It was noon as we returned to the inn, and we first caught a full view of the Alps over a plashy meadow, some feathery trees, and the tops of the houses of the village in which we were. It was a magnificent sight, and in truth a new sensation. Their summits were bright with snow and with the midday sun; they did not seem to stand upon the earth, but to prop the sky; they were at a considerable distance from us, and yet appeared just over our heads. The surprise seemed to take away our breath, and to lift us from our feet. It was drinking the empyrean. As we could not long retain possession of our two places in the interior, I proposed to our guide to exchange them for the cabriolet; and, after some little chaffering and candid representations of the outside passengers of the cold we should have to encounter, we were installed there to our great satisfaction, and the no less contentment of those whom we succeeded. Indeed I had no idea that we should be steeped in these icy valleys at three o’clock in the morning, or I might have hesitated. The view was cheering, the clear air refreshing, and I thought we should set off each morning about seven or eight. But it is part of the sçavoir vivre in France, and one of the methods of adding to the agrémens of travelling, to set out three hours before day-break in the depth of winter, and stop two hours about noon, in order to arrive early in the evening. With all the disadvantages of preposterous hours and of intense cold pouring into the cabriolet like water the two first mornings, I cannot say I repented of my bargain. We had come a thousand miles to see the Alps for one thing, and we did see them in perfection, which we could not have done inside. The ascent for some way was striking and full of novelty; but on turning a corner of the road we entered upon a narrow defile or rocky ledge, overlooking a steep valley under our feet, with a headlong turbid stream dashing down it, and spreading itself out into a more tranquil river below, a dark wood of innumerable pine-trees covering the side of the valley opposite, with broken crags, morasses, and green plots of cultivated ground, orchards, and quiet homesteads, on which the sun glanced its farewell rays through the openings of the mountains. On our left, a precipice of dark brown rocks of various shapes rose abruptly at our side, or hung threatening over the road, into which some of their huge fragments, loosened by the winter’s flaw, had fallen, and which men and mules were employed in removing—(the thundering crash had hardly yet subsided, as you looked up and saw the fleecy clouds sailing among the shattered cliffs, while another giant-mass seemed ready to quit its station in the sky)—and as the road wound along to the other extremity of this noble pass, between the beetling rocks and dark sloping pine-forests, frowning defiance at each other, you caught the azure sky, the snowy ridges of the mountains, and the peaked tops of the Grand Chartreuse, waving to the right in solitary state and air-clad brightness.—It was a scene dazzling, enchanting, and that stamped the long-cherished dreams of the imagination upon the senses. Between those four crystal peaks stood the ancient monastery of that name, hid from the sight, revealed to thought, half-way between earth and heaven, enshrined in its cerulean atmosphere, lifting the soul to its native home, and purifying it from mortal grossness. I cannot wonder at the pilgrimages that are made to it, its calm repose, its vows monastic. Life must there seem a noiseless dream;—Death a near translation to the skies! Winter was even an advantage to this scene. The black forests, the dark sides of the rocks gave additional and inconceivable brightness to the glittering summits of the lofty mountains, and received a deeper tone and a more solemn gloom from them; while in the open spaces the unvaried sheets of snow fatigue the eye, which requires the contrast of the green tints or luxuriant foliage of summer or of spring. This was more particularly perceptible as the day closed, when the golden sunset streamed in vain over frozen valleys that imbibed no richness from it, and repelled its smile from their polished marble surface. But in the more gloomy and desert regions, the difference is less remarkable between summer and winter, except in the beginning of spring, when the summits of the hoary rocks are covered with snow, and the cleft in their sides are filled with fragrant shrubs and flowers. I hope to see this miracle when I return.
