trees, hanging like white hair about some bald, gigantic head, while beneath them roars a torrent, its waters cream-thick with snow. These vanish also as the white curtain grows too dense for the eye to pierce. Suddenly it thins and lifts, and there, far down below, appears a toy town with a toy wood-built church. Next an enormous gulf, and in its depths a torrent raging. always a sense of mountains, invisible indeed but overhanging, impending, vast.

And

Now a little hut is seen and by it a blue-robed woman, signal-flag in hand. There, heedless of the bitter wind and weather she stands, like the wife of Lot, stonestill and white with snow. We rush past her into mile upon mile of tunnel, to pull up at last by some little mountain station where the drifts lie deep.

Here I beheld an instance of true politeness. Two Italian gentlemen, one old, one young, were engaged at the useful task of clearing the rails with long-handled shovels and depositing the snow in barrows for removal. Presently the younger of the pair, giving way to some sudden sportive impulse, shot a whole spadeful of snow over his companion's head. Imagine how such an unexpected compliment would have been received by the average English navvy! Next morning the police-courts would have rung with it. As it was, remembering the fiery southern blood, I expected to see knives flash in the mountain air. But not so. The older person merely coughed, shook the snow from his grizzled locks, and with a deep bow and splendid sweeping gesture-pointed to the barrow. Could reproof have been more gentle or more effective?

Beyond the tunnels to our joy the snow is much thinner, mere patches indeed, lying in the hollows of enormous bold-shouldered mountains whose steep flanks are streaked with white ropes of water, or here and there by the foam of some great fall. In the kloofs also cling lumps and lines of dense mist, like clouds that have sunk

from heaven and rested there. Down in the valley where the railway runs, begin to appear evidences of a milder climate, for vines, grown upon a trellis-work of poles, are seen in plots, and by the stream bank flourish willows, alders, and poplars. So through changing scenes we run southwards into Italy and welcome a softer air.

I have visited many cathedrals in various parts of the world, but I cannot remember one that struck me more than the interior of that of Milan, which I now explored for the first time. I say the interior advisedly, since the exterior, with its unnumbered pinnacles and thousands of statues, does not particularly appeal to my taste in architecture, such as it may be. The grand proportions of the building as viewed from within, the tall fluted columns, the rich windows, the lace-worked roof of the marble dome-an effect produced by painting, as a loquacious and disturbing cicerone insisted upon informing us, with many other details which we did not seekthe noble cruciform design; all such beauties are familiar to many readers and doubtless may be equalled, if not surpassed, elsewhere. As it happened, however, we found more than these, or being fortunate in the time and circumstances of our visit, to me they suggested more.

Passing the ancient door from the busy piazza where electric cars glide up and down continually like misshapen boats with bells fixed in front of them, and pushing aside the heavy curtain of leather, of a sudden we stood in another world. Life and death could scarcely be more different. Vast spaces, very dim, for it was four o'clock on a winter's day, full of shadow and a certain majestic emptiness. Column upon column, more than the eye could number, and above, the scarce-seen, arching roof. In the far distance of the apse something white about the sanctuary, in fact a great veil of which I do not know the use or symbolical significance, but from where we saw it first, suggesting the appearance of the white wings of some angel cherishing the altar of his

God. Then upon that altar itself twinkling sparks of light, and, swinging high in front of it, near to the towering roof indeed, like some sleepless eye watching from above, another starry lamp.

Along the vast nave, down the empty aisles creeps the stately, measured music of the organ. Now quite suddenly sweet voices take up their chant and the offering of song arises, falls to rise again, till slowly its echoes faint and die in the spaces of the dome. As we draw near through the cold and perfumed gloom, priests become visible, robed in white vestments and moving to and fro about the shrine. Others also, or may be they are acolytes, pass from time to time down through the sparse congregation into the body of the church and there vanish to right or left.

The invisible censers swing, we hear their clanking chains and perceive the clouds of incense which float upwards one by one, past the tall lights of the candles. The voices chant still more sweetly and the music of the organ sinks low as though it too were human, and knew that in such a hallowed dusk and silence it is well to whisper. The bright-robed priests, from time to time breaking in upon the ceremonial with utterances of their own that are scarcely less harmonious, move mysteriously, waving their hands like to the officers of some gorgeous, magic incantation, till at length-let him confess it-the mind of the observer softens and he understands, even sympathises with, much at which he has been wont to smile, and presently will smile again. Great is the Church of Rome, who knows so well how to touch our nature on its mystic side and through it reach the heart.

To all this solemn splendour there were but few spectators. The scanty audience of worshippers, or such of them as sat outside the choir and could be easily observed, consisted for the greater part of aged men. Among these one old gentleman-I should put his years

at eighty-attracted my particular attention. His face was still handsome and sharply cut, his short hair snowwhite, and his appearance that of one who had been a soldier. Most noticeable, however, was the extraordinary earnestness and devotion of his bearing. His presence there could be no perfunctory observance, this was easy to be seen. Easy was it to guess also that this man from whom, many as they had been, the sands of life. were ebbing fast, appreciated the fateful truth only too keenly, and, while time remained to him, was endeavouring with a desperate vigour, through the avenues provided by his Church, to win the freedom of a more abiding city. The whole tragic story was written there, in those upturned tearful eyes, those clasped and trembling hands upon which even in that half light the blue veins showed, and on the worn features so purified by time, loss, and sorrow that no beauty of their youth could rival them to-day. A pathetic sight indeed, rightly studied and understood, suggesting many thoughts, but one frequent enough in such places.

So farewell to Milan cathedral, its music, priests, and mystery. Farewell also to that sad old worshipper whose face I shall not see again, and who for his part will never know that the Englishman standing by his side there upon a certain winter evening took note of him and wondered.

CHAPTER II

A TUSCAN WINE-FARM

FOR generations past, visitors to Italy have written about Florence. Therefore, mindful of a certain saying, I propose to leave that noble army unrecruited. Here the reader will find no account of the architecture of its cathedrals; no list of the best pictures, no raptures over the loveliness of Giotto's Campanile-a building, by the way, that grows very much upon the observer, or at least, upon this observer-whose charm also varies more with the conditions of the light than any other with which I am acquainted.

Still a few general remarks may be permitted; for instance on the climate, which is the common property of every traveller and requires no critical training to appreciate. What a climate it is in the month of January—or can be, for with my common evil chance it appears that we "happened on," as they say in Norfolk, the worst winter experienced in Tuscany for many, many years. Such was ever my fortune! Once I went to Iceland to fish for salmon, a country where habitually it pours, but the summer proved the driest that had been known for decades. To the ordinary traveller this would have been a satisfactory circumstance, to the seeker after salmon, which love a swollen river, it was disastrous. Other notable instances occur to me but I pass them by, for, according to the accounts of all inhabitants of the places visited, these misfortunes are common to voyaging mankind.

Within the space of a single month we enjoyed at