rn fustian. The rags of sentimentality flutter
from every crag and olive-tree and orange-tree in all Italy--like the
wilted paper collars which vulgar tourists leave by our own mountains
and streams, to commemorate their enjoyment of the landscape.

The town of Como lies, a swarm of lights, behind us; the hills and
shadows gloom around; the lake is a sheet of tremulous silver. There
is no telling how we get back to our hotel, or with what satisfied
hearts we fall asleep in our room there. The steamer starts for the
head of the lake at eight o'clock in the morning, and we go on board
at that hour.

There is some pretense of shelter in the awning stretched over the
after part of the boat; but we do not feel the need of it in the fresh
morning air, and we get as near the bow as possible, that we may be
the very first to enjoy the famous beauty of the scenes opening
before us. A few sails dot the water, and everywhere there are small,
canopied row-boats, such as we went pleasuring in last night. We reach
a bend in the lake, and all the roofs and towers of the city of Como
pass from view, as if they had been so much architecture painted on
a scene and shifted out of sight at a theatre. But other roofs and
towers constantly succeed them, not less lovely and picturesque than
they, with every curve of the many-curving lake. We advance over
charming expanses of water lying between lofty hills; and as the lake
is narrow, the voyage is like that of a winding river,--like that of
the Ohio, but for the primeval wildness of the acclivities that guard
our Western stream, and the tawniness of its current. Wherever the
hills do not descend sheer into Como, a pretty town nestles on the
brink, or, if not a town, then a villa, or else a cottage, if there is
room for nothing more. Many little towns climb the heights half-way,
and where the hills are green and cultivated in vines or olives,
peasants' houses scale them to the crest. They grow loftier and
loftier as we leave our starting-place farther behind, and as we
draw near Colico they wear light wreaths of cloud and snow. So cool
a breeze has drawn down between them all the way that we fancy it to
have come from them till we stop at Colico, and find that, but for the
efforts of our honest engine, sweating and toiling in the dark
below, we should have had no current of air. A burning calm is in
the atmosphere, and on the broad, flat valley,--out of which a marshy
stream oozes into the l