INEXHAUSTIBLE ITALY 



361 



setting of one of the world's largest and 

 most remarkable cathedrals, a battle- 

 ground of the past, with many a stirring 

 and bloody field to remember, the most 

 beautiful lake district in the world. It 

 has also been a mighty force throughout 

 Italian history. 



Geographically speaking, the Lombard 

 plain, bounded partly on the south by the 

 Po, in part on the west by its large af- 

 fluent, the Ticino, is a rich and fertile 

 agricultural country, very hot in summer, 

 but exposed in winter to bitter cold and 

 fierce mountain storms. Below the 

 mountains there is very little rain in 

 summer, but, thanks to the medieval sys- 

 tem of irrigation, which has no superior 

 anywhere in Europe, it is almost impos- 

 sible for the crops to fail. 



They grow in three tiers in Lombardy — 

 pastures in the mountain regions, vines 

 and fruit trees and chestnuts on the 

 lower slopes, and shining acres of cereals 

 and grapes and innumerable spreading 

 mulberries in the plain itself. 



But it is not quite the same Lom- 

 bardy now that it used to be, for the 

 medieval sheep for which it was so cele- 

 brated have all turned with the centuries 

 into — silkworms ; eugenic worms at that ! 

 The greatest care is taken in crossing and 

 breeding the native worms eugenically 

 with perfect Chinese and Japanese stock, 

 with the result that the Italian worms 

 are steadily improving and producing 

 more and better silk. 



Beside its agriculture and silk indus- 

 tries — Milan is the principal silk market 

 of the world — Lombardy is perhaps the 

 most important manufacturing region in 

 the whole country, with great factories 

 turning out hats, rope, paper, iron and 

 steel, cannon, linens, woolens, and what- 

 not ; mines from whose depths come cop- 

 per and zinc and iron ores ; quarries that 

 yield ample marbles and delicate alabaster 

 and the sturdier granite. 



MILAN AND ITS CATHEDRAL 



The first thing to strike one in Milan is 

 its air of cosmopolitan — I might almost 

 say Yankee — shrewdness and bustle in 

 business. The commonplace streets are 

 lined with good shops, and the energetic 

 people give them the appearance of the 



streets of a big American manufacturing 

 city with a large foreign element. 



Milan was built in a fairly regular 

 polygon, surrounded by walls, and the 

 walls by a moat. The former have 

 moved out into the country a bit, but the 

 moat is still there, inclosing thorough- 

 fares that turn and twist like cowpaths, 

 though from the Piazza Duomo radiate 

 some that are newer and broader. 



But one does not consider streets 

 when he reaches the piazza, for there, 

 white as salt and delicate as a gigantic 

 filigree jewel fresh from the hands of 

 the silversmith, the Cathedral of the 

 Nascent Virgin, a miraculous stalagmite, 

 yearns upward toward heaven with every 

 slender, arrowy spire and shaft and pin- 

 nacle (see pages 362-363). 



In many ways it is not good archi- 

 tecture, and inside it is monotonous 

 and barren ; yet notwithstanding every 

 criticism, despite obvious faults, the Ca- 

 thedral of Milan is a marvel. More than 

 4,000 statues poise and hover about it ; its 

 lines tend upward as resistlessly as the 

 spears of a field of wheat ; the very num- 

 ber of them adds to the illusion — a great 

 work of Nature about whose feet the hu- 

 man ants in the piazza have dug them- 

 selves in, reared their tiny hillocks, and 

 gone bustling and struggling about their 

 tiny affairs in its protecting shadow. 



THE BATTLEFIELDS OF LOMBARDY 



The plain of Lombardy is as dotted 

 with battlefields as most other plains are 

 with ordinary cities, and whichever way 

 one looks from Milan some famous day 

 is almost in sight — Solferino, Magenta, 

 Rivoli, Lodi, Pavia, Novara — fights that 

 were not the mere bickerings of bloody- 

 minded local despots, but combats that 

 shaped or shook international affairs. 

 Beside or upon almost every field rises a 

 city either lovely to look upon or fasci- 

 nating to read about. 



Many other towns there are, too, of 

 beauty and interest — Bergamo, gifted 

 with an acropolis and old walls turned 

 into promenades loved of lovers ; Bres- 

 cia, beautifully situated at the foot of 

 the frosty Alps ; quiet Cremona of the 

 silk-mills and palaces ; little Tavazzano, 

 where the whole plain is grooved by 



