COMO.

My visit to Lake Como has become to me a dream of summer,--a vision

that remains faded the whole year round, till the blazing heats of

July bring out the sympathetic tints in which it was vividly painted.

Then I behold myself again in burning Milan, amidst noises and

fervors and bustle that seem intolerable after my first six months

in tranquil, cool, mute Venice. Looking at the great white Cathedral,

with its infinite pinnacles piercing the cloudless blue, and gathering

the fierce sun upon it, I half expect to see the whole mass calcined

by the heat, and crumbling, statue by statue, finial by finial, arch

by arch, into a vast heap of lime on the Piazza, with a few charred

English tourists blackening here and there upon the ruin, and

contributing a smell of burnt leather and Scotch tweed to the horror

of the scene. All round Milan smokes the great Lombard plain, and

to the north rises Monte Rosa, her dark head coifed with tantalizing

snows as with a peasant's white linen kerchief. And I am walking out

upon that fuming plain as far as to the Arco della Pace, on which

the bronze horses may melt any minute; or I am sweltering through the

city's noonday streets, in search of Sant' Ambrogio, or the Cenacolo

of Da Vinci, or what know I? Coming back to our hotel, "Alla Bella

Venezia," and greeted on entering by the immense fresco which covers

one whole side of the court, it appeared to my friend and me no wonder

that Garibaldi should look so longingly from the prow of a gondola

toward the airy towers and balloon-like domes that swim above the

unattainable lagoons of Venice, where the Austrian then lorded it in

coolness and quietness, while hot, red-shirted Italy was shut out

upon the dusty plains and stony hills. Our desire for water became

insufferable; we paid our modest bills, and at six o'clock we took

the train for Como, where we arrived about the hour when Don Abbondio,

walking down the lonely path with his book of devotions in his hand,

gave himself to the Devil on meeting the bravos of Don Rodrigo. I

counsel the reader to turn to _I Promessi Sposi_, if he would know

how all the lovely Como country looks at that hour. For me, the ride

through the evening landscape, and the faint sentiment of pensiveness

provoked by the smell of the ripening maize, which exhales the same

sweetness on the way to Como that it does on any Ohio bottom-land,

have given me an appetite, and I am to dine before wooing the

descriptive Muse.

After dinner, we find at the door of the hotel an English architect

whom we know, and we take a boat together for a moonlight row upon the

lake, and voyage far up the placid water through air that bathes our

heated senses like dew. How far we have left Milan behind! On the lake

lies the moon, but the hills are held by mysterious shadows, which for

the time are as substantial to us as the hills themselves. Hints of

habitation appear in the twinkling lights along the water's edge, and

we suspect an alabaster lamp in every casement, and in every invisible

house a villa such as Claude Melnotte described to Pauline,--and some

one mouths that well-worn fustian. The rags of sentimentality flutter

from every crag and olive-tree and orange-tree in all Italy--like the

wilted paper collars which vulgar tourists leave by our own mountains

and streams, to commemorate their enjoyment of the landscape.

The town of Como lies, a swarm of lights, behind us; the hills and

shadows gloom around; the lake is a sheet of tremulous silver. There

is no telling how we get back to our hotel, or with what satisfied

hearts we fall asleep in our room there. The steamer starts for the

head of the lake at eight o'clock in the morning, and we go on board

at that hour.

There is some pretense of shelter in the awning stretched over the

after part of the boat; but we do not feel the need of it in the fresh

morning air, and we get as near the bow as possible, that we may be

the very first to enjoy the famous beauty of the scenes opening

before us. A few sails dot the water, and everywhere there are small,

canopied row-boats, such as we went pleasuring in last night. We reach

a bend in the lake, and all the roofs and towers of the city of Como

pass from view, as if they had been so much architecture painted on

a scene and shifted out of sight at a theatre. But other roofs and

towers constantly succeed them, not less lovely and picturesque than

they, with every curve of the many-curving lake. We advance over

charming expanses of water lying between lofty hills; and as the lake

is narrow, the voyage is like that of a winding river,--like that of

the Ohio, but for the primeval wildness of the acclivities that guard

our Western stream, and the tawniness of its current. Wherever the

hills do not descend sheer into Como, a pretty town nestles on the

brink, or, if not a town, then a villa, or else a cottage, if there is

room for nothing more. Many little towns climb the heights half-way,

and where the hills are green and cultivated in vines or olives,

peasants' houses scale them to the crest. They grow loftier and

loftier as we leave our starting-place farther behind, and as we

draw near Colico they wear light wreaths of cloud and snow. So cool

a breeze has drawn down between them all the way that we fancy it to

have come from them till we stop at Colico, and find that, but for the

efforts of our honest engine, sweating and toiling in the dark

below, we should have had no current of air. A burning calm is in

the atmosphere, and on the broad, flat valley,--out of which a marshy

stream oozes into the lake,--and on the snow-crowned hills upon the

left, and on the dirty village of Colico upon the right, and on the

indolent beggars waiting to welcome us, and sunning their goitres at

the landing.

