-a famous city; but I
should have preferred to visit it at a more seasonable hour. "The best
feelings," says the poet, "must have victual," and the most classic
towns must have sleep; so Brescia, forgetful that famous geographers who
lived well-nigh two thousand years ago had mentioned its name, and that
famous poets had sung its streams, and that it still contains
innumerable relics of its high antiquity, slept on much as a Scotch
village would have done at the same hour.

Time is of no value on the south of the Alps. This long halt at this
unseasonable hour was simply to set down an honest woman who had come
with us from Milan. She was as big well-nigh as the _diligence_ itself;
but what caused all our trouble was, not herself, but her trunk. It lay
at the bottom of an immense pile of baggage, which rose on the top of
the vehicle; and before it could be got at, every article had to be
taken down, and put on the pavement. Of course, the baggage had to be
put back, and the operation was gone through most deliberately and
leisurely. A full hour and a half was consumed in the process; and the
passengers, having no place to retire to, did their best to withstand
the chill night air by a quick march on the street.

So, these silent midnight streets I was treading were those of
Brescia,--Brescia, within whose walls had met the valour of the
mountains and the arts of the plain. I was now treading where pagan
temples had once stood, where Christian sanctuaries had next arisen, and
where there had been disciples not a few when the light of the
Reformation broke on northern Italy. I remembered, too, that this was
the city of "Arnold of Brescia," one of the reformers before the
Reformation. Arnold was a man of great learning, an intrepid champion
of the Church's purity, and the founder of the "Arnoldists," who
inherited the zeal and intrepidity of their master.

On the death of Innocent II., in the middle of the twelfth century,
Arnold, finding Rome much agitated from the contests between the Pope
and the Emperor, urged the Romans to throw off the yoke of a priest, and
strike for their independence. The Romans lacked spirit to do so; and
when, seven centuries afterwards, they came to make the attempt under
Pius IX., they failed. Arnold was taken and crucified, his body reduced
to ashes, and it was left to time, with its tragedies, to vindicate the
wisdom of his advice, and avenge his blood; but to this hour no such
opportunity