,,,

1550 ad] (?)

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
" 1481 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
" 148 1. 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 curalo 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 k 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 libertk da casa Triulcia
per 2400 scuti."

This inscription is signed thus : —
Carlo a Marca had written his name
along with three others in 1606 on another
part of the frescoes. Here are the signa-
tures : —

CARLO A.M.,
1623.

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 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 —

, I 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
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

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 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
faccidia 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 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

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 Signer BuUo 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 —

Wl^GO l cL a I

fSOCC.O^^

2 20 Alps and Sanctuaries

Then came my sketch ; and then —

The English 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 filhng-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 Eynsf ord 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. " Sonpersuaso,"
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 .

22 2 Alps and Sanctuaries

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 Alps and Sanctuaries

public-house a little off the main footpath, but there is
no accommodation. From tliis 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

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," ^^^ 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

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 fa9ade 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 colUne,
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

230 Alps and Sanctuaries

high enough without being too high. The South Downs
are very good, and by making believe very much I have
sornetimes 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. AU
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
ItaHans 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
dehghted 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 hke 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 A Ips and Sanctu-
aries. Medea was the daughter of Bartolomeo CoUeone, the famous
condottiere, whose statue adorns the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo at
Venice. Like CatuUus'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 CoUeone, 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 CoUeonis," 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 :—

:?2-

"^^~

-=t:

T P-'=MZZgI

-| — I — I — r

IP2-

±z:

I was always wanting it to go on : —

^^iiE^Efe

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 : —

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

The 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. €ristoforo, 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 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 Uking 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 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 hfe 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
dehvered 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 Itahan
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

jaLsm' "■1" '^•' •*

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 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

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 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 bow^ 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

240 Alps and Sanctuaries

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 fur-
nished it for the sake of the shooting. He spoke perfect
English, and would have none but English things about

^ct^ttit tiCmt^ lAe'cJn'^HC t^,^t'iit^ C0M^'iie-' Ccwtwc f^-^wiT/tft<e/

him. He had Cockle's antibilious pills, and the last
numbers of the " Illustrated London News " and " Morn-
ing 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

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. Cristoforo, an

excellent work at Morbio, and

thing sprung upon us.

TABLE ON MONTE BISBINO

here was another fine
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.

Signer 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-
ever, it was perhaps hardly
less fine than in clear weather, for the clouds had now raised
themselves a httle, though very little, above the sanctuary,
but here and there lay all ragged down below us, and cast
beautiful reflected Hghts upon the lake and town of Como.

CHAPEL OF S. NICOLAO

Above, the heavens were still black and-lowering.
Q

Over

^4-2 Alps and Sanctuaries

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 Poly-
f odium 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 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
droU. 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 Uttle 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 Can tine 245

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 forwatds 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 Hke the old
steward 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 wiU 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 Cantine 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.

^-. *^\'v^ -■-tvf-' ^ X-S^^' ^/'

>- "J "1- -^^ '^'-^ '^ ^^T^i ^'

ill .* •

/-■s. '

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 banctuaries

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 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 (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 smiHng 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 VARESB

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 VARBSE, 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 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

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

256 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

mS'-^-AHf^

> * 91

•0 % . »"*>-*/*£

SACRO MONTE FKOM 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 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
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 Enghsh bishop

to the Surrey pantomime as to the Sacro Monte on ^ 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
■sLuinate, 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

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."

— Ji »«.

CASILE 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 efiigies 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 bp 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 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

264 Alps and banctuaries

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

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 wiU 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'ltalia,
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 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 Enghsh
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 ^ain 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 pubhc-
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 simulacra) 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

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 Beata Vcygine 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 rumous
state, but interesting. If I remember rightly there are
several dates on them, averaging i475-8o- 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

SACRO MONTE, LOCARNO, NO. II

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 foHage
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,

CLOISTER AT SACRO MONTE, LOCARNO

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 hfe-sized coloured statues as at Varallo,
which has a good deal of feeling, and a fresco (?) behind

272 Alps and Sanctuaries

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 approach-
ing 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 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,

Locarno 273

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 Protes-
tants 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 beheve, 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 machifie sewed at him. During the illumina-
tions the unwonted hght 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

274 Alps and Sanctuaries

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 moui:itains — 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, ahd 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 ......

Men with white shirts and red capes .
Men with white shirts and no capes .
The music from Intra
Men with white shirts and blue capes

1 20

(?)
30
25

Locarno 275

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 fire-
men, 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 trans-
parency 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.

276 Alps and Sanctuaries

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 — com] 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.

He seemed much surprised when I discarded reason
as the foundation of our belief. He had made up his
mind that all Protestants based their convictions upon
reason, and was not prepared to hear me go heartily with
him in declaring the foundation of any durable system
to lie in faith. When, however, it came to requiring me
to have faith in what seemed good to him and his friends,
rather than to me and mine, we did not agree so well.
He then began to shake death at me ; I met him with
a reflection that I have never seen in print, though it
is so obvious that it must have occurred to each one of
my readers. I said that every man is an immortal to
himself : he only dies as far as others are concerned ;
to himself he cannot, by any conceivable possibility, do
so. For how can he know that he is dead until he is
dead ? And when he is dead, how can he know that he

277

278 Alps and Sanctuaries

is dead ? If he does, it is an abuse of terms to say that
he is dead. A man can know no more about the end
of his Hfe than he did about the beginning. The most
horrible and loathed death still resolves itself into being
badly frightened, and not a little hurt towards the end of
one's hfe, but it can never come to being unbearably
hurt for long together. Besides, we are at all times,
even during life, dead and dying to by far the greater
part of our past selves. What we call dying is only
dying to the balance, or residuum. This made the
priest angry. He folded his arms and said, " Basta,
basta," nor did he speak to me again. It is because I
noticed the effect it produced upon my fellow-passenger
that I introduce it here.

Bignasco is at the confluence of the two main branches
of the Maggia. The greater part of the river comes
down from the glacier of Basodino, which cannot be seen
from Bignasco ; I know nothing of this valley ,beyond
having seen the glacier from the top of the pass between
Fusio and Dalpe. The smaller half of the river comes
down from Fusio, the valley of Sambucco, and the lake
of Naret. The accommodation at Bignasco is quite
enough for a bachelor ; the people are good, but the
inn is homely. From Bignasco the road ascends rapidly
to Peccia, a village which has suffered terribly from
inundations, and from Peccia it ascends more rapidly
still — Fusio being reached in about three hours from
Bignasco. There is an excellent inn at Fusio kept by
Signer Dazio, to whose energy the admirable mountain
road from Peccia is mainly due. On the right just before
he crosses the bridge, the traveller will note the fresco
of the Crucifixion, which I have mentioned at page
140.

