Cambridge Pieces by Samuel Butler
page 23 of 65 (35%)
page 23 of 65 (35%)
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there are no suburbs, and the consequence is that at the end of
every street one sees the country; the Alps surround the city like a horseshoe, and hence many of the streets seem actually walled in with a snowy mountain. Nowhere are the Alps seen to greater advantage than from Turin. I speak from the experience, not of the journey I am describing, but of a previous one. From the Superga the view is magnificent, but from the hospital for soldiers just above the Po on the eastern side of the city the view is very similar, and the city seen to greater advantage. The Po is a fine river, but very muddy, not like the Ticino which has the advantage of getting washed in the Lago Maggiore. On the whole Turin is well worth seeing. Leaving it, however, on Wednesday morning we arrived at Arona about half-past eleven: the country between the two places is flat, but rich and well cultivated: much rice is grown, and in consequence the whole country easily capable of being laid under water, a thing which I should imagine the Piedmontese would not be slow to avail themselves of; we ought to have had the Alps as a background to the view, but they were still veiled. It was here that a countryman, seeing me with one or two funny little pipes which I had bought in Turin, asked me if I was a fabricante di pipi- -a pipe-maker. By the time that we were at Arona the sun had appeared, and the clouds were gone; here, too, we determined to halt for half a day, neither of us being quite the thing, so after a visit to the colossal statue of San Carlo, which is very fine and imposing, we laid ourselves down under the shade of some chestnut trees above the lake, and enjoyed the extreme beauty of everything around us, until we fell fast asleep, and yet even in sleep we seemed to retain a consciousness of the unsurpassable beauty of the scene. After |
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