We came to Echelles, where we changed horses with great formality and preparation, as if setting out on some formidable expedition. Six large strong-boned horses with high haunches (used to ascend and descend mountains) were put to, the rope-tackle was examined and repaired, and our two postilions mounted and dismounted more than once, before they seemed willing to set off, which they did at last at a hand-gallop, that was continued for some miles. It is nothing to see English blood-horses get over the ground with such prodigious fleetness and spirit, but it is really curious to see the huge cart-horses, that they use for Diligences abroad, lumbering along and making the miles disappear behind them with their ponderous strength and persevering activity. The road for some way rattled under their heavy hoofs, and the heavy wheels that they dragged or whirled along at a thundering pace; the postilions cracked their whips, and the one in front (a dark, swarthy, short-set fellow) flourished his, shouted and hallooed, and turned back to vociferate his instructions to his companion with the robust energy and wildness of expression of a smuggler or a leader of banditti, carrying off a rich booty from a troop of soldiers. There was something in the scenery to favour this idea. Night was falling as we entered the superb tunnel cut through the mountain at La Grotte (a work attributed to Victor-Emanuel, with the same truth that Falstaff took to himself the merit of the death of Hotspur), and its iron floor rang, the whips cracked, and the roof echoed to the clear voice of our intrepid postilion as we dashed through it. Our path then wound among romantic defiles, where huge masses of snow and the gathering gloom threatened continually to bar our way; but it seemed cleared by the lively shout of our guide, and the carriage-wheels, clogged with ice, rolled after the heavy tramp of the horses. In this manner we rode on through a country full of wild grandeur and shadowy fears, till we had nearly reached the end of our day’s journey, when we dismissed our two fore-horses and their rider, to whom I presented a trifling douceur ‘for the sake of his good voice and cheerful countenance.’ The descent into Chambery was the most dangerous part of the road, and our horses were nearly thrown on their haunches several times. The road was narrow and slippery; there were a number of market-carts returning from the town, and there was a declivity on one side, which, though not a precipice, was quite sufficient to have dashed us to pieces in a common-place way. We arrived at Chambery in the dusk of the evening; and there is surely a charm in the name, and in that of the Charmettes near it (where he who relished all more sharply than his fellows, and made them feel for him as for themselves, alone felt peace or hope), which even the Magdalen Muse of Mr. Moore has not been able to unsing! We alighted at the inn fatigued enough, and were delighted on being shewn to a room to find the floor of wood, and English teacups and saucers. We were in Savoy.
We set out early the next morning, and it was the most trying part of our whole journey. The wind cut like a scythe through the valleys, and a cold, icy feeling struck from the sides of the snowy precipices that surrounded us, so that we seemed enclosed in a huge well of mountains. We got to St. Jean de Maurienne to breakfast about noon, where the only point agreed upon appeared to be to have nothing ready to receive us. This was the most tedious day of all; nor did we meet with any thing to repay us for our uncomfortable setting out. We travelled through a scene of desolation, were chilled in sunless valleys or dazzled by sunny mountain-tops, passed frozen streams or gloomy cavities, that might be transformed into the scene of some Gothic wizard’s spell, or reminded one of some German novel. Let no one imagine that the crossing the Alps is the work of a moment, or done by a single heroic effort—that they are a huge but detached chain of hills, or like the dotted line we find in the map. They are a sea or an entire kingdom of mountains. It took us three days to traverse them in this, which is the most practicable direction, and travelling at a good round pace. We passed on as far as eye could see, and still we appeared to have made little way. Still we were in the shadow of the same enormous mass of rock and snow, by the side of the same creeping stream. Lofty mountains reared themselves in front of us—horrid abysses were scooped out under our feet. Sometimes the road wound along the side of a steep hill, overlooking some village-spire or hamlet, and as we ascended it, it only gave us a view of remoter scenes, ‘where Alps o’er Alps arise,’ tossing about their billowy tops, and tumbling their unwieldy shapes in all directions—a world of wonders!—Any one, who is much of an egotist, ought not to travel through these districts; his vanity will not find its account in them; it will be chilled, mortified, shrunk up: but they are a noble treat to those who feel themselves raised in their own thoughts and in the scale of being by the immensity of other things, and who can aggrandise and piece out their personal insignificance by the grandeur and eternal forms of nature! It gives one a vast idea of Buonaparte to think of him in these situations. He alone (the Rob Roy of the scene) seemed a match for the elements, and able to master ‘this fortress, built by nature for herself.’ Neither impeded nor turned aside by immoveable barriers, he smote the mountains with his iron glaive, and made them malleable; cut roads through them; transported armies over their ridgy steeps; and the rocks ‘nodded to him, and did him courtesies!’