Fusio is over 4200 feet above the level of the sea. I

Fusio

2.79

do not know wherein its peculiar charm hes, but it
is the best of all the villages of a kindred character that
I know. Below is a sketch of it as it appears from the
cemetery.

There is another good view from behind the village ;
at sunset this second view becomes remarkably fine.

*'.

' 4.' "■

'• : 'i ■."■ ' ■ •■

FUSIO FROM THE CKMETERY

The houses are in deep cool shadow, but the moun-
tains behind take the evening sun, and are sometimes
of an incredible splendour. It is fine to watch the shadows
creeping up them, and the colour that remains growing
richer and richer until the whole is extinguished ; this
view, however, I am unable to give.

I hold Signer Dazio of Fusio so much as one of my
most particular and valued friends, and I have such a

2 8o Alps and Sanctuaries

special affection for Fusio itself, that the reader must
bear in mind that he is reading an account given by a
partial witness. Nevertheless, all private preferences

STREET VIEW IN FUSIO

apart, I think he will find Fusio a hard place to beat.
At the end of June and in July the flowers are at their
best, and they are more varied and beautiful than any-
where else I know. At the very end of July and the

Fusio 281

beginning of August the people cut their hay, and then
for a while the glory of the place is gone, but by the end
of August or the beginning of September the grass has
grown long enough to re-cover the slopes with a velvety
verdure, and though the flowers are shorn, yet so they
are from other places also.

There are many walks in the neighbourhood for those
who do not mind mountain paths. The most beautiful
of them all is to the valley of Sambucco, the upper end
of which is not more than half-an-hour from Signor
Dazio's hotel. For some time one keeps to the path
through the wooded gorge, and with the river foaming
far below ; in early morning while this path is in shade,
or, again, after sunset, it is one of the most beautiful of
its kind that I know. After a while a gate is reached, and
an open upland valley is entered upon — evidently an old
lake filled up, and neither very broad nor very, long, but
grassed all over, and with the river winding through it
like an English brook. This is the valley of Sambucco.
There are two collections of stalle for the cattle, or monti
— one at the nearer end and the other at the farther.

The floor of the valley can hardly be less than 5000
feet above the sea. I shall never forget the pleasure
with which I first came upon it. I had long wanted
an ideal upland valley ; as a general rule high valleys
are too narrow, and have little or no level ground. If
they have any at all there often is too much as with the
one where Andermatt and Hospenthal are — which would
in some respects do very well — and too much cultivated,
and do not show their height. An upland valley should
first of all be in an Italian-speaking country ; then it
should have a smooth, grassy, perfectly level floor of
say neither much more nor less than a hundred and fifty
yards in breadth and half-a-mile in length. A small river

282 Alps and Sanctuaries

should go babbling through it with occasional smooth
parts, " so as to take the reflections of the surrounding
mountains. It should have three or four fine larches or
pines scattered about it here and there, but not more.
It should be completely land-locked, and there should
be nothing in the way of human handiwork save a few
chalets, or a small chapel and a bridge, but no tilled land
whatever. Here even in summer the evening air will be
crisp, and the dew will form as soon as the sun goes off ;
but the mountains at one end of it will keep the last rays
of the sun. It is then the valley is at its best, especially
if the goats and cattle are coming together to be milked.
The valley of Sambucco has all this and a great deal
more, to say nothing of the fact that there are excellent
trout in it. I have shown it to friends at different times,
and they have all agreed with me that for a valley neither
too high nor too low, nor too big nor too little, the valley
of Sambucco is one of the best that any of us know of —
I mean to look at and enjoy, for I suppose as regards
painting it is hopeless. I think it can be well rendered by
the following piece of music as by anything else* : —

ad lib.

: y A-w

^^^ r P^

p h

-ff^-j

jf-

Mvir

-tp^

-#-

*-X-

-»■
•X-
— t—

rail. . .
sema org.

"F \—r

^^Y-

-JS^^

Li^ '

^^m

* Handel's third set of organ Concertos, No. 3.

Fusio

283

a tempo,
org. solo.

^5=^

^» -^-m-

-»-P-»- a -*-• »-^-m V-*- -*- N

IfO

etc,

eh:

Iftt

One day Signer 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

284 Alps and Sanctuaries

instrument if it knows how to use it. A chamois foot is
a smooth and slippery 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
worTc, 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

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 fuU 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
fowls 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
inarmots'. 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 soyred 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
Alfigiani escape. The majority seemed to us to be
prematurely worn 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

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 feUow-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 clllU OcllH-LUclllCS

parency of the water. We passed the gorge in twiUght
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 was 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 biiilt 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 beheve all the people in Fusio are good. I asked
Gughelmoni once what happened when any one did
something wrong. He seemed bewildered. The case

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 verisimilitude
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 :

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 Signer 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
varying 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 ;

296 Alps and Sanctuaries

tK==?

i I I

I I I -

z±i

TICT

I T J I

:iEaEggg:g4

:M^^Jt^±M^=r^:i rrmz-iz,

->^~F^— '=

H=^=^-rH'

;:lzqz

!*:?:■

::|-lrf^

H — ! — • 1-

--Ni

EiiE

=PT

J — I 1 1 — J — I — —

j l » I » g-^-

=*-j?r

-ijt-JftimzM.

rrfc

H 1 _ I H

P»l>.»-^ N,

-m — I — — 1--1
m—9 — m — "

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 wiU 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 expostulating 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 alfi. 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 hke 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 chmbing up, hke 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 mono'tony 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
thermorneter 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 httle 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 loveher
than their children ; but they do not get a fair chance.

302 Alps ana banctuaries

If the Church would only use her means and leisure to
teach people how to make themselves as healthy and
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. Gothard Pass
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 :

"Epyov x'^^'^oTVTTOL Kai TeKTOve? avSpeg eXenrov
^Kpwyiviov fxeyaXov ^rjTovvres evKTifxevov 6w.

I have been at some pains to find out more about
this translation, but have failed to do so. The ballad
itself is as foUows :

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'5 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,

I'll 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.

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 he'll 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 evidently 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. Michele della
Chiusa," by Gaudenzio Claretta. Turin, CivelU & Co. 1870. P. 116,

309

3IO Alps and Sanctuaries

which seemed in the least likely 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, ordinaverunt quod fiant mandata seu ellemosinae con-
sueta; qua3 sint valloris quatuor prebendarum religiosorum omni die ut
inoris est." (Claretta, Storia diplomatica, p. 325.) The mardatv.ni

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, £is 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-claustraUs 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 account of the fines and all other rights appertain-
ing to his benefice, drawn up by a notary in public form,
and uiidersigned 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 infirmarise, 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 rehgion.
Item, no monk is to wear his hair longer than two fingers
broad, t 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 btead 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, qnpd religiosi non audeant in Sancto Ambrosio videlicet
in hospiciis concedere ultra duos pastes videlicet officiariis singulis
hebdomadis claustrales non de quindecim diebus nisi forte aliquae
personas de eorum parentel§, transeuntes aut nobiles aut tales de
quibus verisimiUter 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.

