V. THE SIMPLON 331

all the greener for it. Such richness I never saw in Italy; the hay just cut, leaving the grass crisp and short; the grey trunks and rich leaves mixed with mossy rock, and the cliffs above, nobler than Amalfi: the sunset sent down rays of opaque gold between me and the Jura, bringing out the successive rises of the Pays de Vaud; the Jura a golden shadow, sharp-edged and baseless in the sky.”

Hence, we crossed the Simplon to Baveno and back,-for the Simplon’s and Lago Maggiore’s sake only.

“BAVENO, July 12th.-I have more feeling for Italy than ever, but it makes me deeply sad. The vines and pasture about this place make it a Paradise; the people are fine-featured, and singularly graceful in motion; but there is every appearance of hopeless vice. Four men have been playing cards and drinking, without stirring, in the inn-yard since twelve o’clock (noon. I had come in from an evening walk), and the gardens and enclosed spots of ground are foul as dunghills. The Isola Bella is fast going to decay-all the stucco of it green, damp, shattered, covered with weeds and dead leaves; yet the flowers and foliage of surpassing beauty.”

And to this day, the uselessness of San Carlo’s memory is to me one of the entirely wonderfullest things in Catholic history;¹-that Rome should go on sending missionaries to China, and, within a thousand yards across the water from St. Carlo’s isle, leave the people of her own Italy’s Garden of Eden in guilt and misery. I call the Lago Maggiore district the Eden of Italy; for there are no solfataras there, no earthquakes, no pestiferous marsh, no fever-striking sunshine. Purest air, richest earth, loveliest wave;² and the same noble race that founded the architecture of Italy at Como.

¹ [For another reference to St. Carlo Borromeo, see Vol. XVII. p. 86.]

² [Compare The Cestus of Aglaia, § 83 (Vol. XIX. p. 130).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]