But to me the great charm of the Alps lay in the sacred character which they wore. They seemed to rise before me, a vast temple, crowned, as temple never was, with sapphire domes and pinnacles, in which a holy nation had worshipped when Europe lay prostrate before the Dagon of the Seven Hills. I could go back to a time when that plain, now covered, alas! with the putridities of superstition, was the scene of churches in which the gospel was preached, of homes in which the Bible was read, of happy death-beds, and blessed graves,--graves in which, in the sublime words of our catechism, "the bodies of the saints being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the Resurrection." Sleep on, ye blessed dead! This pile shall crumble into ruin; the Alps dissolve, Rome herself sink; but not a particle of your dust shall be lost. The reflection recalled vividly an incident of years gone by. I had sauntered at the evening hour into a retired country churchyard in Scotland. The sun, after a day of heavy rain, was setting in glory, and his rays were gilding the long wet grass above the graves, and tinting the hoar ruins of a cathedral that rose in the midst of them, when my eye accidentally fell upon the following lines, which I quote from memory, carved in plain characters upon one of the tombstones:-- The wise, the just, the pious, and the brave, Live in their death, and flourish from the grave. Grain hid in earth repays the peasant's care, And evening suns but set to rise more fair. There are no such epitaphs in the graveyards of Lombardy; nor could there be any such in that of Dunblane, but for the Reformation. CHAPTER XI. MILAN TO BRESCIA. Biblioteca Ambrosiana--A Lamp in a Sepulchre--The Palimpsests--Labours of the Monks in the Cause of Knowledge--Cardinal Mai--He recovers many valuable Manuscripts of the Ancients which the Monks had Mutilated--Ulfila's Bible--The War against Knowledge--The Brazent Serpent at Sant' Ambrogio--Passport Office--Last Visit to the Duomo and the Arco Della Pace--The Alps apostrophized--Dinner at a Restaurant--Leave Milan--Procession of the Alps--Treviglio--The River Adda--The Postilion--Evening, with dreamy, decaying Borgos--Caravaggio--Supper at Chiari--Brescia--Arnold of Brescia.