{ " Cellelarius teneatur ministrare panem et vinura et pittanciarius
pittanciam " (Claretta, Stor. dip., p. 327). Pittancia is believed to be a
corruption of "pietantia." " Pietantiae modus et ordo sic con-
script! . . . observentur. In primis videlicet, quod pietantiarius
qui pro tempore fuerit omni anno singuhs 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 necessarily,
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 maltre d'Mlel of the estab-
lishment.

314 Alps and Sanctuaries

from San Pietro, or any suspected women, to be ad-
mitted without the prior's permission.

" The monks are to be careful how they hoM 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 punished 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,| the third
of a pound in weight. Item, he shall make a pittance to
the convent oh the vigil of St. Martin of bread, wine, and
mincemeat dumplings, § — that is to say, for each person
two loaves and two . . . || of wine 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."

i " Unam carbonatam porci." I suppose I have translated this
correctly ; I cannot find that there is any substance known as " car-
bonate of pork."

§ " RapioUa " 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 (?).

3i6 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 to
keep a servant who shall bring water from the spring
for the service of the mass and for holy water, and
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
those of them who hold office, the sum of six florins and
six groats, J and to the treasurer, precentor, and surveyor, §

* " Caulos cabutos cum salsa " (choux cabotfe ?).

t " Sextaria." t " Grosses. "

§ " Operarius, i.e. Dignitas in Collegiis Canonicorum et Monasteriis,
cui operibus publicis vacare incumbit . . . Latius interdum patebant
operarii munera siquidem 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
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
0* 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 quahty. 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 fer 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, j or seasoning, and
give to each monk one good glass thereof, that is to say,
the fourth part of one J . . 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 aHove-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."

t " Primmentum vel salsam."

t " Biroleti." I have not been able to find the words "I'carmingier,"
" primmentum," and " biroletus " in any dictionary. " Biroletus " is
probably the same as " luiroletus " which we have met with above, and
the word isrnisprinted in one or both cases.

Appendix B 319

the cloister six florins for his fine* . . . and three florins
to the . . . ,f and he should also give five eggs per
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 ;%
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 "
has the meaning " mulcta " assigned to it in Ducange among others,
none of which seem appropriate here. The translation as above,
however, 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.

{ " Ciceratam fractam." This word is not given in any dictionary.
Cicer is a small kind of pea, so cicerata fracta may perhaps mean
something hke 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 gospelf 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 donnfi k un verset qui se chante ou
se recite au commencement de I'of&ce de matines. H varie selon les
fetes et meme les feries. Migne. Encyclop^die Th^ologique.

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 af
... 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 kiiid
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 aU 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. f " Laganum."

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 in Advent.

" Item, concerning the office 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, 1 07

Adaptation and illusion, 44

Adipose cushion of Italy, 92

Advertisements, American, at
Locarno, 273

jEstheticism, culture, earnestness,
and intenseness, all methods of
trying to conceal weakness,
192

Affection a sine gud 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, down, 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 decUne,
141

— moral effect of, 252
Asbestos on pass between Fusio

and Dalpe, 285
Asplenium alternifoHum, 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 niode 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, i8g, 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
Caniine, a day at the, 243

128

Index

Canvas of life turned upside down,

68
"Carbonate of pork," 315
Carracci, the, 147
Casina di Banda, iig
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 Enghsh, and S. Michele

priests, 106
Cloisters at Locarno, 271

— at Oltrona, 258

Club, the, the true university,
155

Cocking, Wednesbury, 55, 305
Collects, unsympathetic priest

bristling with, in
Colleone, Medea, 231
Colma di San Giovanni, 163
Comba di Susa, 119
Comfort as a moral influence,

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 Rossa, 137-9
Demand and supply, 108
D'Enrico, the brothers, 189
Dentist's show-case mistaken for

relics, 43

Index

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

Disgrazia and misfortune, 58

D'Israeli, Isaac, quotations from,
67

Dissenters all narrow-minded,
153

Distribution of plants and animals
often inexplicable, 135

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,

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,
108

330

Index

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

Handel, his ploughman and his
humour, 144

— his paganism and his religious
fervour, 191

— the Varese chapels like a set of
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, in
Hen, the meditative, 110

— 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
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

331

Inundations and the ruscdli, 219

Inventions, 59, 134

Irrigation, iig

Israelites, the Vaudois the lost

ten tribes of, 112
Issime, bells at, 297
Italians, their resemblance to

Englishmen, 141, i68
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,

— 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
BoroUinus, 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 Ukes and dis-
likes, difficulty of, 22

Knowledge, a good bed one of the
main ends of, 186

Lei, 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,

— 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,

— 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 Catholipism,
191

PaglioUo 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

Passero 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

ama:teur5j^i56
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
PoUaiuolo, Antonio, 131
Pollard, Mr., 158
Polypodium vulgare, 242
Porches, timber, 28
"Pork, carbonate of," 315

Ind

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
Cathohcism, 106

— more logical than Cathohcism,
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 ItaUan, in

we would have it so i£ 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

ex 333

Rascane, 29

Rationalism, when will it sit

lightly on us ? 112
ReasQn 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

ReUcs, dentist's show-case mis-
taken for, 43

Rembrandt, Sir W. Scott on, 77

Renaissance, the standing aloof
from academic principles a
sine qud 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,

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 Angera, 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, 108

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, 55

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, 85

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,
89

ZMe, surtout point de, 66, 68

Re-issue of the Works of the late
Samuel Butler

Author of "Erewhon," "The Way of All Flesh," etc.

Mr. FiFiELD has pleasure 4n announcing he has taken over the publication
of the entire works of the late Samuel Butler, novelist, philosopher, scientist,
satirist and classicist ; *' in his own department," says Mr. Bernard Shaw, *' the
greatest English writer of the latter half of the 19th century." "The Way
of All Flesh," "Erewhon," and "Unconscious Memory," which had been out
of print for some time, are now reprinted, and these and all the other works,
with the exception of '*The Fair Haven" and *' Selections " (out of print),
are now offered at more popular prices.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler. With Portrait
and Poems. Edited by H. F. Jones. Second Im-
pression. 6s. net
The Way of All Flesh. A novel. Fifth Impres-
sion of Second Edition. 6s.
God the Known and God the Unknown. is. 6d. net
Erewhon. Seventh Impression of enlarged (loth)

Edition. 2s. 6d. net

Erewhon Revisited. 3rd Impression, 340 pages. 2s. 6d. net
Essays on Life, Art and Science. (New Edition,
with a long biographical sketch by H. F. Jones, in
preparation.)
Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton
Ticino. Illustrated by the Author, Charles Gogin
and H. F. Jones. Large Crown 8vo, cloth gilt.
New and enlarged Edition, re-set. With author's
latest revisions and a new author's index. 5s. net

Unconscious Memory. New Edition, re-set. 5s. net

Life and Habit. An essay after a completer view

of Evolution. New Edition with Addenda. 5s. net

Evolution Old and New. A comparison of the
theories of BulTon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,
with that of Charles Darwin. New Revised Edition. 5s. net
Luck, or Cunning, as the main means of organic

modification ? 5s. net

The Authoress of the Odyssey, who and what

she was, when and where she wrote, etc. 5s. net

The Iliad of Homer, rendered into English prose. 5s. net
The Odyssey, rendered into English prose. 5s. net

Shakespeare's Sonnets, with notes and original text. 5s. net
Ex Voto. An account of the Sacro Monte or New

Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia. 5s. net

The Fair Haven. (New Edition in preparation.)
Selections from Butler's Works. (Out of print.)

