ch contrast to any other city in Italy as to lead the
sojourner to ask himself whether he can still be on the southern side of
the Alpine range. In the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele Milan has the most
wonderful structure in all Europe. This arcade was built in 1865, and
under the magnificent glass dome it includes nearly one hundred of the
most attractive and well-stocked shops, bazaars, and establishments. The
dome is decorated with frescoes and caryatides, and with the statues of
numbers of eminent men, among whom are Dante, Raphael, Savonarola, and
Cavour. The offices and banks in Milan are centres of incessant energy.

For all this stress of activity the visitor does not, however, forget
the art features; the visit to the antique Church of St. Ambrosio; to
the old convent where Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated fresco, "The Last
Supper," is to be seen, though so faded that it is now difficult to
discern all the figures. Nor does he fail to climb the wonderful
cathedral that lifts its airy grace, as if about to float upward in the
skies. Every flight of the steps, in the ascent, brings one to a new
vision of beauty. On the roof of this cathedral one wanders as in a very
forest of sculpture. Its scheme of decoration includes more than two
thousand statues, two of which are by Canova. From the summit, when the
air is clear, there are beautiful views of the Alps.

To the savant and scholar the Ambrosian library in Milan is one of the
special treasures of Europe. It contains some of the most rare and
valuable manuscripts in the entire world,--some of Virgil's with
annotations from Petrarcha; a manuscript of Dante's; drawings by
Leonardo da Vinci, and other interesting matters of which no other
copies exist.

The Magic Land is seen under its most bewitching spell in the region of
the Italian lakes. The palace of Isola Bella; the charming gardens; the
lake of Como, green-walled in hills whose luxuriant foliage and bloom
form a framework for the white villas that cluster on their terraced
slopes,--all form a very fairyland of ethereal, rose-embowered beauty.
At night the lakes are a strange, unreal world of silver lights and
shadows.

The completion of the Simplon tunnel has opened between Italy and Paris
a route not only offering swifter facilities for transit, but adding
another to the regions of beauty. This route has also still further
increased the commercial importance of Milan, the portal and metropolis
of Northern Ita