University of Virginia Library

110. LETTER CX.

In going out of the gates of Milan, we met a cart
full of peasants, tied together and guarded by gens
d'armes, the fifth sight of the kind that has crossed us
since we passed the Austrian border. The poor fellows
looked very innocent and very sorry. The extent
of their offences probably might be the want of a
passport, and a desire to step over the limits of his
majesty's possessions. A train of beautiful horses,
led by soldiers along the ramparts, the property of the
Austrian officers, were in melancholy contrast to their
sad faces.

The clear snowy Alps soon came in sight, and their
cold beauty refreshed us in the midst of a heat that
prostrated every nerve in the system. It is only the
first of May, and they are mowing the grass everywhere
on the road, the trees are in their fullest leaf,
the frogs and nightingales singing each other down,
and the grasshopper would be a burden. Toward night

we crossed the Sardinian frontier, and in an hour were
set down at an auberge on the bank of Lake Maggiore,
in the little town of Arona. The mountains on
the other side of the broad and mirror-like water, are
speckled with ruined castles, here and there a boat is
leaving its long line of ripples behind in its course,
the cattle are loitering home, the peasants sit on the
benches before their doors, and all the lovely circumstances
of a rural summer's sunset are about us, in
one of the very loveliest spots in nature. A very old
Florence friend is my companion, and what with mutual
reminiscences of sunny Tuscany, and the deepest
love in common for the sky over our heads, and
the green land around us, we are noting down “red
days” in our calendar of travel.

We walked from Arona by sunrise, four or five miles
along the borders of Lake Maggiore. The kind-hearted
peasants on their way to the market raised their
hats to us in passing, and I was happy that the greeting
was still “buon giorno.” Those dark-lined mountains
before us were to separate me too soon from the
mellow accents in which it was spoken. As yet, however,
it was all Italian — the ultra-marine sky, the clear,
half-purpled hills, the inspiring air — we felt in every
pulse that it was still Italy.

We were at Baveno at an early hour, and took a
boat for Isola Bella. It looks like a gentleman's villa
afloat. A boy would throw a stone entirely over it in
any direction. It strikes you like a kind of toy as you
look at it from a distance, and getting nearer, the illusion
scarcely dissipates — for, from the water's edge,
the orange-laden terraces are piled one above another
like a pyramidal fruit-basket, the villa itself peers
above like a sugar castle, and it scarce seems real
enough to land upon. We pulled round to the northern
side, and disembarked at a broad stone staircase,
where a cicerone, with a look of suppressed wisdom,
common to his vocation, met us with the offer of his
services.

The entrance-hall was hung with old armor, and a
magnificent suite of apartments above, opening on all
sides upon the lake, was lined thickly with pictures,
none of them remarkable except one or two landscapes
by the savage Tempesta. Travellers going the
other way would probably admire the collection more
than we. We were glad to be handed over by our
pragmatical custode to a pretty contadino, who announced
herself as the gardener's daughter, and gave
us each a bunch of roses. It was a proper commencement
to an acquaintance upon Isola Bella. She
led the way to the water's edge, where, in the foundations
of the palace, a suite of eight or ten spacious
rooms is constructed a la grotte — with a pavement laid
of small stones of different colors, walls and roof of
fantastically set shells and pebbles, and statues that
seem to have reason in their nudity. The only light
came in at the long doors opening down to the lake,
and the deep leather sofas, and dark cool atmosphere,
with the light break of the waves outside, and the long
views away toward Isola Madra, and the far-off opposite
shore, composed altogether a most seductive spot
for an indolent humor and a summer's day. I shall
keep it as a cool recollection till sultry summers
trouble me no more.

But the garden was the prettiest place. The lake
is lovely enough any way; but to look at it through
perspectives of orange alleys, and have the blue
mountains broken by stray branches of tulip-trees,
clumps of crimson rhododendron, and clusters of citron,
yellower than gold; to sit on a garden-seat in the
shade of a thousand roses, with sweet-scented shrubs
and verbenums, and a mixture of novel and delicious
perfumes embalming the air about you, and gaze up
at snowy Alps and sharp precipices, and down upon a
broad smooth mirror in which the islands lie like
clouds, and over which the boats are silently creeping
with their white sails, like birds asleep in the sky —
why (not to disparage nature), it seems to my poor
judgment, that these artificial appliances are an improvement
even to Lago Maggiore.

On one side, without the villa walls, are two or three
small houses, one of which is occupied as a hotel;
and here, if I had a friend with matrimony in his eye,
would I strongly recommend lodgings for the honeymoon.
A prettier cage for a pair of billing doves no
poet would conceive you.

We got on to Domo d'Ossola to sleep, saying many
an oft-said thing about the entrance to the valleys of
the Alps. They seem common when spoken of, these
romantic places, but they are not the less new in the
glow of a first impression.

