the mist that veiled the mountains. The fields, which were covered
with the various cultivation of wheat, maize, orchards, and vineyards,
were fenced with neatly dressed hedge-rows. The vine-stocks were
magnificently large, and their leaves had already acquired the fine
golden yellow which autumn imparts. At a little distance, on a low hill,
deeply embosomed in foliage, was the church of San Giovanni, looking as
brilliantly white as if it had been a piece of marble fresh from the
chisel. Hard by, peeping out amidst fruit-bearing trees, was the village
of Lucerna. On the right rose the mighty wall of the Alps; on the left
the valley opened out into the plain of the Po, bounded by a range of
blue-tinted hills, which stretched away to the south-west, mingling in
the distant horizon with the mightier masses of the Alps. The sun now
broke through the haze; and his rays, falling on the luxuriant beauty of
the valley, and on the more varied but not less rich covering of the
hill-side,--the pasturages, the winding belts of planting, the white
chalets,--lighted up a picture which a painter might have exhibited as a
relic of an unfallen world, or a reminiscence of that garden from which
transgression drove man forth.

After breakfast, I sallied out to explore the valley of Lucerne, at the
entrance of which is placed, as I have said, La Tour, the capital of the
Waldenses. My intention was to trace its windings all the way, past the
village and church of Bobbio, and up the mountains, till it loses itself
amid the snows of their summits,--an expedition which was brought to an
abrupt termination by the black clouds which came rolling up the valley
at noon like the smoke of a furnace, followed by torrents of rain.
Threading my way through the narrow winding street of La Tour, and
skirting the base of the giant Castelluzzo, I emerged upon the open
valley. I was enchanted by its mingled loveliness and grandeur. Its
bottom, which might be from one to two miles in breadth, though looking
narrower, from the titanic character of its mountain-boundary, was, up
to a certain point, one continuous vineyard. The vine there attains a
noble stature, and stretches its arms from side to side of the valley in
rich and lovely festoons, veiling from the great heat of the sun the
golden grain which grows underneath. On either hand the mountains rise
to the sky, not bare and rocky, but glowing with the vine, or shady with
the chestnut, and pouring into th