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G.

Mr. Fifield's New List

The Note- Books of
Samuel Butler

Author of "Erewhon," -''The Way of All Flesh," etc.

Arranged and Edited by Henry Festing Jones
Large Cronvn ^vo^ 452 p'^g^^, ^^« ^'^^j postage ^d.

Second impression.
The volume includes a pJiotogravure portrait of Butler taken by Alfred
Cathie in 1898 ; a preface by^he editor, a lifelong frienii of the author, giving
the origin of the book; a biographical statement of the chief events and dates
of Butler's life ; Butler's poems and sonnets, and an Index.

The publication of these private notes is a literary event of first import-
ance. Samuel Butler*s Note-Books are not only a commentary on the 19th
century of consummate humour and individuality, but an autobiography of
extraordinary interest and intimacy as well.

Tke Times says :— " No one knows Samuel Butler who has not read this book
through; and perhaps it will come to be the most read and valued of all his works."
^From a three-column review.)

Edmund Gosse, in Morning Posi, says : — " He is excessively interesting to us. . . .
We hear the very voice of Butler ; he is talking to us all the time. . . . Briefly, the whole
volume excites in us a desire to read the full biography."

Walter de la Mare, in Edinburgh Review^ says: — "They defy summary or
analysis, crammed as they are with speculation and wisdom, irony, satire, pranks,
quips and stories. Any page will set the wits to work, to amuse, arrest, provoke.
Now and then their obiter dicta will test even a strong stomach. The shut mind had
better approach warily."

The AthencEum says: — "When we say that Samuel Butler's Note-Books supply a
free and intimate exposition of his thoughts from day to day, the judgments, jokes and
incidents, and touches of character that he regarded as worth preserving, we have said
enough for many readers. . . . Every page has an arresting comment, perhaps some-
thing which the whole world is thinking, but is too timid or conventional to utter. AH
is set down with amazing frankness, and often with self-criticism."

The Nation says : — " The book is packed with good things from cover to cover, and
it makes up what amounts to a fresh and striking work from Butler's pen."

The Pall Mall Gazette says : — "No book will be more acceptable to those who
know his work and his mind. . . . Open it where you will and some memorable passage
leaps to view."

The Graphic says : — " A fascinating book to which you can return again and again
with keen pleasure."

£«^//j^ J?«/zVw says :—" A priceless book of wit and wisdom. . . . Even the most
liberal quotation could hardly convey any adequate sense of its gay wisdom and
pregnant wit,"

London: A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

Mr. Fijield's New List

A New Revised and Enlarged Edition, entirely re-set, of

Alps and Sanctuaries

of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino
By Samuel Butler

Author of " Erewhon," "The Way of AH Flesh," etc.

With 85 Illustrations by the Author, H. F. Jones and
, Charles Gogin.

Large crown %vo. Cloth gilt. 5J. net, postage /^d.

An entirely new and popular edition of Samuel Butler's de-
lightful travel book, originally published in 1 881, will be welcomed
by all Butlerians. The cumbrous and heavy form and the high
price prevented the first edition from having a speedy sale, but to
the wise who ignored these things the volume was a source
of infinite pleasure and amusement. Nowhere is Butler's
humour and humanity so well displayed as in these descrip-
tions of North Italy and the Italian Alps. Mr. R. A. Streat-
feild, in preparing the new edition, has incorporated Butler's last
alterations and additions, including an entirely new chapter and an
inimitable descriptive index found in MS. The illustrations
exhibit Butler's skill as a black and white artist. The blocks are
interesting examples of early photo engraving. The type of the
volume has been entirely re-set, a light paper of good quality
employed, and the price is five shillings instead of a guinea.

The Times, in its Essay on Butler, 1908, says : — "'Alps and
Sanctuaries ' and ' Ex Voto ' are concerned with the mountain
shrines of Piedmont and the Ticino, a country to which Butler
returned to again and again and knew intimately. They are far
more than a description of exquisite places and little-known
monuments of a fine local art. They brim over with the
author's swift mocking laughter, as well as with his innumerable
fads and fancies. Anyone who wishes to make Butler's acquaint-
ance should begin with the first of these two books. In no other
did he write with a freer, fuller, more felicitous self-abandonment."

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G.

New Editions of
" Erewhon " Butler

The Way of All Flesh. A Novel. New Edition. 6s.
E/rewhon. A Satire, i ith Impression. 2S. 6d. nett.
Erewhon Re-visited. 3rd Issue. 2s. 6d. nett.

Essays on Life, Art,& Science. New Edition preparing.

" The re-issue of these books gives ground for the hope that
a very notable mind is about to enter into its kingdom. The
public has no longer any excuse for not knowing anything about
the most penetrating, honest, courageous and original of the critics
of modern English life, the most detached and unacademic of
contributors to the literature of evolution. Mr. Birrell said no
word too much in calling Erewhon the best satire of its kind
since Gulliver's Travels. We venture to prophesy that in years
to come journalists will be referring to the Erewhonian ethics
and system of life in general with almost as much confidence of
being understood as they have when they refer to anything in
Sir W. S. Gilbert's works to-day. However, the day may be
distant, for Butler wrote only for people who have learned to use
their minds. His greatest work was his posthumous novel.
The Way of All Flesh — a study of modern English life and
character, more withering, because more true and restrained,
than anything penned by his famous disciple, Mr. Shaw." — The
Outlook, April 1^, 1908.

" Samuel Butler was, in his own department, the greatest
English writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century. It
drives one almost to despair of English literature when one sees
so extraordinary a study of English life as The IVay of ^11 Flesh
making so little stir that when, some years later, I produce plays
in which Butler's extraordinarily fresh free and future piercing
suggestions have an obvious share, I am met with nothing but
vague cacklings about Ibsen and Nietzsche." — Bernard Shaw, in
preface to Major Barbara.

