When we left Brescia the heat was intense; the road, too, was deep in dust to an extent not to be understood in England. There had been a drought of some weeks’ duration, and the much-travelled road from Milan to Verona, along which our way now lay, plainly told the tale which the dry, parched, cracked-looking earth on each side of our way, and the sad faces of every one as they talked about the failure of the vintage, amply confirmed. Unluckily for ourselves we had not taken the advice of our driver to have a close vehicle, but had insisted upon having an open carriage, the consequence of which piece of self-will was that we had hard work, even with the aid of umbrellas, to protect ourselves from _coups de soleil_. We now learnt that in hot weather in Italy it is not always the best plan to have as much of the sun as one can get. In England it always is, but he who acts on his English experience in Italy will surely repent his mistake. We managed, however, to exist through the clouds of dust, relieved perhaps by the sight of a regiment of swarthy and unpleasant looking Austrian soldiers marching through the sun and dust, many of them with their knapsacks and arms, but all with great-coats on to preserve their white uniforms. When we saw them we could not help contrasting our relative lots, and then, feeling how much worse off they were than ourselves, we went on a little more contentedly than before. The road, too, became slightly more interesting; instead of miles upon miles of straight lines, we had a more winding way, and after a time occasional beautiful glimpses of the mountains which marked to us the situation of the Lago di Garda. We drove without stopping through Donato, a place of no interest apparently save for the huge dome of its church, and then passing under a very fine viaduct resting upon a long range of pointed arches, (which carries the railway which soon after our return was opened, and now whisks only too many travellers from Milan to Venice and back without a halt on the way,) we commenced the descent towards the town of Desenzano, beyond and above whose roofs stretched the beautiful expanse of fair Lago di Garda, with its great calm surface, and fine group of distant mountains hemming in with picturesque and irregular outline, its upper end.