n entering by the immense
fresco which covers one whole side of the court, it appeared to my
friend and me no wonder that Garibaldi should look so longingly from the
prow of a gondola toward the airy towers and balloon-like domes that
swim above the unattainable lagoons of Venice, where the Austrian then
lorded it in coolness and quietness, while hot, red-shirted Italy was
shut out upon the dusty plains and stony hills. Our desire for water
became insufferable; we paid our modest bills, and at six o'clock we
took the train for Como, where we arrived about the hour when Don
Abbondio, walking down the lonely path with his book of devotions in his
hand, gave himself to the Devil on meeting the bravos of Don Rodrigo. I
counsel the reader to turn to _I Promessi Sposi_, if he would know how
all the lovely Como country looks at that hour. For me, the ride through
the evening landscape, and the faint sentiment of pensiveness provoked
by the smell of the ripening maize, which exhales the same sweetness on
the way to Como that it does on any Ohio bottom-land, have given me an
appetite, and I am to dine before wooing the descriptive Muse.

After dinner, we find at the door of the hotel an English architect whom
we know, and we take a boat together for a moonlight row upon the lake,
and voyage far up the placid water through air that bathes our heated
senses like dew. How far we have left Milan behind! On the lake lies the
moon, but the hills are held by mysterious shadows, which for the time
are as substantial to us as the hills themselves. Hints of habitation
appear in the twinkling lights along the water's edge, and we suspect an
alabaster lamp in every casement, and in every invisible house a villa
such as Claude Melnotte described to Pauline, and some one mouths that
well-worn 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 pretence of shelter in the awning stretched