And Yet There Were Some Business-Dealings Going
On, And Some Profits Realising; For There Were Arcades Full Of
Jews, Where Those Extraordinary People Were Sitting Outside Their
Shops, Contemplating Their Stores Of Stuffs, And Woollens, And
Bright Handkerchiefs, And Trinkets:
And looking, in all respects,
as wary and business-like, as their brethren in Houndsditch,
London.
Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighbouring Christians,
who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a half, and to
start, next morning, as soon as the gates were opened, I returned
to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a
narrow passage between two bedsteads: confronted by a smoky fire,
and backed up by a chest of drawers. At six o'clock next morning,
we were jingling in the dark through the wet cold mist that
enshrouded the town; and, before noon, the driver (a native of
Mantua, and sixty years of age or thereabouts) began TO ASK THE WAY
to Milan.
It lay through Bozzolo; formerly a little republic, and now one of
the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns: where the
landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him! it was his weekly
custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd
of women and children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and
rain outside his door, where they were gathered to receive his
charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and rain, and vines trained
low upon the ground, all that day and the next; the first sleeping-
place being Cremona, memorable for its dark brick churches, and
immensely high tower, the Torrazzo--to say nothing of its violins,
of which it certainly produces none in these degenerate days; and
the second, Lodi. Then we went on, through more mud, mist, and
rain, and marshy ground: and through such a fog, as Englishmen,
strong in the faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe is
nowhere to be found but in their own country, until we entered the
paved streets of Milan.
The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed
Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that
could be seen of it at that time. But as we halted to refresh, for
a few days then, and returned to Milan again next summer, I had
ample opportunities of seeing the glorious structure in all its
majesty and beauty.
All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it! There are
many good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo
has--if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject--'my warm
heart.' A charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to
the poor, and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the
bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honour his
memory. I honour it none the less, because he was nearly slain by
a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder him at the altar:
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