We arrived at St. Michelle at night-fall (after passing through beds of ice and the infernal regions of cold), where we met with a truly hospitable reception, with wood-floors in the English fashion, and where they told us the King of England had stopped. This made no sort of difference to me.
We breakfasted the next day (being Sunday) at Lans-le-Bourg, where I observed my friend the Spaniard busy with his tables, taking down the name of the place. The landlady was a little, round, fat, good-humoured black-eyed Italian or Savoyard, saying a number of good things to all her guests, but sparing of them otherwise. We were now at the foot of Mount Cenis, and after breakfast we set out on foot before the Diligence, which was to follow us in half an hour. We passed a melancholy-looking inn at the end of the town, professing to be kept by an Englishwoman; but there appeared to be nobody about the house, English, French, or Italian. The mistress of it (a young woman who had married an Italian) had, in fact, died a short time before of pure chagrin and disappointment in this solitary place, after having told her tale of distress to every one, till it fairly wore her out. We had leisure to look back to the town as we proceeded, and which, with its church, stone-cottages, and slated roofs, shrunk into a miniature-model of itself as we continued to advance farther and higher above it. Some straggling cottages, some vineyards planted at a great height, and another compact and well-built village, that seemed to defy the extremity of the seasons, were seen in the direction of the valley that we were pursuing. Else all around were shapeless, sightless piles of hills covered with snow, with crags or pine-trees or a foot-path peeping out, and in the appearance of which no alteration whatever was made by our advancing or receding. We gained on the mountain by a broad, winding road that continually doubles, and looks down upon the point from whence you started half an hour before. Some snow had fallen in the morning, but it was now fine, though cloudy. We found two of our fellow-travellers following our example, and they soon after overtook us. They were both French. We noticed some of the features of the scenery; and a lofty hill opposite to us being scooped out into a bed of snow, with two ridges or promontories projecting (something like an arm-chair) on each side. ‘Voilà!’ said the younger and more volatile of our companions, ‘c’est un trône, et le nuage est la gloire!‘—A white cloud indeed encircled its misty top. I complimented him on the happiness of his allusion, and said that Madame was pleased with the exactness of the resemblance. He then turned to the valley, and said, ‘C’est un berceau.’ This is the height to which the imagination of a Frenchman always soars, and it can soar no higher. Any thing that is not cast in this obvious, common-place mould, that had been used a thousand times before with applause, they think barbarous, and as they phrase it, originaire. No farther notice was taken of the scenery, any more than if we had been walking on the Boulevards at Paris, and my young Frenchman talked of other things, laughed, sung, and smoked a cigar with a gaiety and lightness of heart that I envied. ‘What has become,’ said the elder of the Frenchmen, ‘of Monsieur l’Espagnol? He does not easily quit his seat; he sits in one corner, never looks out, or if you point to any object, takes no notice of it; and when you come to the end of the stage, says—“What is the name of that place we passed by last?” takes out his pocket-book, and makes a note of it. “That is droll.”’ And what made it more so, it turned out that our Spanish friend was a painter, travelling to Rome to study the Fine Arts! All the way as we ascended, there were red posts placed at the edge of the road, ten or twelve feet in height, to point out the direction of the road in case of a heavy fall of snow, and with notches cut to shew the depth of the drifts. There were also scattered stone-hovels, erected as stations for the Gens d’armes, who were sometimes left here for several days together after a severe snow-storm, without being approached by a single human being. One of these stood near the top of the mountain, and as we were tired of the walk (which had occupied two hours) and of the uniformity of the view, we agreed to wait here for the Diligence to overtake us. We were cordially welcomed in by a young peasant (a soldier’s wife) with a complexion as fresh as the winds, and an expression as pure as the mountain-snows. The floor of this rude tenement consisted