af, listening to any
kind of piece became too much of an effort; nevertheless, he continued to
the last the habit of going to one pantomime every winter.

There were about twenty houses where he visited, but he seldom accepted
an invitation to dinner--it upset the regularity of his life; besides, he
belonged to no club and had no means of returning hospitality. When two
colonial friends called unexpectedly about noon one day, soon after he
settled in London, he went to the nearest cook-shop in Fetter Lane and
returned carrying a dish of hot roast pork and greens. This was all very
well once in a way, but not the sort of thing to be repeated
indefinitely.

On Thursdays, instead of going to the Museum, he often took a day off,
going into the country sketching or walking, and on Sundays, whatever the
weather, he nearly always went into the country walking; his map of the
district for thirty miles round London is covered all over with red lines
showing where he had been. He sometimes went out of town from Saturday
to Monday, and for over twenty years spent Christmas at Boulogne-sur-Mer.

There is a Sacro Monte at Varallo-Sesia with many chapels, each
containing life-sized statues and frescoes illustrating the life of
Christ. Butler had visited this sanctuary repeatedly, and was a great
favourite with the townspeople, who knew that he was studying the statues
and frescoes in the chapels, and who remembered that in the preface to
_Alps and Sanctuaries_ he had declared his intention of writing about
them. In August, 1887, the Varallesi brought matters to a head by giving
him a civic dinner on the Mountain. Everyone was present, there were
several speeches and, when we were coming down the slippery mountain path
after it was all over, he said to me:

"You know, there's nothing for it now but to write that book about the
Sacro Monte at once. It must be the next thing I do."

Accordingly, on returning home, he took up photography and, immediately
after Christmas, went back to Varallo to photograph the statues and
collect material. Much research was necessary and many visits to out-of-
the-way sanctuaries which might have contained work by the sculptor
Tabachetti, whom he was rescuing from oblivion and identifying with the
Flemish Jean de Wespin. One of these visits, made after his book was
published, forms the subject of "The Sanctuary of Montrigone." _Ex
Voto_, the book about Varallo, appeared in 1888, and an Itali