the Cardinal, this great encourager of the arts, having these
industrial and social theories, carried them out in practice, as you may
perhaps remember, by obtaining a dispensation from the Pope to marry his
own niece, and building a villa for her on one of the slopes of the
pretty hills which rise to the east of the city. The villa which he
built is now one of the principal objects of interest to the traveler as
an example of Italian domestic architecture: to me, during my stay in
the city, it was much more than an object of interest; for its deserted
gardens were by much the pleasantest place I could find for walking or
thinking in, in the hot summer afternoons.

I say thinking, for these gardens often gave me a good deal to think
about. They are, as I told you, on the slope of the hill above the city,
to the east; commanding, therefore, the view over it and beyond it,
westward--a view which, perhaps, of all those that can be obtained north
of the Apennines, gives the most comprehensive idea of the nature of
Italy, considered as one great country. If you glance at the map, you
will observe that Turin is placed in the center of the crescent which
the Alps form round the basin of Piedmont; it is within ten miles of the
foot of the mountains at the nearest point; and from that point the
chain extends half round the city in one unbroken Moorish crescent,
forming three-fourths of a circle from the Col de Tende to the St.
Gothard; that is to say, just two hundred miles of Alps, as the bird
flies. I don't speak rhetorically or carelessly; I speak as I ought to
speak here--with mathematical precision. Take the scale on your map;
measure fifty miles of it accurately; try that measure from the Col de
Tende to the St. Gothard, and you will find that four cords of fifty
miles will not quite reach to the two extremities of the curve.

20. You see, then, from this spot, the plain of Piedmont, on the north
and south, literally as far as the eye can reach; so that the plain
terminates as the sea does, with a level blue line, only tufted with
woods instead of waves, and crowded with towers of cities instead of
ships. Then in the luminous air beyond and behind this blue
horizon-line, stand, as it were, the shadows of mountains, they
themselves dark, for the southern slopes of the Alps of the Lago
Maggiore and Bellinzona are all without snow; but the light of the
unseen snowfields, lying level behind the visible peaks, is sent up with