of the solid rock; and a three-legged table stood on it, on which were placed three earthen bowls filled with sparkling wine, heated on a stove with sugar. The woman stood by, and did the honours of this cheerful repast with a rustic simplicity and a pastoral grace that might have called forth the powers of Hemskirk and Raphael. I shall not soon forget the rich ruby colour of the wine, as the sun shone upon it through a low glazed window that looked out on the boundless wastes around, nor its grateful spicy smell as we sat round it. I was complaining of the trick that had been played by the waiter at Lyons in the taking of our places, when I was told by the young Frenchman, that, in case I returned to Lyons, I ought to go to the Hotel de l’Europe, or to the Hotel du Nord, ‘in which latter case he should have the honour of serving me.’ I thanked him for his information, and we set out to finish the ascent of Mount Cenis, which we did in another half-hour’s march. The traiteur of the Hotel du Nord and I had got into a brisk theatrical discussion on the comparative merits of Kean and Talma, he asserting that there was something in French acting which an English understanding could not appreciate; and I insisting loudly on bursts of passion as the forte of Talma, which was a language common to human nature; that in his Œdipus, for instance, it was not a Frenchman or an Englishman he had to represent—‘Mais c’est un homme, c’est Œdipe‘—when our cautious Spaniard brushed by us, determined to shew he could descend the mountain, if he would not ascend it on foot. His figure was characteristic enough, his motions smart and lively, and his dress composed of all the colours of the rainbow. He strutted on before us in the snow, like a flamingo or some tropical bird of variegated plumage; his dark purple cloak fluttered in the air, his Montero cap, set a little on one side, was of fawn colour; his waistcoat a bright scarlet, his coat a reddish brown, his trowsers a pea-green, and his boots a perfect yellow. He saluted us with a national politeness as he passed, and seemed bent on redeeming the sedentary sluggishness of his character by one bold and desperate effort of locomotion.
The coach shortly after overtook us. We descended a long and steep declivity, with the highest point of Mount Cenis on our left, and a lake to the right, like a landing-place for geese. Between the two was a low, white monastery, and the barrier where we had our passports inspected, and then went forward with only two stout horses and one rider. The snow on this side of the mountain was nearly gone. I supposed myself for some time nearly on level ground, till we came in view of several black chasms or steep ravines in the side of the mountain facing us, with water oozing from it, and saw through some galleries, that is, massy stone-pillars knit together by thick rails of strong timber, guarding the road-side, a perpendicular precipice below, and other galleries beyond, diminished in a fairy perspective, and descending ‘with cautious haste and giddy cunning,’ and with innumerable windings and re-duplications to an interminable depth and distance from the height where we were. The men and horses with carts, that were labouring up the path in the hollow below, shewed like crows or flies. The road we had to pass was often immediately under that we were passing, and cut from the side of what was all but a precipice out of the solid rock by the broad, firm master-hand that traced and executed this mighty work. The share that art has in the scene is as appalling as the scene itself—the strong security against danger as sublime as the danger itself. Near the turning of one of the first galleries is a beautiful waterfall, which at this time was frozen into a sheet of green pendant ice—a magical transformation. Long after we continued to descend, now faster and now slower, and came at length to a small village at the bottom of a sweeping line of road, where the houses seemed like dove-cotes with the mountain’s back reared like a wall behind them, and which I thought the termination of our journey. But here the wonder and the greatness began: for, advancing through a grove of slender trees to another point of the road, we caught a new view of the lofty mountain to our left. It stood in front of us, with its head in the skies, covered with snow, and its bare sides stretching far away into a valley that yawned at its feet, and over which we seemed suspended in mid air. The height, the magnitude, the immovableness of the objects, the wild contrast, the deep