( 17) 



position, at all events, nearer the middle of the road. 

 During the descent by the edge of this precipice, Tom 

 and I were both looking out of the window on that side 

 of the sledge, and so dangerous did it look that, after 

 my simple observation that cc we were rather near the 

 edge of the road ", neither of us spoke, but perhaps 

 thought a good deal. It seemed as if either of us, by 

 putting our head out of the window, would certainly 

 turn the scale and overbalance the whole affair. . . . 

 Our sledge was No. i, and it was as curious a sight as 

 can well be imagined, after having whisked round the 

 sharp angles of the road, to see the other five longo ordine 

 sliding down like cc a shot out of a shovel ", and one 

 after another whirling round after us.' Only a week 

 before there had been a very serious accident to some 

 English travellers on the same Pass. 



The party visited Turin, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, and 

 other towns of North Italy, seeing all the regular sights, 

 and suffering all the regular impositions which travellers 

 in Italy have to suffer even at the present day. My 

 father seems to have been on the whole more impressed 

 with architecture than with pictures, and to have found 

 many . famous pictures wanting in expression. He 

 remarks of Raphael's ' Madonna della Seggiola ' in the 

 Pitti Palace, c the only one I have seen that does not 

 look sillily vacant and almost idiotic. . . . One wonders 

 how the painter of this could have painted some of his 

 other Madonnas.' They spent three weeks in Rome 



B 



