ld rather see Italy
through the warm colourings of history, and the bright hues of his own
fancy, than look upon her as she is.

I shall never forget the intense excitement that thrilled me when I
found myself rolling along on the magnificent avenue of pollard-elms,
that runs all the way from Rivoli to Turin. The voluptuous air, which
seemed to fill the landscape with a dreamy gaiety; the intense sunlight,
which tinted every object with extraordinary brilliancy, from the bright
leaves overhead, to the burning domes of Turin in front; the dark eyes
of the natives, which flashed with a fervour like that of their own sun;
the Alps towering above me, and running off in a vast unbroken line of
glittering masses,--all contributed to form a picture of so novel and
brilliant a kind, that it absolutely produced an intoxication of
delight.

I passed a few days at Turin; and the pleasure of my stay was much
enhanced by the society of my friend the Rev. John Bonar, whom I had met
at Chamberry, _en route_, with his family, for Malta. We visited
together the chief objects of interest in the capital of Piedmont. The
churches we saw of course. And though we had been carried blindfolded
across the Alps, and set down in the cathedral of Turin, the statuary
alone would have told us that we were in Italy. The most unpractised eye
could see at once the difference betwixt these statues and those of the
Transalpine churches. The Italian sculptors seemed to possess some
secret by which they could make the marble live. Some half-dozen of
priests, with red copes (I presume it was a martyr's day, for on such
days the Church's dress is red), ranged in a pew near the altar, were
singing psalms. Whether the good men were thinking of their dinner, I
knew not; but they yawned portentously, wrung their hands with an air of
helplessness, and looked at us as if they half expected that we would
volunteer to do duty for an hour or so in their stead. A bishop chanting
his psalter under the groined roof of cathedral, and a covenanter
praying in his hill-side cave, would form an admirable picture of two
very different styles of devotion. There were some dozen of old women on
the floor, whom the mixed motive of saying their prayers and picking up
a chance alms seemed to have drawn thither. From the Duomo we went to
the King's palace. We walked through a suit of splendid apartments,
though not quite accordant in their style of ornament and comfort with
our En