tones, the dance and play of the landscape from the change of our direction and the interposition of other striking objects, the continued recurrence of the same huge masses, like giants following us with unseen strides, stunned the sense like a blow, and yet gave the imagination strength to contend with a force that mocked it. Here immeasurable columns of reddish granite shelved from the mountain’s sides; here they were covered and stained with furze and other shrubs; here a chalky cliff shewed a fir-grove climbing its tall sides, and that itself looked at a distance like a huge, branching pine-tree; beyond was a dark, projecting knoll, or hilly promontory, that threatened to bound the perspective—but, on drawing nearer to it, the cloudy vapour that shrouded it (as it were) retired, and opened another vista beyond, that, in its own unfathomed depth, and in the gradual obscurity of twilight, resembled the uncertain gloom of the back-ground of some fine picture. At the bottom of this valley crept a sluggish stream, and a monastery or low castle stood upon its banks. The effect was altogether grander than I had any conception of. It was not the idea of height or elevation that was obtruded upon the mind and staggered it, but we seemed to be descending into the bowels of the earth—its foundations seemed to be laid bare to the centre; and abyss after abyss, a vast, shadowy, interminable space, opened to receive us. We saw the building up and frame-work of the world—its limbs, its ponderous masses, and mighty proportions, raised stage upon stage, and we might be said to have passed into an unknown sphere, and beyond mortal limits. As we rode down our winding, circuitous path, our baggage, (which had been taken off) moved on before us; a grey horse that had got loose from the stable followed it, and as we whirled round the different turnings in this rapid, mechanical flight, at the same rate and the same distance from each other, there seemed something like witchcraft in the scene and in our progress through it. The moon had risen, and threw its gleams across the fading twilight; the snowy tops of the mountains were blended with the clouds and stars; their sides were shrouded in mysterious gloom, and it was not till we entered Susa, with its fine old drawbridge and castellated walls, that we found ourselves on terra firma, or breathed common air again. At the inn at Susa, we first perceived the difference of Italian manners; and the next day arrived at Turin, after passing over thirty miles of the straightest, flattest, and dullest road in the world. Here we stopped two days to recruit our strength and look about us.
CHAPTER XV
My arrival at Turin was the first and only moment of intoxication I have found in Italy. It is a city of palaces. After a change of dress (which, at the end of a long journey, is a great luxury) I walked out, and traversing several clean, spacious streets, came to a promenade outside the town, from which I saw the chain of Alps we had left behind us, rising like a range of marble pillars in the evening sky. Monte Viso and Mount Cenis resembled two pointed cones of ice, shooting up above all the rest. I could distinguish the broad and rapid Po, winding along at the other extremity of the walk, through vineyards and meadow grounds. The trees had on that deep sad foliage, which takes a mellower tinge from being prolonged into the midst of winter, and which I had only seen in pictures. A Monk was walking in a solitary grove at a little distance from the common path. The air was soft and balmy, and I felt transported to another climate—another earth—another sky. The winter was suddenly changed to spring. It was as if I had to begin my life anew. Several young Italian women were walking on the terrace, in English dresses, and with graceful downcast looks, in which you might fancy that you read the soul of the Decameron. It was a fine, serious grace, equally remote from French levity and English sullenness, but it was the last I saw of it. I have run the gauntlet of vulgar shapes and horrid faces ever since. The women in Italy (so far as I have seen hitherto) are detestably ugly. They are not even dark and swarthy, but a mixture of brown and red, coarse, marked with the small pox, with pug-features, awkward, ill-made, fierce, dirty, lazy, neither attempting nor hoping to please. Italian beauty (if there is, as I am credibly informed, such a thing) is retired, conventual, denied to the common gaze. It was and it remains a dream to me, a vision of the brain! I returned to the inn (the Pension Suisse) in high