We were a little in start of the sun this morning,
and commenced the ascent of the Simplon by a gray
summer's dawn, before which the last bright star had
not yet faded. From Domo d'Ossola we rose directly
into the mountains, and soon wound into the wildest
glens by a road which was flung along precipices and
over chasms and waterfalls like a waving riband. The
horses went on at a round trot, and so skilfully are the
difficulties of the ascent surmounted, that we could
not believe we had passed the spot that from below
hung above us so appallingly. The route follows the
foaming river Vedro, which frets and plunges along at
its side or beneath its hanging bridges, with the impetuosity
of a mountain torrent, where the stream is
swollen at every short distance with pretty waterfalls,
messengers from the melting snows on the summits.
There was one, a water-slide rather than a fall, which
I stopped long to admire. It came from near the peak
of the mountain, leaping at first from a green clump
of firs, and descending a smooth inclined plane, of
perhaps two hundred feet. The effect was like drapery
of the most delicate lace, dropping into festoons
from the hand. The slight waves overtook each other
and mingled and separated, always preserving their elliptical
and foaming curves, till, in a smooth scoop
near the bottom, they gathered into a snowy mass,
and leaped into the Vedro in the shape of a twisted
shell. If wishing could have witched it into Mr.
Cole's sketch-book, he would have a new variety of
water for his next composition.

After seven hours' driving, which scarce seemed ascending
but for the snow and ice and the clear air it
brought us into, we stopped to breakfast at the village
of Simplon, “three thousand, two hundred and sixteen
feet above the sea level.” Here we first realized
that we had left Italy. The landlady spoke French
and the postillions German! My sentiment has
grown threadbare with travel, but I don't mind confessing
that the circumstance gave me an unpleasant
thickness in the throat. I threw open the southern
window, and looked back toward the marshes of Lombardy,
and if I did not say the poetical thing, it was
because

In sober sadness, one may well regret any country
where his life has been filled fuller than elsewhere of
sunshine and gladness; and such, by a thousand enchantments,
has Italy been to me. Its climate is life
in my nostrils, its hills and valleys are the poetry of
such things, and its marbles, pictures, and palaces, beset
the soul like the very necessities of existence.
You can exist elsewhere, but oh! you live in Italy!

I was sitting by my English companion on a sledge
in front of the hotel, enjoying the sunshine, when the
diligence drove up, and six or eight young men alighted.
One of them, walking up and down the road to
get the cramp of a confined seat out of his legs, addressed
a remark to us in English. We had neither
of us seen him before, but we exclaimed simultaneously,
as he turned away, “That's an American.”

“How did you know he was not an Englishman?” I
asked. “Because,” said my friend, “he spoke to us
without an introduction and without a reason, as Englishmen
are not in the habit of doing, and because he
ended his sentence with `sir,' as no Englishman does
except he is talking to an inferior, or wishes to insult
you. And how did you know it?” asked he.
“Partly by instinct,” I answered, “but more, because,
though a traveller, he wears a new hat that cost him
ten dollars, and a new cloak that cost him fifty (a peculiarly
American extravagance), because he made no
inclination of his body either in addressing or leaving
us, though his intention was to be civil, and because
he used fine dictionary words to express a common
idea, which, by the way, too, betrays his southern
breeding. And, if you want other evidence, he has
just asked the gentleman near him to ask the conducteur
something about his breakfast, and an American
is the only man in the world that ventures to come
abroad without at least French enough to keep himself
from starving.” It may appear ill-natured to
write down such criticisms on one's own countryman;
but the national peculiarities by which we are distinguished
from foreigners, seemed so well defined in this
instance, that I thought it worth mentioning. We
found afterward that our conjecture was right. His
name and country were on the brass plate of his portmanteau
in most legible letters, and I recognised it directly
as the address of an amiable and excellent man,
of whom I had once or twice heard in Italy, though I
had never before happened to meet him. Three of
the faults oftenest charged upon our countrymen, are
over-fine clothes, over-fine words, and over-fine, or over-free
manners!

From Simplon we drove two or three miles between
heaps of snow, lying in some places from ten to six
feet deep. Seven hours before, we had ridden through
fields of grain almost ready for the harvest. After
passing one or two galleries built over the road to protect
it from the avalanches where it ran beneath the
loftier precipices, we got out of the snow, and saw
Brig, the small town at the foot of the Simplon, on the
other side, lying almost directly beneath us. It looked
as if one might toss his cap down into its pretty gardens.
Yet we were four or five hours in reaching it,
by a road that seemed in most parts scarcely to descend
at all. The views down the valley of the Rhone,
which opened continually before us, were of exquisite
beauty. The river itself, which is here near its source,
looked like a meadow rivulet in its silver windings, and
the gigantic Helvetian Alps which rose in their snow
on the other side of the valley, were glittering in the
slant rays of a declining sun, and of a grandeur of
size and outline which diminished, even more than
distance, the river and the clusters of villages at their
feet.