number of the _Gazetta del Popolo_,--the same which I have
already mentioned as given me by the editors in Turin. This, thought I,
will prove the dead fly in my box of ointment. The sheet was opened and
examined. "Have you," said the official, "any more?" I could reply with
a clear conscience that I had not. To my surprise, the paper was
returned to me. He next took up my note-book. Now, said I to myself,
this is a worse scrape than the other. What a blockhead I am not to have
put the book into my pocket; for, except in extreme cases, the
traveller's person is never searched. The man opened the thin volume,
and found it inscribed with mysterious and strange characters. It was
written in short-hand. He turned over the leaves; on every page the same
unreadable signs met the eye. He held it by the top, and next by the
bottom: it was equally inscrutable either way. He shut it, and examined
its exterior, but there was nothing on the outside to afford a key to
the mystic characters within. He then turned to me for an explanation of
the suspicious little book. Affecting all the unconcern I could, I told
him that it contained only a few commonplace jottings of my journey. He
opened the book; took one other leisurely survey of it; then looked at
me, and back again at the book; and, after a considerable pause, big
with the fate of my book, he made me a bland bow, and handed me the
volume. I was equally polite on my part, inly resolving, that
henceforward Austrian douanier should not lay finger on my note-book.

The halt here was one of from two to three hours, which were spent in
unlading the _diligence_, opening and locking trunks,--for in Austria
nothing is done in a hurry, save the trial and execution of Mazzinists.
But the long halt was nothing to me: I could not possibly lose time, and
I could scarce be stopped at the wrong place; and certainly the bridge
of the Ticino is the very spot one would select for such a halt, were
the matter left in one's own choice. It commands the finest assemblage
of grand objects, in a ride abounding in magnificent objects throughout.
Having been pronounced, in passport phrase, "good to enter
Austria,"--for my carpet-bag was clean, though doubtless my mind was
foul with all sorts of notions which, in the latitude of Austria, are
rankly heretical,--(and, by the way, of what use is it to search trunks,
and leave breasts unexplored? Here is an imperfection in the system,
which I wonder the Jesuits