behold a burnished realm
of mountain and plain beneath the royal sun of Italy. In the foreground
it shines hard as the lines of an irradiated Cellini shield. Farther
away, over middle ranges that are soft and clear, it melts, confusing
the waters with hot rays, and the forests with darkness, to where,
wavering in and out of view like flying wings, and shadowed like wings
of archangels with rose and with orange and with violet, silverwhite
Alps are seen. You might take them for mystical streaming torches on the
border-ground between vision and fancy. They lean as in a great flight
forward upon Lombardy.

The curtain of an early autumnal morning was everywhere lifted around
the Motterone, save for one milky strip of cloud that lay lizard-like
across the throat of Monte Boscero facing it, when a party of five
footfarers, who had met from different points of ascent some way below,
and were climbing the mountain together, stood upon the cropped herbage
of the second plateau, and stopped to eye the landscape; possibly also
to get their breath. They were Italians. Two were fair-haired muscular
men, bronzed by the sun and roughly bearded, bearing the stamp of breed
of one or other of the hill-cities under the Alps. A third looked a
sturdy soldier, squareset and hard of feature, for whom beauties of
scenery had few awakening charms. The remaining couple were an old
man and a youth, upon whose shoulder the veteran leaned, and with a
whimsical turn of head and eye, indicative of some playful cast of
mind, poured out his remarks upon the objects in sight, and chuckled
to himself, like one who has learnt the necessity to appreciate his own
humour if he is disposed to indulge it. He was carelessly wrapped about
in long loose woollen stuff, but the youth was dressed like a Milanese
cavalier of the first quality, and was evidently one who would have been
at home in the fashionable Corso. His face was of the sweetest virile
Italian beauty. The head was long, like a hawk's, not too lean, and not
sharply ridged from a rapacious beak, but enough to show characteristics
of eagerness and promptitude. His eyes were darkest blue, the eyebrows
and long disjoining eyelashes being very dark over them, which made
their colour precious. The nose was straight and forward from the brows;
a fluent black moustache ran with the curve of the upper lip, and lost
its line upon a smooth olive cheek. The upper lip was firmly supported
by the under, and the