d instantly
step into her shoes; but if some such deplorable consummation is to
be avoided in England, it can only be through more evident leaning
on the part of our clergy to such an interpretation of the Sacred
History as the presence of a black and white Madonna almost side by
side at Oropa appears to suggest.

I fear that in these last paragraphs I may have trenched on
dangerous ground, but it is not possible to go to such places as
Oropa without asking oneself what they mean and involve. As for the
average Italian pilgrims, they do not appear to give the matter so
much as a thought. They love Oropa, and flock to it in thousands
during the summer; the President of the Administration assured me
that they lodged, after a fashion, as many as ten thousand pilgrims
on the 15th of last August. It is astonishing how living the
statues are to these people, and how the wicked are upbraided and
the good applauded. At Varallo, since I took the photographs I
published in my book Ex Voto, an angry pilgrim has smashed the nose
of the dwarf in Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary, for no other reason
than inability to restrain his indignation against one who was
helping to inflict pain on Christ. It is the real hair and the
painting up to nature that does this. Here at Oropa I found a paper
on the floor of the Sposalizio Chapel, which ran as follows:--

"By the grace of God and the will of the administrative chapter of
this sanctuary, there have come here to work --- ---, mason, --- ---
, carpenter, and --- ---, plumber, all of Chiavazza, on the twenty-
first day of January, 1886, full of cold (pieni di freddo).

"They write these two lines to record their visit. They pray the
Blessed Virgin that she will maintain them safe and sound from
everything equivocal that may befall them (sempre sani e salvi da
ogni equivoco li possa accadere). Oh, farewell! We reverently
salute all the present statues, and especially the Blessed Virgin,
and the reader."

Through the Universal Review, I suppose, all its readers are to
consider themselves saluted; at any rate, these good fellows, in the
effusiveness of their hearts, actually wrote the above in pencil. I
was sorely tempted to steal it, but, after copying it, left it in
the Chief Priest's hands instead.

Art in the Valley of Saas {188}

Having been told by Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, that there
were some chapels at Saas-Fee which bore analogy to those at
Var