any thing but absurd; from the solemnity of the place altogether, and from the goodness of the execution, I looked on them with no disposition to laugh or to criticise. But what I did not expect was the exceeding depth and richness of the chestnut shade, through which the road partially ran, only coming out at every turning to the extreme edge of the mountain, and so commanding the view on every side. But when we got to the summit we saw a path leading up to the green edge of a cliff on the mountain above, and we thought if we could get there we should probably see Lugano. Accordingly, on we walked; till just at sunset we got out to the crown of the ridge, the brow of an almost precipitous cliff, looking down on the whole mountain of S. Maria del Monte, which on this side presented nothing but a large mass of rock and cliff, a perfect contrast to the rich wood of its other side. But neither S. Maria del Monte, nor the magnificent view of the plain of Lombardy, one mass of rich verdure, enlivened with its thousand white houses. and church towers, were the objects which we most gazed upon. We looked westward full upon the whole range of mountains behind which, in a cloudless sky, the sun had just descended. It is utterly idle to attempt a description of such a scene. I counted twelve successive mountain outlines between us and the farthest horizon; and the most remote of all, the high peaks of the Alps, were brought out strong and dark in the glowing sky behind them, so that their edge seemed actually to cut it. Immediately below our eyes, plunged into a depth of chestnut forest, varied as usual with meadows and villages, and beyond, embosomed amidst the nearer mountains, lay the Lake of Lugano. As if every thing combined to make the scene perfect, the mountain on which we stood was covered, to my utter astonishment, with the Daphne Cneorum, and I found two small pieces in flower to ascertain the fact, although generally it was out of bloom. We stood gazing on the view and hunting about to find the

Daphne in flower, till the shades of darkness were fast rising; then we descended from our height, went down the mountain of S. Maria, refreshing ourselves on the way at one of the delicious fountains which are made beside the road, regained our carriage at the foot of the mountain, and, though we had left our coats and neckcloths at Varese before we started, and were hot through and through with the skirmish, yet the soft air of these summer nights has nothing chilly in it, and we were only a little refreshed by the coolness during our drive home. I now look out on a sky bright with its thousand stars, and have observed a little summer lightning behind the mountains. If any one wishes for the perfection of earthly beauty, he should see such a sunset as we saw this evening from the mountain above S. Maria del Monte.

2. Mule track above the Lake of Como, under the chestnuts, July 25, 1830.

(Third visit.)

Once more, dearest M-, for the third time, seated under these delicious chestnuts, and above this delicious. lake, with the blue sky above, and the green lake beneath, and Monte Rosa and the S. Gothard, and the Simplon rearing their snowy heads in the distance. It would be a profanation of this place to use it for common journal; I came out here with partly to enjoy the associations which this lake in a peculiar manner has connected with it to my mind. Last year it did not signify that I was not here, for you were with me; but, with you absent, I should have grieved to have visited Como, and not have come to this sweet spot. I see no change in the scenery since I was last here in 1827, and I feel very little, if any, in myself. Yet for me, "summer is now ebbing;" since I was here last, I have passed the middle point of man's life, and it is hardly possible that I should be here again without feeling some change. If we were here with our dear children, that itself would be a change, and I hardly

VOL. II.

B B

expect to be again on this very spot, without having them. But what matters, or rather what should matter, change or no change, so that the decaying body and less vigorous intellect were but accompanied with a more thriving and more hopeful life of the spirit. It is almost awful to look at the overwhelming beauty around me, and then think of moral evil; it seems as if heaven and hell, instead of being separated by a great gulph from one another, were absolutely on each other's confines, and indeed not far from every one of us. Might the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as my delight in external beauty, for in a deep sense of moral evil, more perhaps than in any thing else, abides a saving knowledge of God! It is not so much to admire moral good; that we may do, and yet not be ourselves conformed to it; but if we really do abhor that which is evil, not the persons in whom evil resides, but the evil which dwelleth in them, and much more manifestly and certainly to our own knowledge, in our own hearts-this is to have the feeling of God and of Christ, and to have our spirit in sympathy with the Spirit of God. Alas! how easy to see this and say it—how hard to do it and to feel it! Who is sufficient for these things? No one, but he who feels and really laments his own insufficiency. God bless you, my dearest wife, and our beloved children, now and evermore, through Christ Jesus.

July 29, 1880.

