don't correct)--having, I say, had the
Croat-guarded gates of Austria opened to me till I should find it
convenient to enter, I retraced the few paces which divided the Dogana
from the bridge, and stood above the rolling floods of the Ticino.

Refreshing it verily was to turn from the petty tyrannies of an Austrian
custom-house, to the free, joyous, and glorious face of nature. Before
me were the Alps, just shaking the cold night mists from their shaggy
pine-clad sides, as might a lion the dew-drops from his mane. Here rose
Monte Rosa in a robe of never-fading glory and beauty; and there stood
Mont Blanc, with his diadem of dazzling snows. The giant had planted his
feet deep amid rolling hills, covered with villages, and pine-forests,
and rich pastures. Anywhere else these would have been mountains; but,
dwarfed by the majestic form in whose presence they stood, they looked
like small eminences, scattered gracefully at his base, as pebbles at
the foot of some lofty pile. On his breast floated the fleecy clouds of
morn, while his summit rose high above these clouds, and stood, in the
calm of the firmament, a stupendous pile of ice and snow. Never had I
seen the Alps to such advantage. The level plain ran quite up to them,
and allowed the eye to take their full height from their flower-girt
base to their icy summit. Hundreds and hundreds of peaks ran along the
sky, conical, serrated, needle-shaped, jagged, some flaming like the
ruby in the morning ray, others dazzlingly white as the alabaster.

As I bent over the parapet, gazing on the flood that rolled beneath, I
could not help contrasting the bounty of nature with the oppression of
man. Here had this river been flowing through the long centuries,
dispensing its blessings without stop or grudge. Day and night, summer
and winter, it had rolled gladsomely onwards, bringing verdure to the
field, fruitage to the bough, and plenty to the peasant's cot. Now it
laved the flower on its brink,--now it fed the umbrageous sycamore and
the tall poplar on the plain,--and now it sent off a crystal streamlet
to meander through corn-field and meadow-land. It exacted nothing of man
for the blessings it so unweariedly dispensed. It gave all freely.
Whether, said I to myself, does Italy owe most to its rivers or to its
Governments? Its rivers give it corn and wine: its Governments give it
chains and prisons. They load the patient Lombard with burdens that
press him down into toil and pove