e to Ober-Ammergau, and as long as
memory lasts shall remember _Die Kreuzesschule_.

J.W.F.

VARESE.

Varese is an ancient little town on a hill overlooking the small lake
of the same name in the midst of the mountainous country between
Como and Lago Maggiore, and a little to the southward of the Lake of
Lugano. It is within a very few miles of the Swiss frontier. All
this lacustrine region has for many generations been celebrated as a
specially privileged one. It is Italy without the enervating heat and
aridity which are such serious drawbacks to the enjoyment of its other
charms by Northern folk. It is Switzerland without the rigidity of its
climate and the comparative poverty of the northern vegetation. You
have the oleander and cactus around your feet, while the snow-peaks
high above your head are rose-colored morning and evening by a
southern sun. You wander amid groves of Spanish chestnut, and may hear
the while the Swiss-sounding cattle-bells from Alpine pastures high
above them. The lakes themselves, with their branching arms and bays
and their fairy-like islands, are of course a feature of ever-varying
and incomparable beauty.

Accordingly, Fortune's favorites of all countries have long, even from
the old Roman times downward, thickly studded the district with their
villas and gardens and palaces and parks. But the possession of a
villa on one of the Italian lakes implies that the happy owner is
nothing very much less than a millionaire. And it has been reserved
for these quite latter days to find the means of placing within the
reach of the many all the delights which were heretofore the exclusive
privilege of the few. In no instance has this been done with so
complete a measure of success as at Varese. The hotel is situated
about a mile from the little town. Its gardens look down on the lake,
the intervening slope being covered with forest. To the left, as one
stands at the garden-front of the house, looking toward the lake, are
the hills in the midst of which the Lake of Lugano nestles, and on
the right, beyond the Lago Maggiore, is a view of Monte Rosa with its
eternal snows, perhaps the finest to be found anywhere. I have seen
Monte Rosa and its chain very finely from the top of the pass called
the Col di Tenda, between Turin and Nice, but I think the view from
the terrace in front of this house is finer. Immediately at the back
of the house we have the hills--mountains they would be called in a