CHAPTER XLIII. Beauty of the Lake of Como.-Como to Milan.-Leonardo da Vinci. How strange it is that the beauty of Italy is so mingled with decay and death! Between Chiavenna and the Lake of Como, if you stop anywhere by night, you do it at your peril. The malaria fever lies in ambush where the mountain streams from the Val Bregaglia, the vale of Lira, and the Valteline, have slowly intruded their marshy shoals in plains that may of old have been covered by the Lake of Como. We started from Chiavenna, through this desolate region, early in the morning by the diligence, and in a few hours arrived at Colico on the Lake, for the purpose of embarking in the steamer, that daily about noon departs for Como. You bid adieu to the companionship of mountains, that have so long been personal friends, with great regret, though you are launched upon one of the most beautiful water-scenes in the world, and one of the grandest also; for the mountains that invest the Lake of Como give it an air of sublimity and grandeur as impressive as its beauty is attractive. It is about forty miles in length, bordered by a mountain landscape of perpetual richness, magnificence, and beauty. But let no man, who has leisure to explore its beauties, cross it in a steamer. There are row-boats and sail-boats, and you should take a day or two with a dear friend, or in quiet solitude, to run into its nooks, its enclosures, to land at its picturesque cliffs and recesses, and to watch the clouds, the rocks, and the foliage reflected in its bosom, with nothing but the dipping oar to break its silence, or ruffle its smoothness. There is great enjoyment in such a sail, and it is only thus that you can become acquainted with the genius loci, the soul and spirit of the lake and the landscape. At the town of Como you feel that you are in Italy, and how vast the change. from the mountains of Switzerland to this sunny clime! We were in haste to reach Milan, and there being nothing to detain us at Como, we secured the only two remaining seats in the diligence, and passed on. A tree fell directly across the road in one part of our way, and falling between the horses and the carriage, stopped us completely, so that the laborers were obliged to cut through the tree on both sides of the road, before we could be extricated. Besides this, we were delayed by an angry altercation between our conductor and an English coachman, with whom he got into a squabble, raising the whole populace, together with the officers of justice, in a little village on the road. Such a clatter and storm of fierce words and furious gesticulations would have been rare to meet anywhere else out of Bedlam; but after all, we arrived safe, though late, the same evening at Milan. How heavenly the enchantment which, from the Italian side, distance lends to the mountains of Switzerland! Every step we departed from them seemed to render the view more beautiful. They began to appear like another world floating in mid-heaven; it was as if we were coasting a neighboring planet, battlemented and turreted with crags of diamond, and divided from us by fields of cerulean space. Meantime, the open country, through which we are travelling, is full of luxuriance. One can never forget the transcendent glory of the horizon, with the evening sun against it. It is the picture drawn by Milton, but reduplicated in broad space in the heavens. "Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where heaven Slowly descended; and with right aspect Against the eastern gate of Paradise Levelled his evening rays: it was a rock The day shuts upon such scenery, just as the thickening thoroughfares, the passing and repassing peasantry, with wains and donkey-wagons, and the glimmering of suburban lights, tell you that you are nearing a great city. At length you drive under its proud arches, and in the strange romance that surrounds you, on first being set down at dusk among new ranges of buildings and faces, as in the transitions of a dream, you wait for the examination of your passports. That done, you drive on again through streets, now deserted and murky, and now gay and crowded, into the well lighted centres of evening life and activity; perhaps you are whirled past the blaze of the great theatre. What creature in all the crowd cares for you, or knows of your existence? You are as a water-drop falling into a great river. But you need not fear; you are to be carefully sponged up and preserved separate. There is now a watch over you, on earth as well as in heaven. But if you find as much difficulty in getting lodgings as we did, you will begin to wish you had stayed away from Italy. It was past midnight before we found any other shelter than the ante-room of the post-house, for the city was literally crammed with strangers; but we did at length, by dint of runners, discover a fine range of rooms