post-chaise, dismissed my fellow to carry my baggage by way of
Verona, and with no more than a valise on my back plunged into
the fastnesses of those mountains. I had a fancy to see the
little sculptured hills which made backgrounds for Gianbellini,
and there were rumours of great mountains built wholly of marble
which shone like the battlements.

...1 This extract from the unpublished papers of the Manorwater
family has seemed to the Editor worth printing for its historical
interest. The famous Lady Molly Carteron became Countess of
Manorwater by her second marriage. She was a wit and a friend of
wits, and her nephew, the Honourable Charles Hervey-Townshend
(afterwards our Ambassador at The Hague), addressed to her a
series of amusing letters while making, after the fashion of his
contemporaries, the Grand Tour of Europe. Three letters, written
at various places in the Eastern Alps and despatched from Venice,
contain the following short narrative....

of the Celestial City. So at any rate reported young Mr.
Wyndham, who had travelled with me from Milan to Venice. I lay
the first night at Pieve, where Titian had the fortune to be
born, and the landlord at the inn displayed a set of villainous
daubs which he swore were the early works of that master. Thence
up a toilsome valley I journeyed to the Ampezzan country, valley
where indeed I saw my white mountains, but, alas! no longer
Celestial. For it rained like Westmorland for five endless days,
while I kicked my heels in an inn and turned a canto of Aristo
into halting English couplets. By-and-by it cleared, and I
headed westward towards Bozen, among the tangle of rocks where
the Dwarf King had once his rose-garden. The first night I had