After the wonders of Vienna and the mines of Salzburg, the mountain scenery of the Tyrol was an unspeakable pleasure, which tries to express itself in many closely written pages.  Crossing into Italy by the Stelvio Pass, a sharp but passing fit of illness detained Coley at Como for a day, and caused him to call in an Italian doctor, who treated him on the starvation system, administered no medicines, and would take no fee.  The next day Coley was in condition to go on to Milan, where his first impression of the Cathedral was, as so often happens, almost of bewilderment.  He did not at first like the Lombardo-Gothic style, but he studied it carefully, and filled his letter with measurements and numbers, though confessing that no part pleased him so much as the pinnacles terminating in statues, ’each one a very beautiful martyr’s memorial.’  Two more visits of several hours, however, brought the untutored eye to a sense of the harmony of proportion, and the surpassing beauty of the carvings and sculpture.

It did not need so much study to enjoy Lionardo da Vinci’s great fresco, of which he wrote long and elaborately, and, altogether, Milan afforded him very great delight and was a new world to him.  It was the farthest limit of his travels on this occasion.  The party returned by way of Geneva; and Coley, alone with four guides, attempted the Col du Geant.  Then following is his account of the danger in which he found himself:—­

’On Monday at 4.15 A.M. we started from the Montanvert, with our alpenstocks, plenty of ropes, and a hatchet to cut steps in the ice.  We walked quickly over the Mer de Glace, and in about three hours came to the difficult part.  I had no conception of what it would be.  We had to ascend perpendicular walls of ice, 30, 40, 50 feet high, by little holes which we cut with the hatchet, and to climb over places not a foot broad, with enormous crevasses on each side.  I was determined not to give in, and said not a word, but I thought that no one had a right to expose himself to such danger if known beforehand.  After about three hours spent in this way, (during which I made but one slip, when I slid about twelve feet down a crevasse, but providentially did not lose my head, and saved myself by catching at a broken ridge of ice, rising up in the crevasse, round which I threw my leg and worked my way up it astride), got to the region of snow, and here the danger was of falling into hidden crevasses.  We all five fastened ourselves to one another with ropes.  I went in the middle, Couttet in front, then Payot.  Most unluckily the weather began to cloud over, and soon a sharp hailstorm began, with every indication of a fog.  We went very cautiously over the snow for about three hours, sinking every now and then up to our middles, but only once in a crevasse, when Couttet suddenly fell, singing out “Tirez! tirez!” but he was pulled out instantly.  We had now reached the top, but the fog was so dense that I could scarcely