peaks in the north, what a vast and dazzling picture of meadows, woods, rivers, cities, with the sun of Italy shining over all!

Ye glorious piles! well are ye termed everlasting. Kings and kingdoms pass away, but on you there passes not the shadow of change. Ye saw the foundations of Rome laid; -now ye look down upon its ruins. In comparison with yours, man's life dwindles to a moment. Like the flower at your foot, he blooms for an instant, and sinks into the tomb. Nay, what is a nation's duration, when weighed against thine? Even the forests that wave on your slopes will outlast empires. Proud piles, how do ye stamp with insignificance man's greatest labours! This glorious edifice on which I stand,—ages was it in building; myriads of hands helped to rear it; and yet, in comparison with your gigantic masses, what is it?-a mere speck. Already it is growing old;-ye are still young. The tempests of six thousand winters have not bowed you down. Your glory lightened the cradle of nations, your shadows cover their tomb.

But to me the great charm of the Alps lay in the sacred character which they wore. They seemed to rise before me, a vast temple, crowned, as temple never was, with sapphire domes and pinnacles, in which a holy nation had worshipped when Europe lay prostrate before the Dagon of the Seven Hills. I could go back to a time when that plain, now covered, alas! with the putridities of superstition, was the scene of churches in which the gospel was preached, of homes in which the Bible was read, of happy death-beds, and blessed graves,-graves in which, in the sublime words of our catechism, "the bodies of the saints being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the Resurrection." Sleep on, ye blessed dead! This pile shall crumble into ruin; the

Alps dissolve, Rome herself sink; but not a particle of your dust shall be lost. The reflection recalled vividly an incident of years gone by. I had sauntered at the evening hour into a retired country churchyard in Scotland. The sun, after a day of heavy rain, was setting in glory, and his rays were gilding the long wet grass above the graves, and tinting the hoar ruins of a cathedral that rose in the midst of them, when my eye accidentally fell upon the following lines, which I quote from memory, carved in plain characters upon one of the tomb-stones :

The wise, the just, the pious, and the brave,

Live in their death, and flourish from the grave.
Grain hid in earth repays the peasant's care,

And evening suns but set to rise more fair.

There are no such epitaphs in the grave-yards of Lombardy ; nor could there be any such in that of Dunblane, but for the Reformation.

1

CHAPTER XI.

MILAN TO BRESCIA.

Biblioteca Ambrosiana-A Lamp in a Sepulchre-The Palimpsests— Labours of the Monks in the Cause of Knowledge-Cardinal Mai—He recovers many valuable Manuscripts of the Ancients which the Monks had Mutilated-Ulfila's Bible-The War against Knowledge-The Brazent Serpent at Sant' Ambrogio-Passport Office-Last Visit to the Duomo and the Arco Della Pace-The Alps apostrophized-Dinner at a Restaurant-Leave Milan-Procession of the Alps-Treviglio-The River Adda-The Postilion-Evening, with dreamy, decaying BorgosCaravaggio-Supper at Chiari-Brescia-Arnold of Brescia.

THE morning of my last day in Milan was passed in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. This justly renowned library was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Borromeo, the cousin of that Borromeo whose mummy lies so gorgeously enshrined in the subterranean chapel of the Duomo. This prelate was at vast care and expense to bring together in this library the most precious manuscripts extant. For this purpose he sent learned men into every part of Europe, with instructions to buy whatever of value they might be fortunate enough to discover, and to copy such writings as their owners might be unwilling to part with. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is worth a visit, were it only to see the first public library established in Europe.

There were earlier libraries, and some not i but only in connection with cathedrals a access to them was refused to all save to these establishments. This, on the contra the public; and, with a liberality rare in th materials were freely supplied to all who fre library buildings form a quadrangle of mass a grave, venerable look, becoming its name is upwards of 80,000 volumes; but, what is mentary to the literary tastes of the prefet canons of Sant' Ambrogio, the curators of the arranged, not according to their subjects, their sizes. This library reminded me of Etrurian tomb. There was light enough in minate the whole duchy of the Milanese, cou outlet. As it is, I fear a few straggling rays able to escape. There is no catalogue of some very imperfect lists; and I was told that fical bull against making any such. I saw a its halls, attracted, like myself, by its curiosit no one who had come to restore volumes they receive others in their room. The modern Milan gives his days and nights to the café and to the library. He lives and dies unpolluted b press, an execrable invention of the fifteenth which a paternal Government and an infallibl ploy their utmost energies to shield him. dead authors he dare not read; the productions he dare not print; and the only compositions has access are the decrees of the Austrian po Catechism of the Jesuit. He fully appreciate the care taken to preserve the purity of his

religious faith, and will one day show the extent of his gratitude.

I saw in this library the famous Palimpsests. My readers know, of course, what these are. The Palimpsests are little books of vellum, from which an original and ancient writing has been erased, to make room for the productions of later ages and of other pens. These pages bore originally the thoughts of Virgil and Livy, and, in short, of almost all the great writers of pagan antiquity; but the monks, who did not relish pagan notions, thought the vellum would be much better bestowed if filled with their own homilies. The good fathers conceived the project of enlightening and evangelizing the world by purging of its paganism all the vellum in Europe; and, being much intent on their object, they succeeded in it to an amazing extent.

their

"A second deluge learning did o'errun,

And the monks finished what the Goths begun."

Our readers have often seen with what rapidity a fog swallows up a landscape. They have marked, with a feeling of despair, golden peak and emerald valley sinking hopelessly in the dank drizzle. So the classics went down before the monks. The ancients were set a-trudging through the world in a monk's cowl and a friar's frock. On the same page from which Cicero had thundered, a monk now discoursed. Where Livy's pictured narrative had been, you found only a dull wearisome legend. Where the thunder of Homer's lyre or the sweet notes of Virgil's muse had resounded, you heard now a dismal croak or a lugubrious chant. Such was the strange metamorphosis which the ancients were compelled to endure at the hands of the monks; and such was the way in which they strove to earn the gratitude of succeeding ages by the benefits. they conferred on learning.