d sweep by or slacken.
_Italiam petimus!_

_Tangimus Italiam!_ Chiavenna is a worthy key to this great gate Italian.
We walked at night in the open galleries of the cathedral-cloister--white,
smoothly curving, well-proportioned logge, enclosing a green space, whence
soars the campanile to the stars. The moon had sunk, but her light still
silvered the mountains that stand at watch round Chiavenna; and the castle
rock was flat and black against that dreamy background. Jupiter, who
walked so lately for us on the long ridge of the Jacobshorn above our
pines, had now an ample space of sky over Lombardy to light his lamp in.
Why is it, we asked each other, as we smoked our pipes and strolled, my
friend and I;--why is it that Italian beauty does not leave the spirit so
untroubled as an Alpine scene? Why do we here desire the flower of some
emergent feeling to grow from the air, or from the soil, or from humanity
to greet us? This sense of want evoked by Southern beauty is perhaps the
antique mythopoeic yearning. But in our perplexed life it takes another
form, and seems the longing for emotion, ever fleeting, ever new,
unrealised, unreal, insatiable.

II.--OVER THE APENNINES.

At Parma we slept in the Albergo della Croce Bianca, which is more a
bric-a-brac shop than an inn; and slept but badly, for the good folk of
Parma twanged guitars and exercised their hoarse male voices all night
in the street below. We were glad when Christian called us, at 5 A.M.,
for an early start across the Apennines. This was the day of a right
Roman journey. In thirteen and a half hours, leaving Parma at 6, and
arriving in Sarzana at 7.30, we flung ourselves across the spine of
Italy, from the plains of Eridanus to the seashore of Etruscan Luna. I
had secured a carriage and extra post-horses the night before; therefore
we found no obstacles upon the road, but eager drivers, quick relays,
obsequious postmasters, change, speed, perpetual movement. The road
itself is a noble one, and nobly entertained in all things but
accommodation for travellers. At Berceto, near the summit of the pass,
we stopped just half an hour, to lunch off a mouldly hen and six eggs;
but that was all the halt we made.

As we drove out of Parma, striking across the plain to the _ghiara_ of
the Taro, the sun rose over the austere autumnal landscape, with its
withered vines and crimson haws. Christian, the mountaineer, who at home
had never seen the sun rise from a flat hor