3. The Laquai de Place, at Padua, was a good one of his kind, and, finding that his knowledge of French was much less than mine of Italian, if that be possible, we talked wholly in Italian. He said that the taxes now were four times as heavy as under the old Venetian government, or under the French. He himself, when a young man, had volunteered into the republican army, after the overthrow of the Venetian aristocracy in 1797, and had fought at Marengo, where he was wounded. He

said they had in Padua a Casa di Ricovero, or asylum for the infirm and infant poor, and here also, he said, relief was given to men in full age and vigour, when they were thrown out of employment. I asked how it was supported. He said, chiefly by bequests; for whenever a man of property died, the priest who attended him never failed to suggest to him that he should leave something to the Casa di Ricovero; and he seemed to think it almost a matter of course that such a recommendation should be attended to. It seems then, that in the improved state of society, the influence of the Catholic clergy is used for purposes of general charity, and not for their own advantage; and who would not wish that our clergy dared to exercise something of the same influence over our higher classes, and could prevent that most unchristian spirit of family selfishness and pride, by which too many wills of our rich men are wholly dictated? But our Church bears, and has ever borne the marks of her birth; the child of regal and aristocratical selfishness and unprincipled tyranny, she has never dared to speak boldly to the great, but has contented herself with lecturing the poor. "I will speak of thy testimonies even before kings, and will not be ashamed," is a text which the Anglican Church, as a national institution, seems never to have caught the spirit of. Folly, and worse than folly is it, to think that preaching what are called orthodox doctrines before the great is really preaching to them the Gospel. Unless the particular conclusions which they should derive from those doctrines be impressed upon them; unless they are warned against the particular sins to which they are tempted by their station in society, and urged to the particular duties which their political and social state requires of them, the Gospel will be heard without offence, and, therefore, one may almost say, without benefit. Of course I do not mean offence at the manner in which it is preached, nor offence, indeed, at all, in the common sense of the word;

but a feeling of soreness that they are touched by what they hear, a feeling which makes the conscience uneasy, because it cannot conceal from itself that its own practice is faulty.

Latsch, August 3, 1830.

4. In the market place at Meraus there is a large statue of the Virgin, to commemorate two deliverances from the French, in 1796, and in 1799, when the enemy on one occasion came as far as Bolzen, and on the other as far as Ghern and Eyers. But this is so exactly a thing after the manner of Herodotus, that I must for a few lines borrow his language.

Ἔστηκε δὲ ἐν μέσῃ τῇ ἀγορῇ ἄγαλμα ξύλινον ̓Αθήνης ἀλεξικάκου ἐστὶ δὲ τὸ ἄγαλμα καὶ γραφῇ καὶ ἔργῳ εἰκασμένον· καὶ τῇ μὲν κεφαλῇ τῆς θεοῦ περικέεται στέφανος ἀστέρων, τῇ δὲ στήλῃ πολλὰ ἐπιγεγράπται, τὴν αἰτίην τοῦ ἀναθήματος ἀποδεικνύμενα. Ην γὰρ ποτὲ μέγας ἀνὰ πάσην, ὡς εἰπεῖν, Ευρώπην πόλεμος συχναὶ δὲ ἐγένοντο πολέων ἀναστάσιες, ἐτὶ δὲ μᾶλλον ἀγρῶν δηώσεις καὶ ἀνθρώπων φόνοι. Ἐν μὲν ὧν τούτῳ τῷ πολέμῳ μέγιστα δὴ πάντων ἔργα ἀπεδέξαντο οἱ Γαλάται· καὶ πολὺς ἐπέκειτο πασῇσι τῇσι περιωκημένησι πολίσιν ὁ ἀπ' αὐτῶν κίνδυνος. Οὗτοι οἱ Γαλάται Αυστριάνοις ἐπολεμοῦν· τοῦ δὲ ̓Αυστριάνων βασίλεος τὸ Τιρωλίκον ἔθνος ἦν ὑπήκοον. Οἱ δὲ ̓Αυστρίανοι πολλῇσιν ἤδη μάχῃσι νικήθεντες, κακῶς ἔπασχον· καὶ περὶ τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀρχῆς ἤδη καθίστατο ὁ ἀγών. Καὶ τῆς μὲν Τιρωλίδος γενναίως υπερε μάχοντο οἱ ἐπιχώριοι, πλήθει δὲ ὑπερβαλλόμενοι τοὺς Γαλάτας ἐς τὴν χώρην ἐσεδέχοντο. Οὗτοι δὲ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα δηώσαντες ἐς τὴν τῶν Μεράνων οὐκ ἀφίκοντο, εἴτε συντυχίη τινι, εἴτε τῆς θεου οὕτω διαθείσης. Αλλά γε οἱ Μέρανοι ἐς θεῖόν τι ἀναφέροντες τὸ πρῆγμα, καὶ οὐ τύχῃ μᾶλλον ἢ θεῶν ἐυνοίᾳ σωθῆναι τοτὲ ἡγόυμενοι, τό τε ἄγαλμα τῇ θεῷ ἀνέθηκαν, καὶ ἐτὶ ἐς τὸ νῦν ἀεὶ, ὡς δι' αυτὴν περιγιγνόμενοι, διαφερόντως τιμῶσι.