The name Colico, indeed, might be literally taken in English as

descriptive of the local insalubrity. The place was once large, but it

has fallen away much from sickness, and we found a bill posted in its

public places inviting emigrants to America on the part of a German

steamship company. It was the only advertisement of the kind I

ever saw in Italy, and I judged that the people must be notoriously

discontented there to make it worth the while of a steamship company

to tempt from home any of the home-keeping Italian race. And

yet Colico, though undeniably hot, and openly dirty, and tacitly

unhealthy, had merits, though the dinner we got there was not among

its virtues. It had an accessible country about it; that is, its woods

and fields were not impenetrably walled in from the vagabond foot;

and after we had dined we went and lay down under some greenly waving

trees beside a field of corn, and heard the plumed and panoplied maize

talking to itself of its kindred in America. It always has a welcome

for tourists of our nation wherever it finds us in Italy; and

sometimes its sympathy, expressed in a rustling and clashing of its

long green blades, or in its strong sweet perfume, has, as already

hinted, made me homesick, though I have been uniformly unaffected by

potato-patches and tobacco-fields. If only the maize could impart to

the Italian cooks the beautiful mystery of roasting-ears! Ah! then

indeed it might claim a full and perfect fraternization from its

compatriots abroad.

From where we lay beside the corn-field, we could see, through the

twinkling leaves and the twinkling atmosphere, the great hills across

the lake, taking their afternoon naps, with their clouds drawn like

handkerchiefs over their heads. It was very hot, and the red and

purple ooze of the unwholesome river below "burnt like a witch's

oils." It was indeed but a fevered joy we snatched from Nature there;

and I am afraid that we got nothing more comfortable from sentiment,

when, rising, we wandered off through the unguarded fields toward a

ruined tower on a hill. It must have been a relic of feudal times,

and I could easily believe it had been the hold of one of those wicked

lords who used to rule in the terror of the people beside peaceful and

happy Como. But the life, good or bad, was utterly gone out of it

now, and what was left of the tower was a burden to the sense. A few

scrawny blackberries and other brambles grew out of its fallen stones;

harsh, dust-dry mosses painted its weather-worn walls with their

blanched gray and yellow. From its foot, looking out over the valley,

we saw the road to the Splügen Pass lying white-hot in the valley; and

while we looked, the diligence appeared, and dashed through the dust

that rose like a flame before. After that it was a relief to stroll

in dirty by-ways, past cottages of saffron peasants, and poor stony

fields that begrudged them a scanty vegetation, back to the steamer

blistering in the sun.

Now indeed we were glad of the awning, under which a silent crowd of

people with sunburnt faces waited for the departure of the boat. The

breeze rose again as the engine resumed its unappreciated labors, and,

with our head toward Como, we pushed out into the lake. The company

on board was such as might be expected. There was a German

landscape-painter, with three heart's-friends beside him; there

were some German ladies; there were the unfailing Americans and

the unfailing Englishman; there were some French people; there were

Italians from the meridional provinces, dark, thin, and enthusiastic,

with fat silent wives, and a rhythmical speech; there were Milanese

with their families, out for a holiday,--round-bodied men, with blunt

square features, and hair and vowels clipped surprisingly short, there

was a young girl whose face was of the exact type affected in rococo

sculpture, and at whom one gazed without being able to decide whether

she was a nymph descended from a villa gate, or a saint come from

under a broken arch in a Renaissance church. At one of the little

towns two young Englishmen in knickerbockers came on board, who were

devoured by the eyes of their fellow-passengers, and between whom and

our kindly architect there was instantly ratified the tacit treaty of

non-intercourse which travelling Englishmen observe.

Nothing further interested us on the way to Como, except the gathering

coolness of the evening air; the shadows creeping higher and higher

on the hills; the songs of the girls winding yellow silk on the reels

that hummed through the open windows of the factories on the shore;

and the appearance of a flag that floated from a shallop before the

landing of a stately villa. The Italians did not know this banner, and

the Germans loudly debated its nationality. The Englishmen grinned,

and the Americans blushed in silence. Of all my memories of that hot

day on Lake Como, this is burnt the deepest; for the flag was that

insolent banner which in 1862 proclaimed us a broken people, and

persuaded willing Europe of our ruin. It has gone down long ago from

ship and fort and regiment, as well as from the shallop on the

fair Italian lake. Still, I say, it made Como too hot for us that

afternoon, and even breathless Milan was afterwards a pleasant

contrast.