spirits, and made a most luxuriant dinner. We had a wild duck equal to what we had in Paris, and the grapes were the finest I ever tasted. Afterwards we went to the Opera, and saw a ballet of action (out-heroding Herod) with all the extravagance of incessant dumb-show and noise, the glittering of armour, the burning of castles, the clattering of horses on and off the stage, and heroines like furies in hysterics. Nothing at Bartholomew Fair was ever in worse taste, noisier, or finer. It was as if a whole people had buried their understandings, their imaginations, and their hearts in their senses; and as if the latter were so jaded and worn out, that they required to be inflamed, dazzled, and urged almost to a kind of frenzy-fever, to feel any thing. The house was crowded to excess, and dark, all but the stage, which shed a dim, ghastly light on the gilt boxes and the audience. Milton might easily have taken his idea of Pandemonium from the inside of an Italian Theatre, its heat, its gorgeousness, and its gloom. We were at the back of the pit, in which there was only standing room, and leaned against the first row of boxes, full of the Piedmontese Nobility, who talked fast and loud in their harsh guttural dialect, in spite of the repeated admonitions of ‘a gentle usher, Authority by name,’ who every five seconds hissed some lady of quality and high breeding whose voice was heard with an éclat above all the rest. No notice whatever was taken of the acting or the singing (which was any thing but Italian, unless Italian at present means a bad imitation of the French) till a comic dance attracted all eyes, and drew forth bursts of enthusiastic approbation. I do not know the performers’ names, but a short, squat fellow (a kind of pollard of the green-room) dressed in a brown linsey-woolsey doublet and hose, with round head, round shoulders, short arms and short legs, made love to a fine die-away lady, dressed up in the hoops, lappets and furbelows of the last age, and stumped, nodded, pulled and tugged at his mistress with laudable perseverance, and in determined opposition to the awkward, mawkish graces of an Adonis of a rival, with flowing locks, pink ribbons, yellow kerseymere breeches, and an insipid expression of the utmost distress. It was an admirable grotesque and fantastic piece of pantomime humour. The little fellow who played the Clown, certainly entered into the part with infinite adroitness and spirit. He merited the teres et rotundus of the poet. He bounded over the stage like a foot-ball, rolled himself up like a hedge-hog, stuck his arms in his sides like fins, rolled his eyes in his head like bullets—and the involuntary plaudits of the audience witnessed the success of his efforts at once to electrify and stultify them! The only annoyance I found at Turin was the number of beggars who are stuck against the walls like fixtures, and expose their diseased, distorted limbs, with no more remorse or feeling than if they did not belong to them, deafening you with one wearisome cry the whole day long.
We were fortunate enough to find a voiture going from Geneva to Florence, with an English lady and her niece—I bargained for the two remaining places for ten guineas, and the journey turned out pleasantly, I believe, to all parties; I am sure it did so to us. We were to be eight days on the road, and to stop two days to rest, once at Parma, and once at Bologna, to see the pictures. Having made this arrangement, I was proceeding over the bridge towards the Observatory that commands a view of the town and the whole surrounding country, and had quite forgotten that I had such a thing as a passport to take with me. I found, however, I had no fewer than four signatures to procure, besides the six that were already tacked to my passport, before I could proceed, and which I had some difficulty in obtaining in time to set out on the following morning. The hurry I was thrown into by this circumstance prevented me from seeing some fine Rembrandts, Spagnolettos and Caraccis, which I was told are to be found in the Palace of Prince Carignani and elsewhere. I received this piece of information from my friend the Spaniard, who called on me to inquire my proposed route, and to ‘testify,’ as he said, ‘his respect for the English character.’ Shall I own it? I who flout, rail at, and contemn the English, was more pleased with this compliment paid to me in my national character, than with any I ever received on the score of personal civility. My fellow-traveller was for Genoa and Milan; I for Florence: but we were to meet at Rome.
