464 OLD ALPINE JOTTINGS. 



July 1866 caused me to cross with Mr. Girdlestone into 

 Italy, in the hope that a respite of ten or twelve days 

 might improve the temper of the mountains. We 

 walked across the Simplon to the village of the same 

 name, and took thence the diligence to Domo d'Ossola 

 and Baveno. The atmospheric change was wonderful ; 

 and still the clear air which we enjoyed below was the 

 self-same air that heaped clouds and snow upon the 

 mountains. It came across the heated plains of Lom- 

 bardy charged with moisture, but the moisture was 

 reduced by the heat to the transparent condition of true 

 vapour, and hence invisible. Tilted by the mountains 

 the air rose, and as it expanded it became chilled, and 

 as it became chilled it discharged its vapour as visible 

 cloud, the globules of which were swelled by coalescence 

 into rain-drops on the mountain flanks, or were frozen to 

 ice-particles on their summits, the particles collecting 

 afterwards to form flakes of snow. 



At Baveno we halted on the margin of the Lago 

 Maggiore. I could hear the lisping of the waters on 

 the shingle far into the night. My window looked 

 eastward, and through it could be seen the first warm- 

 ing of the sky at the approach of dawn. I rose and 

 watched the growth of colour all along the east. The 

 mountains, from mere masses of darkness projected 

 against the heavens, became deeply empurpled. It 

 was not as a mere wash of colour overspreading their 

 surfaces. They blent with the atmosphere as if their 

 substance was a condensation of the general purple of 

 the air. Nobody was stirring at the time-and the very 

 lap of the lake upon its shore only increased the sense 

 of silence. 



The holy time was quiet as a nun 

 Breathless with adoration. 



In my subsequent experience of the Italian lakes I met 



