This necessity was spared me. I climbed slowly up the long slope that hides Como, then I came down upon that lovely city and saw its frame of hills and its lake below me.
These things are not like things seen by the eyes. I say it again, they are like what one feels when music is played.
I entered Como between ten and eleven faint for food, and then a new interest came to fill my mind with memories of this great adventure. The lake was in flood, and all the town was water.
Como dry must be interesting enough; Como flooded is a marvel. What else is Venice? And here is a Venice at the foot of high mountains, and all in the water, no streets or squares; a fine even depth of three feet and a half or so for navigators, much what you have in the Spitway in London River at low spring tides.
There were a few boats about, but the traffic and pleasure of Como was passing along planks laid on trestles over the water here and there like bridges; and for those who were in haste, and could afford it (such as take cabs in London), there were wheelbarrows, coster carts, and what not, pulled about by men for hire; and it was a sight to remember all one's life to see the rich men of Como squatting on these carts and barrows, and being pulled about over the water by the poor men of Como, being, indeed, an epitome of all modern sociology and economics and religion and organized charity and strenuousness and liberalism and sophistry generally.
For my part I was determined to explore this curious town in the water, and I especially desired to see it on the lake side, because there one would get the best impression of its being really an aquatic town; so I went northward, as I was directed, and came quite unexpectedly upon the astonishing cathedral. It
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seemed built of polished marble, and it was in every way so exquisite in proportion, so delicate in sculpture, and so triumphant in attitude, that I thought to myself—