" Many will welcome a cheaper edition of the works of this
very original writer . . . and it will help to give them the wider
publicity which they deserve." — The Times.

" We have often dwelt upon the remarkable originality and
freshness of Butler as a thinker. He is not for all minds, but
those who know his powers will agree with Mr. Shaw's hearty
tribute. " — Atheneeum.

London: A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G.

New Editions of Butler's Works .

God the Known & God the

Unknown. By Samuel Butler. Now first re-
printed from The Examiner. H. 6d. net, postage ^d.

'[Only now has ' Erewhon ' really dug into the ribs of the human race and its civili-
zation, turned it upside down and laughed at it. . . . But you should read also the
serious work of the satirist, who has sought God with every will of humour and
research."— Clarence Rook, in Daily Chronicle. " This exposition of his system
of Pantheism reveals another side of his mind from the scepticism of the two Erewhons."

OhserTjer.

Unconscious Memory. By samuei

Butler. A new edition with a 26-page Introduction by
Professor Marcus Hartog. Cr, S'yf?, 5/. net^ postage Ad.

" It is nearly thirty^ years since the first edition of Unconscious Memory appeared,
yet the problem of which it mainly treats is as much to the front to-day as it was then.
Mr. Fifield's re-issue is therefore very welcome — the more so as Butler's views, after
temporary eclipse, are gaining ground among scientific men of philosophic habit of
mind. . . . His theoryhas far-reaching consequences. It involves the attribution of
some sort of psychical Hfe, not only to cells, but even— as with Haeckel — to molecules
and atoms. In a word, Butler's Weltayischauung is a pan-psychism — a manifestation
of spirit through matter — such as is more aud more becoming the philosophical creed of
the twentieth-century men of science." — J. Arthur Hill in Hiifbert Journal.

Life and Habit. By Samuel Butler. Anew

edition with author's addenda, and preface by R. A.
Streatfeild. Cr. ^vo^ ^s, net, postage ^,

"This new and revised edition is a welcome addition to the libraries of all who are
interested in biological speculation. It is a book pregnant with fascinating ideas and
illuminating suggestions, which are presented with the clear and forcible writing so
characteristic of the author." — Pall Mall Gazette. ^ " It is only after a generation of
neglect that the world is coming to recognize that in Samuel Butler it had a writer of
uncommon power and a thinker of quite exceptional philosophical insight. Because
he was not dull his own generation hastily concluded that he was shallow. The future
may be trusted to rectify this error." — Scotsman.

Evolution, Old ^ New. By Samuel

Butler. A new edition, with author's revisions, appendix,
and descriptive index. Cr. %vo^ 55, net, postage \d.

"Though not a student of nature at first hand, he brought to the examination of
ascertained facts a power of analysis and interpretation which his dialectic makes
appear almost superhuman. He delighted in turning an authority's most cherished
illustrations against the authority himself, a characteristic which together with his
lucidity and satire places him among the most formidable of those who have opposed
the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection." — Cambridge Daily Neivs. " Introduce
purpose, really consciously conceived purpose, into the course of evolution, as Butler's
vitalistic theories do, and at least one great conviction of religion, that, namely, which
views the universe as the expression of a Divine Will, comes near some sort of a
verification." — The Inquirer.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 ClifFord's Inn, E.G.

Mr. Fijield's New List

Castellinaria :

And other Sicilian Diversions
By Henry Festing Jones

Editor of "The Note-Books of Samuel Butler."

Crown Zvo. Cloth gilt, ^s. net, postage \d.

In this book the reader renews his acquaintance with Peppino and Brancaccia,
to whom he was introduced in Di'verstons in Sicily. He is also shown others of
Mr. Jones's friends, including the Corporal and the Cardinalessa. He is taken
again behind the scenes of the people's theatres, accompanies the Buffo on his
holiday, sees the Nascita, and assists at a wedding on Mount Eryx. There are
chapters about the sulphur mines, Omerta, the Mafia, the Mala Vita ; about
S. Alfio and those who run naked to his shrine ; about the Passion of Christ as
performed by the marionettes, and about those who escaped from the earthquake
at Messina.

" Is really diverting. Anything more remote from the ordinary machine-
made travel-book we can hardly imagine. . . . Mr. Festing Jones has felt the
pulse of the peasants, enjoying unsurpassed opportunities of appreciating their
characteristic traits. . . . Here is a volume in which Borrow or Kinglake
might find fifty times more to approve than to cavil at. . . . We do not re-
member any book on Sicily which has the same contagious gaiety, the same
sunny bonhomie as * Castellinaria.' . . . Altogether, a most welcome vivacious
companionable volume distinguished by racy inconsequence and genuine
pleasantry." — Italian Gazette.

"Delightfully intimate pictures of Sicilian life, . . . Many of his little stories
are deliciously unconventional, revealing the Sicilians not as the tourist sees
them, but as nearly as possible as they see themselves."— Ow/Zoo/^.

"Mr. Festing Jones has wit, humour, and a most attractive style ... he
has all sorts and conditions of friends on the island, and he introduces us to
them in a manner which makes us envy him their friendship.*' — Daily Telegraph.

Charles Darwin & Samuel Butler

A Step Towards Reconciliation
By Henry Festing Jones

IS. net, postage id.

Contains a statement of the grounds of their quarrel, some correspondence
between Mr. Frank Dcrwin and Mr. Festing Jones, letters from Darwin and
Butler, and a suggestion as to how the misunderstandings arose and may be
settled.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 CliiFord's Inn, E.C.

3vlr. Fifield's New List

The Presence of the Kindly

X^3-tri3,rCfl, By Raymond Taunton. Boards, 2s. net, postage 3^.

"Its plain, lively, and naturalistic narrative takes one to an English village,
and there persuasively brings in a queer, supernatural sort of wandering Jew
with a blessing instead of a curse. The tale is interesting, serious, and
pleasing." — Scotsman. "Written with . . , Insight and humour.*' — Atkenaum^

The Plays of Brieux. By p. v. Thomas,

M.A., Assistant in French at University College, London, wzpp.
Cr. Svo, wrappers, zs. net, postage \d.

Brieux has been called almost everything from " an apostle " to
"the French Shaw." This study without attempting to give
him a name, and without intruding too much criticism, aims
above all at giving a straightforward chronological summary of
the man's work by means of analysis of the plays from Bernard
Palissy to Suzette, and quotations from the original texts, with a
brief account of his career. \Just Published.

The Little Wicket Gate : An Ex-
perience Ex Nihilo. By Algernon Petworth. ze^S pp., cloth gilt,
gilt top, 6s.

The Little Wicket Gate leads to a finely imagined idealistic Utopia,
— or perhaps it is a picture of life after death. The problem of
love is present, but free from the factors of wealth and rank
commonly involved in romance. The story will attract and
interest many as greatly as it will repel others. The writer is
known ; the author is not. {Just Published.

