orest region of
luxuriant chestnut-trees, giants with pink boles just bursting into
late leafage, yellow and tender, but too thin as yet for shade.
A little higher up, the chestnuts are displaced by wild laburnums
bending under their weight of flowers. The graceful branches meet
above our heads, sweeping their long tassels against our faces as we
ride beneath them, while the air for a good mile is full of fragrance.
It is strange to be reminded in this blooming labyrinth of the dusty
suburb roads and villa gardens of London. The laburnum is pleasant
enough in S. John's Wood or the Regent's Park in May--a tame
domesticated thing of brightness amid smoke and dust. But it is
another joy to see it flourishing in its own home, clothing acres of
the mountain-side in a very splendour of spring-colour, mingling its
paler blossoms with the golden broom of our own hills, and with
the silver of the hawthorn and wild cherry. Deep beds of
lilies-of-the-valley grow everywhere beneath the trees; and in the
meadows purple columbines, white asphodels, the Alpine spiraea, tall,
with feathery leaves, blue scabious, golden hawkweeds, turkscap
lilies, and, better than all, the exquisite narcissus poeticus, with
its crimson-tipped cup, and the pure pale lilies of San Bruno, are
crowded in a maze of dazzling brightness. Higher up the laburnums
disappear, and flaunting crimson peonies gleam here and there upon
the rocks, until at length the gentians and white ranunculuses of the
higher Alps displace the less hardy flowers of Italy.

About an hour below the summit of the mountain we came upon the inn,
a large clean building, with scanty furniture and snowy wooden floors,
guiltless of carpets. It is big enough to hold about a hundred guests;
and Doctor Pasta, who built it, a native of Mendrisio, was gifted
either with much faith or with a real prophetic instinct.[8] Anyhow he
deserves commendation for his spirit of enterprise. As yet the house
is little known to English travellers: it is mostly frequented by
Italians from Milan, Novara, and other cities of the plain, who call
it the Italian Righi, and come to it, as cockneys go to Richmond,
for noisy picnic excursions, or at most for a few weeks'
_villeggiatura_ in the summer heats. When we were there in May
the season had scarcely begun, and the only inmates besides ourselves
were a large party from Milan, ladies and gentlemen in holiday guise,
who came, stayed one night, climbed the peak at s