The next morning was clear and frosty, and the sun shone bright into the windows of the voiture, as we left Turin, and proceeded for some miles at a gentle pace along the banks of the Po. The road was level and excellent, and we met a number of market people with mules and yokes of oxen. There were some hills crowned with villas; some bits of traditional Italian scenery now and then; but in general you would not know but that you were in England, except from the greater clearness and lightness of the air. We breakfasted at the first town we came to, in two separate English groups, and I could not help being struck with the manner of our reception at an Italian inn, which had an air of indifference, insolence, and hollow swaggering about it, as much as to say, ‘Well, what do you think of us Italians? Whatever you think, we care very little about the matter!’ The French are a politer people than the Italians—the English are honester; but I may as well postpone these comparisons till my return. The room smoked, and the waiter insisted on having the windows and the door open, in spite of my remonstrances to the contrary. He flung in and out of the room as if he had a great opinion of himself, and wished to express it by a braggadocio air. The partridges, coffee, cheese and grapes, on which we breakfasted à la fourchette, were, however, excellent. I said so, but the acknowledgment seemed to be considered as superfluous by our attendant, who received five francs for his master, and one for himself, with an air of condescending patronage. In consequence of something being said about our passports, he relaxed in the solemnity of his deportment, and observed that ‘he had been once near being engaged as valet to an English gentleman, at Ostend; that he had but three hours to procure his passport, but while he was getting it, the ship sailed, and he lost his situation.’ Such was my first impression of Italian inns and waiters, and I have seen nothing since materially to alter it. They receive you with a mixture of familiarity and fierceness, and instead of expecting any great civility from them, they excite that sort of uncomfortable sensation as to the footing you are upon, that you are glad to get away without meeting with some affront. There is either a fawning sleekness, which looks like design, or an insolence, which looks as if they had you in their power. In Switzerland and Savoy you are waited on by women; in Italy by men. I cannot say I like the exchange. From Turin to Florence, only one girl entered the room, and she (not to mend the matter) was a very pretty one.—I was told at the office of Messrs. Bonnafoux at Turin, that travelling to Rome by a vetturino was highly dangerous, and that their Diligence was guarded by four carabineers, to defend it from the banditti. I saw none, nor the appearance of any thing that looked like a robber, except a bare-foot friar, who suddenly sprang out of a hedge by the road-side, with a somewhat wild and haggard appearance, which a little startled me. Instead of finding a thief concealed behind each bush, or a Salvator Rosa face scowling from a ruined hovel, or peeping from a jutting crag at every turn, there is an excellent turnpike-road all the way, three-fourths perfectly level, skirted with hedges, corn-fields, orchards and vineyards, populous with hamlets and villages, with labourers at work in the fields, and with crowds of peasants in gay, picturesque attire, and with healthy, cheerful, open, but manly countenances, passing along, either to or from the different market-towns. It was Carnival time; and as we travelled on, we were struck with the variety of rich dresses, red, yellow, and green, the high-plaited head-dresses of the women, some in the shape of helmets, with pins stuck in them like skewers, with gold crosses at their bosoms, and large muffs on their hands, who poured from the principal towns along the high-road, or turned off towards some village-spire in the distance, chequering the landscape with their gaily-tinted groups. They often turned back and laughed as we drove by them, or passed thoughtfully on without noticing us, but assuredly showed no signs of an intention to rob or murder us. Even in the Apennines, though the road is rugged and desolate, it is lined with farm-houses and towns at small distances; and there is but one house all the way that is stained by the recollection of a tragic catastrophe. How it may be farther south, I cannot say; but so far, the reports to alarm strangers are (to the best of my observation and conjecture) totally unfounded.