e of the Roman Milan has
come down to our day. A second Milan was founded, but only to fall, in
its turn, before the arms of Frederick Barbarossa. There was a strong
vitality in its site, however; and a third Milan,--the Milan of the
present day,--arose. This city is a huge collection of churches and
barracks, cafes and convents, theatres and palaces, traversed by narrow
streets, ranged mostly in concentric circles round its grand central
building, the Duomo. The streets, however, that lead to its various
ports, are spacious thoroughfares, adorned with noble and elegant
mansions. Such is the arrangement of the town in which I now found
myself.

I sought everywhere for the gay Milan,--the white-robed city I had seen
an hour ago,--but it was gone; and in its room sat a silent and sullen
town, with an air of most depressing loneliness about it. There were few
persons on the streets; and these walked as if they dragged a chain at
their heels. I passed through whole streets of a secondary character,
without meeting a single individual, or hearing the sound of man or of
living thing. It seemed as if Milan had proclaimed a fast and gone to
church; but when I looked into the churches, I saw no one there save a
solitary figure in white, in the distance, bowing and gesticulating with
extraordinary fervour, in the presence of dumb pictures and dim tapers.
How can a worship in which no one ever joins edify any one? I could
discover no signs of a flourishing art. There were not a few pretty and
some beautiful things in the shop-windows; 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 fr