near the public walk by Napoleon, for the people to dance and assemble
in, when the weather was unfavourable. The man concluded some very
animated and sensible remarks on the late events, by adding
expressively, that though many had been benefited by the change, there
was to him and all others of his class as much difference between the
late reign and the present, as between _l'or et le fer_.

The silver shrine of St. Carlo Borromeo, with all its dazzling waste
of magnificence, struck me with a feeling of melancholy and
indignation. The gems and gold which lend such a horrible splendour to
corruption; the skeleton head, grinning ghastly under its invaluable
coronet; the skeleton hand supporting a crozier glittering with
diamonds, appeared so frightful, so senseless a mockery of the
excellent, simple-minded, and benevolent being they were intended to
honour, that I could but wonder, and escape from the sight as quickly
as possible. The Duomo is on the whole more remarkable for the
splendour of the material, than the good taste with which it is
employed: the statues which adorn it inside and out, are sufficient of
themselves to form a very respectable congregation: they are four
thousand in number.

_9th, Tuesday._--We gave the morning to the churches, and the evening
to the Ambrosian library. The day was, on the whole, more fatiguing
than edifying or amusing. I remarked whatever was remarkable, admired
all that is usually admired, but brought away few impressions of
novelty or pleasure. The objects which principally struck my
capricious and fastidious fancy, were precisely those which passed
unnoticed by every one else, and are not worth recording. In the first
church we visited, I saw a young girl respectably and even elegantly
dressed, in the beautiful costume of the Milanese, who was kneeling on