aining we commenced our rapid and
dashing descent. Mount Cenis is decidedly steeper on this side than on
the other; it is only surmounted by a succession of zig-zags so near
each other that I think we traveled three miles in making a direct
progress of one, during which we must have descended some 1,500 feet.
Daylight found us at the foot with the level plain before us, and at 8
o'clock, A. M. we were in Turin.

XXI.

SARDINIA--ITALY--FREEDOM.

GENOA (Italy), June 22, 1851.

The Kingdom of Sardinia was formed, after the overthrow of Napoleon, by
the union of Genoa and its dependencies, with the former Kingdom of
Piedmont and Savoy including the island of Sardinia, to whose long
exiled Royal house was restored a dominion thus extended. That dominion
has since stood unchanged, and may be roughly said to embrace the
North-Western fourth of Italy, including Savoy, which belongs
geographically to Switzerland, but which forms a very strong barrier
against invasion from the side of France. Savoy is almost entirely
watered by tributaries of the Rhone, and so might be said to belong
naturally to France rather than to Italy, regarding the crests of the
Alps as the proper line of demarcation between them. Its trade, small at
any rate, is of necessity mainly with France; very slightly, save on the
immediate sea-coast, with Genoa or Piedmont. Its language is French.
Though peopled nearly to the limit of its capacity, the whole number of
its inhabitants can hardly exceed Half a Million, nine-tenths of its
entire surface being covered with sterile, intractable mountains. Savoy
must always be a poor country, with inconsiderable commerce or
manufactures (for though its water-power is inexhaustible, its means of
communication must ever be among the worst), and seems to have been
created mainly as a barrier against that guilty ambition which impels
rulers and chieftains to covet and invade territories which reject and
resist their sway. Alas that the Providential design, though so
palpable, should be so often disregarded! Doubtless, the lives lost from
age to age by mere hardship, privation and exposure, during the passage
of invading armies through Savoy, would outnumber the whole present
population of the country.

Descending the Alps to the east or south into PIEDMONT, a new world lies
around and before you. You have passed in two hours from the Arctic
circle to the Tropics--from Lapland to Cuba. The snow-crested mou