race thus seek these shrines. Does not the German savant muse over his pipe of the Wanderjahre of adolescence when every student, inspired by Goethe, visited Italy, and he climbed the heights of Como, light of heart and purse, to sleep at wayside inns, and gather cystus, primula, or gentian in the valleys and ravines? The grandparents in their chimneycorner, within sound of the North Sea, smile at each other in celebrating their Golden Wedding such time as the bride and bridegroom of to-day prepare their modern luggage for a journey to Bellaggio. Is not the American soothed by the souvenir of drifting idly in a boat beneath garden hedges of bay and cyprus, redolent of the terraces of jasmine, magnolia, orange, and citron beyond, in a brief expansion of freedom from the bondage of routine? Como opens her gates in welcome. On the south side the tourist quits the train which has glided through the mazes of the St. Gothard route at the town, and launches on the narrow channel wending between green hills to open spaces beyond.

Eastward Lecco lures the wayfarer from the marble silence of Venice, reflecting dome and parapet in sluggish lagoons, to the blooming freshness of the Brianza, past Castello, the pilgrim shrine of Baro, and the Val Madrera. Westward Menaggio guards the twin portal from Lugano, the realm of peaceful countryside, with beech and walnut, ripening fig and grape, spanned by a toy railway adapted to a holidaymaking mood. The mountain world is sentinel. of the North, where hurrying crowds descend from glacier and snow-field in the brief hours of summer to Colico and Varenna. Oh, friendly reader, avoid all other craft, from the plodding daily steamer to the lumbering camballo, with odd rudder and arabesque gunwale, the barge of Pliny's time, and embark in the light skiff of Memory on these tranquil waters! Follow your own whim of the moment, and adorn the shallop with such pomp of imagination as the wreath of laurel, arazzi, and pictures on the fleet of boats which celebrated the marriage of Gian Galeazzo in 1493, to make short voyages from inlet to

rocky point.

Pliny's own cockle-shell, with painted planks, awnings, garlands of roses, and leaves twined about the staves, may even suit better your caprice. Hoist a filmy sail of fancy, and breast the tide independent of those winds of Como, the night Tivano the tramontana, or la Breva of midday from the southwest. Dip the oar of reverie into the stream of Lethe in shore, where roses shed their petals on marble steps laved by the tide, and orchids spread wings of white, pink, and sulphur tints amidst the shrubbery, and hold converse with a shadowy brotherhood of past generations who have done likewise.

Years are as a day here, and the recurring seasons only change the scenes of a mimic theatre.

II

ACROSS THE CENTURIES

T

HAT south gate of Como, the cradle

of Pliny the Younger, is neither es

pecially picturesque in situation, nor attractive in architecture, placed as

it is between the narrow strip of water and the higher level of the railway. The town has been described as resembling a crab stretched along the shore and slope. This miniature sovereign of a little world has a history out of all proportion to existing magnitude. Como may be compared to a drop of water reflecting the colours of environment.

Ancient Italian chroniclers, leisurely discursive in the treatment of history through musty volumes on library shelves, trace the settlement of Como to Comerus, the ancestor of Japeth, one hundred and thirty years after the Deluge.

Still another version is the founding of the place by a certain Antenore, who also built Padua after the destruction of Troy. A further inference is that the Etruscans in sending forth twelve colonies to build cities from the Po to the Alps, traced these boundaries as well. A first group of habitations, round in shape, constructed of interlaced branches, or reeds, with a thatched roof, expanded, in time, to a Latin colony of the date of the Roman Republic. The town, shown favour by Cæsar and Augustus, and boasting of Etruscan and Greek culture in the inhabitants, had a Forum, Gymnasium, Bath, Basilica, and Portico. Assuredly the nocturnal Triumviri of such cities were no other than the flying squadron of Carabinieri taking the beat of the suburbs of Italian towns in the nineteenth century. The theatre was already an important feature, as is the modern circus. Placards were posted about the streets vaunting the tricks of the jugglers, and inviting the public to witness the feats of acrobats in an interior perfumed with the scents of crocus and saffron essences. Traffic had