The Further Evolution of Man.

A Study from Observed Phenomena. By W. Hall Calvert, m.d.
Cr. %vo, 328 pp., cloth gilt,*Ss. net, postage i^d.

In its ten chapters this book treats of " The Cannibal Habit in
the Male " and the " Law of Population " as modifying to a large
extent the struggle for existence, and so removing the horror of an
inevitable and perpetual conflict, and it then discusses the " Lesson
of History," " The Spiritual Evolution of Society," " The Ideal
State," and " The Final Goal." [Just Published.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G.

Mr. Fijield's New List

Henrik Ibsen : Poet, Mystic, and Moralist.
By Henry Rose, Author of "Maeterlinck's Symbolism."
Cr. %vo, 1^6 pages. Cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. net, postage ^d.

" A helpful introduction to the study of the plays."— Totm. " An interesting
study of the spiritual development of Ibsen." — Athenaum. " Students of Ibsen
will be grateful to Mr. Rose for his thoughtful and suggestive criticism." —
Standard. " Mr. Rose does his work extremely w€i\.." —Observer. "Avery
useful and timely volume. It is a clear and coherent effort to show the
continuity of Ibsen's development by a skilful analysis of the problem presented
in every play." — Literary tVorld,

On the Truth of Decorative Art.

A dialogue between an Oriental and an Occidental. By
Lionel de Fonseka. New popular issue. Cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. net,
postage 2,d.

" A most notable and remarkable book. . . . Let the reader be advised to get
it, he will find rich and stimulating food for thought." — Academy. "A spirited
and piquant criticism of our artistic concepts which deserves and ought to be
read." — Nation. "A protest against the modern tendency of the people of
Ceylon, under Western influences, to abandon their traditions in art and in
life." — Athenaum.

The Ego and his Own. By Max stimer.

Popular edition. ^20 pages. Cloth, zs, 6d. net, postage 4^.

" It must always rank as the most uncompromising attempt to vindicate the
all-engrossing egoism that is the intellectual basis of anarchism properly so-
called. . . . This strange masterpiece holds an abiding fascination." — Morning
Post. "One of the profoundest of human documents.'' — Freeivoman. "It is a
book even more relevant to modern thought than to its own age." — Athenaum.

Richard JefferieS : His Life and his ideals.

By H. S. Salt. New edition. Boards, is, vet, postage 2d.

"For a true appreciation of Jefferies' work, nothing could be better." Neiv Age.

New Verse

The Call of the Mountains. J. E. Pickering. 15, net.
The Peacemaker : A Play. Dr. Winslow Hall. is. net.
The Flood of Youth. H, S. Spencer, is. net.
Gloom and Gleam. Teresa Hooley. is, net.
Life's Lottery, B. L. ffoUiott. is. 6d. net.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

Mr. Fifieid's New List

Henrik Ibsen :

Poet, Mystic and Moralist
By Henry Rose

Crown Zvo, 156//. Cloth gUt^gilt top, 2s, 6d. net, postage 3^.

"A helpful introduction to the study of the plays.'' — Times.

"An interesting study of the spiritual development of Ibsen as seen in his
writings. All his social and psychological plays are dealt with, and through
them Mr. Rose traces the consistent growth of his ideas, and emphasizes their
unity." — tAtbemeum.

"Mr. Rose does his work on the whole extremely well. He has an
immense enthusiasm for Ibsen . . . and he records what he has seen soundly and
lucidly. " — Obsewer.

"The man's work was to prepare humanity for new and better ideals, and
though it was necessarily largely destructive it was the duty that lay nearest to
him. Mr. Rose has admirable qualifications for the task he has undertaken,
and students of Ibsen will be grateful to him for his thoughtful and suggestive
criticism." — Standard.

"An invaluable guide to Ibsen." — Re'vieiv ofRe-vieivs.

" A very useful and timely volume. . . . It is a clear and coherent effort to
show the continuity of Ibsen's development, by a skilful analysis of the problem
presented in every play." — Literary ff^orld.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Maeterlinck's Symbolism :

The Blue Bird, and other Essays

Second and Revised Edition.
Wrappers^ \s. net^ postage lid, \-clotk, gilt top, zs. net, postage 2\d,

"An able and suggestive essay, expounding in detail the symbolism of
Maeterlinck's fascinating allegory. We commend this volume to all lovers
of the 'Blue Bird.'"— Ti&e Quest.

On Maeterlinck :

Notes on the Study of Symbols

Wrappers, \s. net, postage \\d. \-chth, gilt top, zs, net, postage 2\d.

" The analysis by Mr. Rose of ' The Sightless ' is even more subtle than that
■which he gives of the ' Blue Bird.' " — Field.

"Readers of Maeterlinck will virelcome this new volume." — Standard.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

Mr. Fifield's New List

A Sympathetic and informed study of Woman, Marriage,
and the Family.

The Nature of Woman

By J. Lionel Tayler, m.r.c.s., l.r.c.p.

London University Extension and Tutorial Lecturer on Biology
and Sociology.

Crown 2,vo, cloth gilty i^S pages , 3/. 6d, net, postage 3^/.

This book is, probably, one of the most valuable and interesting contributions
to the subject that has been made so far. It will have a quieting and calming-
influence where bitterness between the sexes has arisen , and it indicates the line
on which normal and happy life for man and woman is possible to-day and in the
future.

The English Review says : — " The qualities that have won Dr. Lionel Tayler success
as a lecturer on biology combine to make his book a profound and valuable study, to
which it is impossible to do justice in a short notice. It is notable for its calm sanity,
its sound logic, and the manner in which every statement is supported by proof. . . . The
whole book is one that no student of modern life should miss."

The Times says : — " Dr. Taj^Ier approaches the subject mainfy as a biologist deeply
convinced of the fundamental differences between man and woman, which must always
keep their spheres diverse. His book is non-technical, easy to read, and contains
suggestive matter."

The Irish Independent stLys'. — " Reasoned, forcible, and convincing. . . . It deals
with every phase of the woman question of the day."

Agnes Herbert, in Daily Chronicle^ says ; — '* Dr. Tayler takes us far beyond the
feminist barriers to wider horizons where the biological and sociological student works.
A very sincere and sympathetic work, which presents its complex subject in as simple
a manner as so complex a subject can be presented. Wholly untechnical, it should be
of interest to everyone, even those unused to biological thought,"

The Inquirer says : — *' We hope, earnestly and sincerely, that this book will stimu-
late fruitful discussion. . . . We believe it will ultimately be realised by all thoughtful
people that there is no woman's_ movement distinct from man's, and that if one section
of the community suffers any injustice it is the result of the chaotic ideas and the
conduct of life which prevail through the community as a whole."

