“It is the custom,” concludes our author, “in token of holy cheerfulness (_allegria spirituale_) to wear a sprig of pine in the hat on leaving the holy place, to show that the visitor has been there; for it has some fine pine trees. This custom was introduced in royal merriment by Carlo Emmanuele I. He put a sprig in his hat, and was imitated by all his court, and the ladies wore the same in their bosom or in their hair. Assuredly it is one of the wonders of the world to see here, amid the amenities and allurements of the country, especially during the summer season, what a continuous _festa_ or holy fair is maintained. For there come and go torrents of men and women of every nation under heaven. Here you shall see pilgrims and persons in religion of every description, processions, prelates, and often princes and princesses, carriages, litters, calêches, equipages, cavalcades accompanied by trumpeters, gay troops of cavaliers, and ladies with plumes in their hats and rich apparel wherewithal to make themselves attractive; and at intervals you shall hear all manner of songs, concerts, and musical instruments, both civil and military, all done with a modest and devout cheerfulness of demeanour, by which I am reminded of nothing so strongly as of the words of the Psalmist in the which he saith ‘Come and see the works of the Lord, for He hath done wonders upon earth.’” It must have been something like our own Tunbridge Wells or Bath in the last century. Indeed, one is tempted to think that if the sea had come up to Varallo, it must have been almost more like Margate than Jerusalem. Nor can we forget the gentle rebuke administered on an earlier page to those who came neither on business nor for devotion’s sake, but out of mere idle curiosity, and bringing with them company which the good Canon designates as scandalous. _Mais nous avons changé tout cela_. I have allowed myself to quote so freely from Torrotti, as thinking that the reader will glean more incidentally from these fragments about the genius of Varallo and its antecedents than he would get from pages of disquisition on my own part. Returning to the Varallo of modern times, I would say that even now that the railway has been opened, the pleasantest way of getting there is still over the Colma from Pella opposite Orta. I always call this road “the root,” for I once saw it thus described, obviously in good faith, in the visitors’ book at one of the inns in Varallo. The gentleman said he had found “the root” without any difficulty at Pella, had taken it all the way to Varallo, and it was delicious. He said it was one of the finest “roots” he had ever seen, and it was only nine or ten miles long.