and their Scripture pieces by various masters, sorely faded; and here and there, above the rich foliage of its various woods, like the tall mast of a ship at sea, is seen the handsome and lofty campanile, so peculiar to the architecture of Lombardy. The great Alps look down with most benignant aspect upon this plain. They seem quite proud of it, and nurse it with the care and tenderness of a parent. Noble rivers not a few--the Ticino, the Adige, and streams and torrents without number--do they send down, to keep its beauty ever fresh. These streams cross and re-cross its green bosom in all directions, forming by their interlacings a curious network of silvery lines, like the bright threads in the mine, or the white veins in the porphyritic slab. Observe this little flower, with its bright petals, growing by the wayside. That humble flower owes its beauty to yonder chain. From the frozen summits of the Alps come the waters at which it daily drinks. And when the dog-days come, and a fiery sun looks down upon the plain from a sky that is cloudless for months together, and when every leaf droops, and even the tall poplar seems to bow itself beneath the intolerable heat, the mountains, pitying the panting plain, send down their cool breezes to revive it. Would that from the lofty pinnacles of rank and talent there descended upon the lower levels of society an influence equally wholesome and beneficent! Were there more streams from the mountain, there would be more fruits upon the plain. The world would not be the scorched desert which it is, in which the vipers of envy and discontent hiss and sting; but a fragrant garden, full of the fruits of social order and of moral principle. Truly, man might learn many a useful lesson from the earth on which he treads: the great, to dispense freely out of their abundance,--for by dispensing they but multiply their blessings, as Mont Blanc, by sending down its streams to enrich the plain, feeds those snows which are its glory and crown,--and the humble, the lesson of a thankful reciprocation. This plain does not drink in the waters of the Alps, and sullenly refuse to own its obligations. Like a duteous child, it brings its yearly offering to the foot of Mont Blanc,--fields of golden wheat, countless vines with their blood-red clusters, fruits of every name, and flowers of every hue;--such is the noble tribute which this plain, year by year, lays at the feet of its august parent. There is but one drawback to its prosperity. Two sombre shadows fall gloomily athwart its surface. These are Austria and Rome.