Isola Madre soon appeared, at a little distance, and modestly unveiled its milder graces, elegantly skreened from the garish eye of day, by lattice-work, and curling vines.

Attracted by the artificial splendour of Isola Bella, we landed at the foot of the Palace, which however we did not enter, as it wore, upon a nearer view, the forbidding aspect of partial dilapidation; and impatiently rambling over the measured islet, we wondered to find ourselves soon weary of pacing its formal walks, and covered vistas; though they were lined with oranges, and citrons, bending under golden fruit, and bordered, or terminated, with spouting fountains and gigantic statuary.

Behind this glittering prison we beheld with commiseration, a fishing village, the meagre Inhabitants of which appeared to us to have been crowded into the lake, to make room for an overgrown Landlord to stretch his legs in three or four times in the year.

We quitted these celebrated Islands, without regret, and stopped for the night at a neighbouring town, where we had the next morning, in an extravagant Bill, the first gross specimen of Italian imposition, which I have since learned to dispute by dint of practice.

Here however, having left the mountains behind us, we again saw the sun rise, upon a distant horizon, accompanied

with the brilliant colouring of an Italian

sky.

We now found that we had quitted the protection of the hero Tell, for the mediation of Saint Anthony of Padua; and we passed, in prosecuting our voyage to Sesto, a bronze statue of San Carlo Borromeo, tall enough to serve for a steeple to a Seminary of Priests, founded by him at Arona, the place of his birth. -The munificent Nephew of Pius the Fourth does not appear to have been troubled with the squeamish idea of the Man of Ross:

Who builds a Church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name.*

I recollect

* Pope.

I recollect nothing more interesting until we reached Milan, in the low grounds about which a great deal of rice is raised. Some parts of them are said to be not less than eighty feet below the surface of the Lago Maggiore; they can therefore be watered at pleasure, like the Savannahs of Louisiana, and the grass, produced by this profuse irrigation, is said to be cut as often as five or six times in a year.

Milan is a large and populous town; but not very pleasant to a stranger, from the lowness of its situation, and the narrowness, and dampness of the streets.

It was often however the temporary residence of the Roman Emperors, when in the decline of the Empire, they found it necessary to defend their frontiers from

the

the incursions of the Barbarians.-In one of the streets may still be seen a Doric Colonnade of Roman Antiquity, and in the Church of St. Ambrose, the antiquated Choir is yet inclosed by the identical bronze gates, which the holy Father is said to have shut, with indignation, in the face of the Emperor Theodosius, on account of the Massacre at Thessalonica.

In the Refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della gracie, is the celebrated Last Supper of Leonardo da Vincimuch damaged by time-probably more by injudicious repairs. There is not now a single fine head in the groupe; and among the Twelve Communicants you are ready to suspect half a dozen Judas's, instead of one.-A story goes, that the Painter, provoked by the parsimony of

one