over a common pot-house, where we established ourselves very pleasantly. A fine range of rooms over a common pot-house, and established pleasantly! What! and decently also? Yes, and far more respectably and comfortably, than just at that time we could have been at any of the crowded hotels at which we applied in vain for entrance. The juxta-position of the extremes of refinement and of low life is no uncommon thing in these countries. You may have luxury and quiet, unsuspected and unenvied, far enough away from palaces. It was amusing to us to see the goings on of life in the tavern below our suite of apartments. The common people seemed to enjoy themselves as freely and heartily, as if they were eating and drinking in an atmosphere of genuine liberty. But no man can forget that the quiet here is maintained by Austrian bayonets. Milan is one of the first cities in Italy, though there is not so much of curious and beautiful sight-seeing as in Florence or Naples, nor so fine a climate, neither a volcano with Pompeii at its feet, nor a splendid bay in the Mediterranean. It is more healthful than many places in the kingdom. One might find many things of the deepest interest to say of its legendary history, but we cannot dwell upon this, nor upon the statistical province of the guide books. I had visited Milan some years before, but had entered it in the rain, stayed in it through the rain, and passed from it in a rain-storm; circumstances not the most favorable for seeing a fine city. Almost the only thing I remembered was its white glittering Cathedral, and its college of fine old paintings, the College of Brera. Then there is the dim shadowy spectre of Leonardo da Vinci's great painting of the Last Supper. No man would visit it, if it were not for what it had been; it is like visiting the house in which Shakspeare lived, or the room in which Milton died; the occupant is gone. In looking at the picture, you find yourself gazing not so much at what is there, but endeavoring to see what is not there. It is as if one led you to a dim room filled with apparitions, some ante-chamber to the land of shades, and you should vainly strain your sight for some known image, but you only see "the shadowy forms That seem things dead, and dead again." Sixteen years did the Artist labor upon this painting with slow and patient toil, the fruit of intense contemplation. He was one of the most universal and commanding geniuses of Italy, and doubtless the painting was in all respects the most perfect the world ever saw. It would have matched the Transfiguration by Raphael, had it been painted on canvas, in undecaying colors. But one half century and a little more, sufficed, by various accidents and exposure, for its almost complete destruction; and by so many hands has it been retouched, mended and painted anew, that it would probably be impossible for the most consummate judge of art to find in it a trace of the pencil of the original author. CHAPTER XLIV. The Cathedral of Milan.-The Gospel in Italy. You have Nature in Switzerland and Art in Italy. The tran sition is great from cloud and snow-capped mountains and thundering waterfalls, to the ribbed chapels and aisles of cathedrals, with saints and angels sculptured upon slender spires, and the organ solemnly pealing. The Duomo of Milan is the first full introduction for the stranger from the North into the Ecclesiastical splendors of a past artistic world. From great mountains to some gigantic supernatural structure, like the colossal Temple of Karnak in Thebes, would be a change more fitting to the feelings; but coming from the cities or the plains of Lombardy, the sight of the architectural pile at Milan is truly imposing and majestic. The Cathedral is claimed by the Milanese as the eighth wonder of the world. It rises in the very heart of the city, a magnificent broad pile of white marble, sculptured and entablatured on the face and sides with groups of statuary, and pinnacled at every angle and corner with lofty and delicate spires, which bear upon their summits each a majestic statue of white marble. One hundred and sixteen of these spires are visible at once, and the sculptured forms springing from their slender extremities look as if suspended in the air by magic. The great tower of the Cathedral is an almost interminable labyrinth of marble statuary and tracery at so great height, and so light and delicate, that it seems as if the first strong wind would prostrate the whole, or scatter its rocky lace-work like leaves in autumn. If you can conceive of a river of liquid white marble shot into the air to the height of five hundred feet, and then suddenly petrified while falling, you will come to some approximation of the beauty and rareness of this magnificent vision. It seems like a petrified oriental dream, and if it had stood in Venice, opposite |