ur Swiss voiturier, and took an Italian
one; who conveyed us to Omegna on the Lake of Orta; a place little
visited by English travellers, but which fully repaid us the trouble of
going there. We were lodged in a simple and even rude Italian inn; where
they cannot speak a word of French; where we occupied a barn-like room,
with a huge chimney fit to lodge a hundred ghosts, whom we expelled by
dint of a hot woodfire. There were two beds, and as it happened good
ones, in this strange old apartment; which was adorned by pictures of
Architecture, and by Heads of Saints, better than many at the Royal
Academy Exhibition, and which one paid nothing for looking at. The
thorough Italian character of the whole scene amused us, much more than
Meurice's at Paris would have done; for we had voluble, commonplace
good-humor, with the aspect and accessories of a den of banditti.

"To-day we have seen the Lake of Orta, have walked for some miles among
its vineyards and chestnuts; and thence have come, by Baveno, to this
place;--having seen by the way, I believe, the most beautiful part
of the Lago Maggiore, and certainly the most cheerful, complete and
extended example of fine scenery I have ever fallen in with. Here we
are, much to my wonder,--for it seems too good to be true,--fairly in
Italy; and as yet my journey has been a pleasanter and more instructive,
and in point of health a more successful one, than I at all imagined
possible. Calvert and I go on as well as can be. I let him have his way
about natural science, and he only laughs benignly when he thinks
me absurd in my moral speculations. My only regrets are caused by my
separation from my family and friends, and by the hurry I have been
living in, which has prevented me doing any work,--and compelled me to
write to you at a good deal faster rate than the _vapore_ moves on the
Lago Maggiore. It will take me to-morrow to Sesto Calende, whence we go
to Varese. We shall not be at Milan for some days. Write thither, if you
are kind enough to write at all, till I give you another address. Love
to my Father.

"Your affectionate son,
"JOHN STERLING."

Omitting Milan, Florence nearly all, and much about "Art," Michael
Angelo, and other aerial matters, here are some select terrestrial
glimpses, the fittest I can find, of his progress towards Rome:--

_To his Mother_.

"_Lucca, N