It is well known that the traveller, if he knows the Italian language as written in books, the standard Tuscan, still finds himself a stranger in many parts of Italy, unable to comprehend the dialects, with their lively abbreviations and witty slang.  That of Venice I had understood somewhat, and could enter into the drollery and naivete of the gondoliers, who, as a class, have an unusual share of character.  But the Milanese I could not at first understand at all.  Their language seemed to me detestably harsh, and their gestures unmeaning.  But after a friend, who possesses that large and ready sympathy easier found in Italy than anywhere else, had translated for me verbatim into French some of the poems written in the Milanese, and then read them aloud in the original, I comprehended the peculiar inflection of voice and idiom in the people, and was charmed with it, as one is with the instinctive wit and wisdom of children.

There is very little to see at Milan, compared with any other Italian city; and this was very fortunate for me, allowing an interval of repose in the house, which I cannot take when there is so much without, tempting me to incessant observation and study.  I went through, the North of Italy with a constantly increasing fervor of interest.  When I had thought of Italy, it was always of the South, of the Roman States, of Tuscany.  But now I became deeply interested in the history, the institutions, the art of the North.  The fragments of the past mark the progress of its waves so clearly, I learned to understand, to prize them every day more, to know how to make use of the books about them.  I shall have much to say on these subjects some day.

Leaving Milan, I went on the Lago Maggiore, and afterward into Switzerland.  Of this tour I shall not speak here; it was a beautiful little romance by itself, and infinitely refreshing to be so near nature in these grand and simple forms, after so much exciting thought of Art and Man.  The day passed in the St. Bernardin, with its lofty peaks and changing lights upon the distant snows,—­its holy, exquisite valleys and waterfalls, its stories of eagles and chamois, was the greatest refreshment I ever experienced:  it was bracing as a cold bath after the heat of a crowd amid which one has listened to some most eloquent oration.

Returning from Switzerland, I passed a fortnight on the Lake of Como, and afterward visited Lugano.  There is no exaggeration in the enthusiastic feeling with which artists and poets have viewed these Italian lakes.  Their beauties are peculiar, enchanting, innumerable.  The Titan of Richter, the Wanderjahre of Goethe, the Elena of Taylor, the pictures of Turner, had not prepared me for the visions of beauty that daily entranced the eyes and heart in those regions.  To our country Nature has been most bounteous; but we have nothing in the same kind that can compare with these lakes, as seen under the Italian heaven.  As to those persons who have pretended to discover that the effects of light and atmosphere were no finer than they found in our own lake scenery, I can only say that they must be exceedingly obtuse in organization,—­a defect not uncommon among Americans.