it brings its yearly offering
to the foot of Mont Blanc,--fields of golden wheat, countless vines with
their blood-red clusters, fruits of every name, and flowers of every
hue;--such is the noble tribute which this plain, year by year, lays at
the feet of its august parent. There is but one drawback to its
prosperity. Two sombre shadows fall gloomily athwart its surface. These
are Austria and Rome.

The plain of Lombardy is so broad, and the road to Milan by Novara is so
much on a level with its general surface, that the eye catches the
distant Apennines only at the more elevated points. The screen which
here, and for miles after leaving Turin, shuts out the view of the
Apennines, is the Colina. The Colina is a range of lovely hills, which
rise to a height of rather more than 1200 feet, and run eastward along
the plain a few miles south of the Milan road. Soft and rich in their
covering, picturesque in their forms, and indented with numerous dells,
they look like miniature Alps set down on the plain, nearly equidistant
from the great white hills on the north and the purple peaks on the
south. The sun was near his setting; and his level rays, passing through
fields of vapour,--presages of storm,--and shorn of the fiery brilliancy
which is wont at eve to set these hills on a blaze, fell softly upon the
dome of the Superga, and lighted up the white villas which stud the
mountain by hundreds and hundreds throughout its whole extent. Vividly
relieved by the deep azure of the vineyards, and looking, from their
distance, no bigger than single blocks, these villas reminded one of a
shower of marble, freshly fallen, and glittering in pearly whiteness in
the setting rays.

The road, which to me had an almost sacred character, being the
beginning of my journey to Rome, was a straight line,--straight as the
arrow's flight,--between fields of rich meadow land, and rows of elms
and poplars, which ran on and on, till, in the far distance, they
appeared to converge to a point. It was a broad, macadamized,
substantial highway, of about thirty feet in width, having a white line
of curb-stones placed eight or ten paces apart; outside of which was an
excellent pathway for foot passengers. On the left rose the Alps, calm
and majestic, clothed in the purple shadows of evening.

I have mentioned the Po as flowing past Turin. This stream is doubtless
the relic of that mighty flood which covered, at some former period, the
vast space between