Socialist Review says : — "It deserves attention by all who are interested in the
deeper problem of the functional relationship of men and women as co-members of
society and the human race."

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

Mr. Fifield's New List

The Broom Fairies IS"

By Ethel M. Gate

Small Crown Zvo, lod pages, attractively produced for gift-bookpurposes,
decorated brown boards, \s. 6d. net, postage 2d.

Mr. Fifield strongly recommends these delightfully humorous old"
style fairy tales by a new young writer — a genuinely original and
charming successor to Hans Andersen and the Grimms. For birth-
day or Christmas gift, or for a " reader " in school, the volume is a
real discovery.

TJu Field says ; — " The stories are really well told, and indeed it is not often that a
modern writer of fairy stories so skilfully reproduces the true vein of narration which
characterised the older authors of this class of book. They are full of pretty fancy, and
attract and hold the attention of the reader from start to finish."

The Dundee Advertiser says : — *' Delightful work of exceptional merit,"

The Soul of a Gardener

By H. M. Waithman

foolscdp Sm, 1^0 />ages, hrown decorated boards^ 2s, net^ postage -^d

Healing. Give me a fork, and let me go

To dig within my garden-plot,
Then all the things 1 needs must know
But would forget, are soon forgot.

'/ hs Saul of a Gardener.
Katharine Tynan Hinksoh says, in Freetnan's Journal: - " Here iii avolume of
poems of that delicate and sensitive kind that they may very well be overlooked among
more assertive things. It is a fragrant book, and conceived on a charming plan. The
poems are all concerned with garden matters in their seasons. Month by month we get
the poems that belong to the month. Not merely poems of flowers, but poems of the
garden of the heart as well. . . . ' The Soul of a Gardener ' is a lovesome book."

Fatuous Fables 7t^^;IZ

By Denis Turner (" X.Y.X.")

Foolscap Zt/o, cloth extra, gilt top^ register and head band,
2s. 6d, net, postage 2d,

The Times says :— " Amusing, easy- flow in g/fw^r desprii upon topics of the hour both
in London and Cambridge. One of the best is ' A Farewell,' ending :—
' O Liddell and Scott, and Lewis and Short,

This much I declare b true;
The happiest hours I spent were those
I ought to have spent with you.' "

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

Recently Published

The Ego and His Own

By Max Stirner

Translated by Steven T. Byington, with Introductions and

Prefaces by Benj. R. Tucker, Dr. J. L. Walker,

and the Translator.

Sm, Crown Svo. Cloth, ^2^ pages. Indexed.
2s. 6d. net ; postage, j\d. (U.S.A., 75 ^^^^s.)

This unique book is now obtainable for the first time at a popular price in
English. Published originally seventy years ago in Germany, it made a
tremendous furore, but being too much in advance of its age the interest
subsided. A great Stirner revival has taken place during the last fifteen years,
however, and the book has been translated into all the principal languages.
In its aim it out-Nietzsches Nietzsche long before Nietzsche's time, presenting
the philosophy of conscious egoism in its most extreme and relentless form.
The book, is one of the most remarkable original works in existence, and no one
seeking to know the best the human mind and soul has brought forth, can
afford to ignore Stirner. He has no affectations, and is honesty itself.

The Morning Tost says : *'It must always rank as the most uncompromising
attempt to vindicate the all-engrossing egoism that is the intellectual basis of
anarchism properly so-called. . . . The revolving and reverberating glooms
of his strange masterpiece hold an abiding fascination for the connoisseur of
style. There is something awe-inspiring in the spectacle of this lonely thinker
applying himself to the hopeless task of destroying the myriad mansioned
structure of human society with a small hammer that no suffragist would look
at and a bent nail for chisel. He asks no help from his fellow-anarchists ;
the bomb is as senseless and tyrannical in his mind's eye as the policeman's
truncheon or the king's sceptre or the grace of God — which seems to him the
worst despotism of all. . . . However, the cold and unconquerable courage which
has enabled him to press his principle to its ultimate conclusion, has gained
him many admirers in these latter days. .... To Stirner the Ego is the only
reality, the only ideal. There is nobody else and nothing else in the universe,
and when all men can say with him, 'AH things are nothing to me,' then
freedom will be fully achieved."

The Free'woman says : "We have laid aside one of the profoundest of human
documents. . . . Sapient, grey-clad truths follow close pressed one upon the
heels of another wearing the sincerity of unstudied reflection."

The Athenceum says : *' It is a book even more relevant to modern thought
than to its own age, and the power of logic with which its doctrine of a
complete egoism is set forth has given it permanent importance."

The Morning Leader says : " He is a proto-Nietzsche, more profound,
more exact."

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G.

The Works of "The Super-Tramp/'

Songs of Joy, and Others

By William H. Davies

Foolscap Svo, cloth gilt, 2s, 6d. net, postage 2d,

"Mr. Davies can write as no other man." — Morning Post. " If anyone thinks there
is no fine poetry being written in England now, let him get this little book at once. . . .
Really there can be no arguing about it." — English Review. " His latest volume is
a treasury of noble verse, the typical expression of a rare and unique genius." — Black
and White. "Mr. Davies' poetry is unlike any other poetry that is written to-day.
It is fresh and sweet like a voicefrom a younger and lustier world." — Daily News,
" He is that rare thing in modern life, an artist who has nothing to do with commerce.
His new volume is in every way a worthy addition to his already'fine achievements."—
T.P:s Weekly.

Nature Poems, and Others

By William H. Davies
T^rd thousand. Grey Boards Series, Is. net, postage l^dr.

" It has the limpidity of Wordsworth. There is a truth and freshness in the writing
that is a pledge of the author's absolute sincerity." — Morning- Past "He has found
himself, and has been divinely gifted with a power of expression equal to that of any
man of our day," — Daily Chronicle.

Farewell to Poesy

By William H. Davies
2nd thousand. Grey Boards Series, Is. net, postage l^d,

" William Davies bidding farewell to Poesy I It is not to be thought of. . . . Here are
sixty pages_ of charming and delicious poetry. Here sounds again that clear, sweet
note to which nothing, or very little, in contemporary literature can be likened." —
The Nation (whole page review).

The Auto-biography of a
Super-Tramp

By William H. Davies, with a Preface by Bernard Shaw
2rd Edition, "^20 pages. Crown 8vo, 6s, Canvas

" One of the most remarkable human documents ever published." — Morning Leader,
" His book ought to be read by every adult too old and respectable to turn beggar. It
is absorbingly real." — Globe. " The autobiography of a poet like Mr. Davies was bound
to be good." — Daily Chronicle.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

Five Unique Works

Three Plays by Brieux, with a preface by

Bernard Shaw. Crown 8vo, linen gilt, ivith photogravure, ^s.
net, postage ^d.

