their sides in silent, meditative, ethereal
grace. The scene possessed not the sublime grandeur of Switzerland, nor
the rugged picturesqueness of Scotland: its characteristic was the
finished, spiritualized, voluptuous beauty of Italy. But hark! the
railway-bell rings out its summons.

The carriages on the Verona and Venice Railway are not those
strong-looking, crib-like machines which we have in England, and which
seem built, as our jails and bridewells are, in anticipation that the
inmates will do their best to get out. They are roomy and elegant
saloons (though strong in their build), of about forty feet in length,
and may contain two hundred passengers a-piece. They are fitted up with
a tier of cushioned seats running round the carriage, and two sofa-seats
running lengthways in the middle. At each end is a door by which the
guard enters and departs, and passes along the whole train, as if it
were a suit of apartments. So far as I could make out, I was the only
_Englese_ in the carriage, which was completely filled with the citizens
and peasantry of the towns and rural districts which lay on our
route,--the mountaineer of the Tyrol, the native of the plain, the
inhabitant of the city of Verona, of Vicenza, of Venice. There was a
greater amount of talk, and of vehement and eloquent gesture, than would
have been seen in the same circumstances in England. The costume was
varied and picturesque, and so too, but in a less degree, the
countenance. There were in the carriage tall athletic forms, reared amid
the breezes and vines of the Tyrol; and there were noble faces,--faces
with rich complexions, and dark fiery eyes, which could gleam in love or
burn in battle, and which bore the still farther appendage of moustache
and beard, in which the wearer evidently took no little pride, and on
which he bestowed no little pains. The company had somewhat the air of a
masquerade. There was the Umbrian cloak, the cone-shaped beaver, the
vest with its party-coloured lacings. There were the long loose robe and
low-crowned hat of the priest, with its enormous brim, as if to shade
the workings of his face beneath. There was the brown cloak of the
friar; and there were hats and coats of the ordinary Frank fashion. The
Leghorn bonnet is there unknown, as almost all over the Continent,
unless among the young girls of Switzerland; and the head-gear of the
women mostly was a plain cotton napkin, folded on the brow and pinned
below the chin,--