ny
other part of Europe--of which Monte Generoso, now covered with snow,
though with a hotel on the top, is the most conspicuous. The country
more immediately around us is a district of rolling hills, partly
vineyard, but in a larger degree wooded, and here and there
diversified by the well-cared-for gardens of some large villa. Our
outlook, it will be admitted, is pleasant enough. The house I am
speaking of, now known under the style and title of the "Excelsior
Hotel," was recently a magnificent villa of the Morosini family at
Venice. The name will not be new to any who have visited Venice; for
the traveler, even if his tastes did not lead him to take any heed of
such matters, will not have been allowed by the _ciceroni_ to overlook
the tombs of the doges of that family in the grand old church of the
beheaded Saint John, _San Giovanni decollata,_ or "San Zuan Degola,"
as the soft-lisping Venetians call it. Yes, the Morosini were very
great men in their day: more than one of the brightest chapters in
the history of the great republic on the Adriatic is filled with their
name. But now their place knows them no more: the family is extinct.
The last scion of the race, an old lady who died quite recently at
Varese, is said to have declared that it was time for a Morosini to
retire from the scene when their house was about to be turned into an
inn. Poor old lady! One could have wished that she had vanished before
that desecration had been threatened, especially as her end was so
near at hand; for it would, I fear, have been too much to wish that
the Excelsior Hotel should have been kept out of existence for another
generation.

The Morosini had palaces among the most splendid of that city of
palaces, Venice, as may be seen to the present day. But this Varese
villa was their place of delight and enjoyment. And truly the ideas
which we generally attach to the word "villa" are scarcely
represented by the magnificent building to which the public are now
indiscriminately invited. It is an enormous pile of building, the vast
garden-frontage of which makes considerable claims to architectural
magnificence. There are, especially in Switzerland, very magnificent
and palace-like hotels which have been built for the purpose they
now serve, but the fact that they were so built has very effectually
prevented even the most splendid among them from rivaling, or indeed
approaching, the grandiose magnificence of this superb hostelrie,
whic