disputed sway by obliterating the handiwork of men; and at present
Nature forms the chief charm of Canossa. Lying one afternoon of May on
the crisp short grass at the edge of a precipice purple with iris in
full blossom, I surveyed, from what were once the battlements of
Matilda's castle, a prospect than which there is none more
spirit-stirring by reason of its beauty and its manifold associations
in Europe. The lower castle-crowded hills have sunk. Reggio lies at
our feet, shut in between the crests of Monte Carboniano and Monte
delle Celle. Beyond Reggio stretches Lombardy--the fairest and most
memorable battlefield of nations, the richest and most highly
cultivated garden of civilised industry. Nearly all the Lombard cities
may be seen, some of them faint like bluish films of vapour, some
clear with dome and spire. There is Modena and her Ghirlandina. Carpi,
Parma, Mirandola, Verona, Mantua, lie well defined and russet on the
flat green map; and there flashes a bend of lordly Po; and there the
Euganeans rise like islands, telling us where Padua and Ferrara nestle
in the amethystine haze Beyond and above all to the northward sweep
the Alps, tossing their silvery crests up into the cloudless sky from
the violet mist that girds their flanks and drowns their basements.
Monte Adamello and the Ortler, the cleft of the Brenner, and the sharp
peaks of the Venetian Alps are all distinctly visible. An eagle flying
straight from our eyrie might traverse Lombardy and light among the
snow-fields of the Valtelline between sunrise and sundown. Nor is the
prospect tame to southward. Here the Apennines roll, billow above
billow, in majestic desolation, soaring to snow summits in the
Pellegrino region. As our eye attempts to thread that labyrinth of
hill and vale, we tell ourselves that those roads wind to Tuscany, and
yonder stretches Garfagnana, where Ariosto lived and mused in
honourable exile from the world he loved.

It was by one of the mountain passes that lead from Lucca northward
that the first founder of Canossa is said to have travelled early in
the tenth century. Sigifredo, if the tradition may be trusted, was
very wealthy; and with his money he bought lands and signorial rights
at Reggio, bequeathing to his children, when he died about 945, a
patrimony which they developed into a petty kingdom. Azzo, his second
son, fortified Canossa, and made it his principal place of residence.
When Lothair, King of Italy, died in 950,