The book, contains three censored plays by Brieux : Maternity^ The Three Daughters
o/M. Dupont, and Damaged Goods, and a new version of Maternity. The preface is
45 pages ot trenchant matter. Every important journal m the British Isles has reviewed
this book at length. It is indeed one of the few modern books that really counts. Three
typical reviews are those o^—The English Review: "Every young man should be
made to read Damaged Goods, every mother, Maternity" ; The Pall Mall Gazette:
" They are, of course, among the three most moral plays ever written, and all honour
is due to M. Brieux for having tackled such subjects with so much courage"; and
Truth : " Mr. Shaw's extraordinarily, even diabolically clever preface is worth reading
and re-reading."

Racial Decay : a Compilation of Evidence from
World Sources. By Octavius Charles Beale, a Royal Com-
missioner of Australia. Crown ^o, 480 pages, with index.
Cloth, ^s, net, postage ^d. (Abroad, is,)

This book is a mine of information on the moral and physical causes and results of
the artificial limitation of families throughout the civilised world. It is sold below its
cost to draw public attention to the subject. The Pall Mall Gazette says : — "There
can be no doubt that this is an extraordinarily useful, passionately sincere, and much
needed book." The Western Morning News says: "All public men, M.P.'s, C.C.'s,
guardians, and clergymen, should -have this book and face the facts."

The New Word. By Alien Upward. Crown 8vo,
Cloth, ^s. net^ postage ^d.

No notice or review can do justice to this extraordinary book, a sheer indescribable
workofgenius. Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee, in theiVgTy Vorh Times, says : " Shakespeare
might have done it." In the New Age the author is described as "a thinker of
enormous power.'* The Westminster Gazette says: "It is impossible to do Mr.
Upward justice by quoting him, unless we quote the whole of the book, because it all
hangs together and it is all good." Current Literature says; "It is unique in'
contemporary Literature."

Egypt S Rum : a Financial and Administrative
Record. By Theodore Rothstein. With introduction
by Wilfrid Blunt. Croivn 2vo, 448 pages, indexed, 6s, net^
postage 4^/.

This book is the answer to the pictures which officially pass as the history of Egypt
under British rule. It shows the other side of th« medal, and it should be read by every
sincere and honest man. It is documented throughout and indexed. The Daily News
says:— "It is a piece of sober historical research resting on facts gathered with untiring
industry and ordered with masterful lucidity."

Anarchism. By Dr. Paul Eltzbacher. Small Crown
%vo, cloth gilt, 6s. 6d. net, postage 4^. Six Portraits and Index,

This valuable work is a r^sumd of the anarchistic philosophy of Godwin, Proudhon,
Stirner, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tucker, and Tolstoy, classified under uniform divisions.
It is thoroughly impartial and very ably done, and it presents in itself the best and most
authoritative library of international anarchistic thought that has been compiled.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 CliiFord's Inn, E.G.

Five Uncommon Books at 3s. 6d. each.

The Blood of the Poor. By Godfrey Blount,B.A.

Cloth gilt, gj. 6d. net, postage ^d.

" We welcome it as the work of a fresh, original, thopght-provoking mind."
— Sheffield Daily Telegraph. " Mr. Blount's latest book is a fine piece of
stimulating argument, in its way as complete and as convincing as anything he has
done." — Oxford Chronicle. " It is a book which thinking men will do well to
read." — Huddersjield Examiner. " Mr. Blount's solution of our economic
difficulties is the restoration of peasant industry, making agriculture in every
sense the highest occupation." — ff^estern Morning Nevjs.

England's Need in Education. By j. s.

Knowlson. Cloth gilt, ^j. 6d, nety postage 3^.

^* Mr. Knowlson'a book should be read by all teachers and educationalists.'*
— Yorkshire E'vening T^etvs, " A suggestive and comprehensive criticism of our
educational methods," — The Observer,

A Holiday with a Hegelian. By Francis

Sedlak. Cloth gilt, ^x, 6d. net^ postage ^d,

" Mr. Sedldk's Holiday ivitb a Hegelian ... is an elaborate analysts of (Hegel*s)
system in 596 * Acts of Thought.* It is a very remarkable book, , , , Here is
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The Camel and the Needle's Eye. By

Arthur Ponsoiby, m.p. Third Edition. Cloth gilt, ^s. 6d. net,

postage ^d.

" It is a sincere and interesting attempt to study without passion or prejudice
the state of mammon worship to which all classes of the community have
come." — Daily Telegraph. "It bears on every page testimony to thought
literally wrung out of concrete experience." — Manchester Guardian,

My Country : Right or Wrong. By

Gustave Herve. Translated by Guy Bowman. With
Portrait. Cloth, gx. 6d. net, postage 3^.

" A strange and ardent volume, thundering against international strife, and
announcing in an earnest voice the federation of the w,rld of workers. It has
qualities in it which will affect the whole outlook of humanity." — Sheffield
Telegraph.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

The Grey Boards Series

of original verse, essays, and drama, printed on deckled-edge paper
in high-class style, and uniformly bound in quiet grey paper boards
with loose jacket, foolscap 8 vo size. All are 64 pages, except No. 10.

1. Nature Poems. "William H. Davies.

znd edition (completing Z5oo). " He is a born poet."— ?"/;« Nation.

2. Farewell to Poesy. William H. Davies.

" Pure lyric of perhaps the first rank." — Daily Chronicle,

3. The Sanity of William Blake. An essay.

Greville MacDonald, m. d. Illustrated.

4. Spiritual Perfection. A Socratic dialogue.

Thomas Clune. (Arthur Ponsonby, m.p. )

5. Count Louis. H. H. Schloesser.

6. The Fallacy of Speed. T. F. Taylor.

7. Other- World. Harold B. Shepheard, m.a.

8. Songs of a Shopman. Arthur Hickmott.

9. The Third Road, and other songs and verses.

Kathleen Conyngham Greene, znd edition.

10. Poems by Marjory Mines. 32 pages.

11. The King's Temptation, and other poems.

James E. Pickering.

12. Wishing Wood, and other verses. Agnes S.

Falconer.

13. Songs by the Way. Margaret Blaikie.

14. The Secret Things. Margaret Lovell Andrews.

15. The Poet's Calendar. Margaret Macdonald. znded.

16. Metred Playlets. W. Winslow Hall, m.d.

17. Vale — a book of verse. Leonard Inkster.

18. The Cap of Care. James E. Pickering.

1 9. The Ballad of Two Great Cities. Harold Williams.

20. The Strummings of a Lyre. F. Bonham Burr.

21. Castle Building, and other Poems. Guy Kendall.

22. The Peacemaker. A Play. W. Winslow Hall, m.d.

23. The Call of the Mountains. J. E. Pickering.

24. The Flood of Youth. Sherwood Spencer.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

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