but the latter were all copies generally of the more striking natural objects in the neighbourhood, or of the works of art in the city, the productions of other times,-things which a dying genius might produce, but not such as a living genius, free to give scope to her invention, would delight to create. Such was the art of Milan,—the feeble and reflected gleam of a glory now set. As regards the trade of Milan,—a yet more important matter,—I could see almost no signs of it either. There were walking sticks, and such things, in considerable variety in the shops; but little of more importance. The fabrics of the loom, and the productions of the plane, the forge, and the printing press, which crowd our cities and dwellings, and give honest bread to our artizans, were all wanting in Milan. How its people contrived to get through the twenty-four hours, and where they got their bread, unless it fell from the clouds, I could not discover.

What an air of languor and weariness on the faces of the people! Amid these heavy-hearted and dull-eyed loiterers, what a relief it would have been to have met the soiled jacket, the brawny arm, and the manly brow, of one of our own artizans! I felt there were worse things in the world than hard work. Better it were to roll the stone of Sisyphus all life-long, than spend it in such idleness as weighs upon the cities of Italy. Better the clang of the forge than the rattle of the sabre. The Milanese seemed looking into the future; and a dismal future it is, if one may judge from their looks,—a future full of revolutions, to conduct, mayhap, to freedom; more probably to the scaffold.

I turned sharply round the corner of a street, and there, as if it had risen from the earth, was the Cathedral. As the sun breaking through a fog, or an Alpine peak flashing through

mists, so burst this magnificent pile upon me; and its sudden revelation dispelled on the instant all my gloomy musings. I could only stand and gaze. Beauty, not sublimity, is the attribute of this pile. Beauty it rains around it in a never-ending, overflowing shower, as the sun does light, or Mont Blanc glory. I sought for some one presiding idea, simple and grand, which might take its place in the mind, and dwell there as an image of glory, never more to fade; but I could find no such idea. The pile is the slow creation of centuries, and the united conception of innumerable minds, which have clubbed their ideas, so to speak, to produce this Cathedral. Quarries of marble and millions of money have been expended upon it; and there is scarce an architect or sculptor of eminence who has flourished since the fourteenth century, who has not contributed to it some separate grace or glory; and now the Cathedral of Milan is perhaps the most numerous assemblage of beauties in stone which the world contains. Impossible it were to enumerate the elegances that cover it from top to bottom,-its carved portals, its flying buttresses, its arabesque pilasters, its richly mullioned windows, its basso-reliefs, its beautiful tracery, and its forest of snow-white pinnacles soaring in the sunlight, so calm and moveless, and yet so airy and light, that you fear the next breeze will scatter them. You can compare it only to some Alpine group, whose flashing peaks shoot up by hundreds around some snow-white central summit.

The building, too, is populous as a city. There are upwards of three thousand statues upon it, and places for a thousand more. Here stands a monk, busy with his beads,there a mailed warrior,-there a mitred bishop,-there a pilgrim, staff in hand,—there a nun, gracefully veiled,—and yon

der hundreds of seraphs perched upon the loftier pinnacles, and looking as if a white cloud of winged creatures from the sky had just lighted upon it.

I purposed to-morrow to climb to the roof, and thence survey the plains of Lombardy and the chain of the Alps; so, turning away from the door, I made the tour of the square in which the Cathedral stands. I came first upon a row of cannon, so pointed as to sweep the square. Behind the guns, piled on the pavement, were stacks of arms, and soldiers loitering beside them. Ah! thought I, these are the loving ties that bind the people of Lombardy to the House of Hapsburg. The priest's chant is heard all day long within that temple; and outside there blend with it the sentinel's tramp and the drum's roll. I passed on, and came next upon a most unusual display of literature. Four-paged pamphlets in hundreds lay piled upon stalls, or were ranged in rows against the wall. The subjects discussed in these pamphlets were of a high spiritual cast, and woodcuts were freely employed to aid the reader's apprehension. These latter belonged to a very different style of art from that conspicuous in the Cathedral, but they had the merit of great plainness; and a glance at the woodcut enabled one to read at once the story of the pamphlet. The wall was all a-blaze with flames; and I saw the advantage of an infallible Church to teach one secrets which the Bible does not reveal. The sin chiefly insisted on was that of despising the priest; and the punishment awaiting it was set before me in a way I could not possibly mistake. Here, for instance, was a wealthy sinner, who lay dying in a splendid mansion. With horrible impiety, the man had refused the wafer, and ordered the priest about his business, despite the imploring tears of wife and family, who surrounded his bed. A glance at the other compartment of the picture showed the

consequence of this. There you found the man just launched into the other world. A crowd of black fiends, hideous to behold, had seized upon the poor soul, and were dragging it down into a weltering gulf of lurid flame. In another picture you had an equally graphic illustration of the happiness of obeying Mother Church. Here lay one dying amid beads, crucifixes, and shaven crowns. The devil was fleeing from

the house in terror; and in the compartment devoted to the spiritual world, the soul was following a benevolent-looking gentleman, who carried a big key, and was walking in the direction of a very magnificent mansion on a high hill, where, I doubt not, a welcome and hospitable reception waited both. The same lesson was repeated along the wall times without number.

Here was the doctrine of purgatory as incontestably proved as painted flames, and images of creatures with tails who tormented other creatures who had no tails, could prove it. If there was no purgatory, how could the painters of an infallible Church ever have given so exact a representation of it? And exact it must have been, else the priests would never have allowed these pictures to be hung up here, under their very eye. This was as much as to write 66 cum privilegio" underneath them. The whole scenery of purgatory was here most vividly depicted. There were fiends flying off with souls, or tossing them with pitchforks into the flames. There were boiling cauldrons, red-hot gridirons, cataracts of fire, and innumerable other modes of torment. A walk along this infernal gallery was enough, one would have thought, to make the boldest purgatory-despiser quail. But no one who has a little spare cash, and is willing to part with it, need fear either purgatory or the devil. In the large marble house in the centre of the square one might buy at a reasonable rate an ex

cision of some thousands of years from his appointed sojourn in that gloomy region. And doubtless that was one reason for bringing this purgatorial gallery and the indulgence-market into such close proximity. It reminded the people of the latter inestimable blessing; and without some such salutary impulse the traffic in indulgences might flag.

I could not but remark, that the only person for whom these extraordinary representations appeared to have any attractions was myself. Not so the exhibition on the other side of the square. Having perused with no ordinary interest, though, I fear, with not much profit, this "Theory of a Future State," I crossed the quadrangle, passing right under the eastern towers of the Cathedral, and came suddenly upon a knot of persons gathered round a tall rectangular box, in which was enacting the melo-drama of Punch. These persons were enjoying the fun with a relish which was noways abated by the spectacle over the way. The whole thing was acted exactly as I had seen it before; but to me it was a novelty to hear Punch, and all the other interlocutors in the piece, discourse in the language in which Dante had sung, and in which I had heard, just before leaving Scotland, Gavazzi declaim. In all lands Punch is an astute scoundrel; but, strange to say, in all lands the popular feeling is on his side. His imperturbable coolness and truculent villany procured him plaudits among the Milanese, as I had seen them do elsewhere. Courage and self-possession are valuable qualities, and for their sake we sometimes forgive bad men and bad causes; whereas, from nothing do we more instinctively recoil than from hypocrisy. On this principle it is, perhaps, that we have a sort of liking for Punch, incorrigible scoundrel as he is; and that great criminals, who rob and murder at the head of armies, we deify, while little ones we hang.

H