Just such a beautiful place--but, luckily, not thus tenanted--is a villa on the Lake of Como, just opposite the sharp end of the tongue of land which, jutting into the lake to the distance of half its length, cuts it into the shape of a Y. We passed it every day on our way to the chapel. It was formerly, if we remember rightly, the pleasure-house of Queen Caroline of England during her exile. No one ever goes there now, and its aspect is as suggestive, as gloomy, as pathetic, as Edgar Poe or Mrs. Radcliffe could have wished. Just beyond it, on the narrow slip of land which runs parallel to the lake at the foot of the abrupt mountains, is a private chapel, built over the family vault of the Marquises of A---- and Counts of S----, an old Savoyard family of great piety and high origin. The land around here is part of their patrimonial estate, and the chapel contains two or three very beautiful monuments of white marble, exquisite in carving and finish, but hardly very Christian in taste. Further up, and to be reached by a pleasant, rugged path right behind our little hotel, was another church--a village parish church this time, a much more homely and _homelike_ place--served by a gentle old _curato_. The view over the lake from the jasmine-covered parapet surrounding this church was lovely--so peaceful that it suggested rather the possible surroundings of a holy soul just released from the body than the actual home of a busy, struggling, mortal life. To heighten the illusion, the moon rose slowly as we descended the same path, and her broad silver shield, as it passed seemingly behind the crags of the mountains on the opposite shore, became momentarily stamped with the irregular outline of dark rocks, simulating to our imagination the turrets and spires of a spectre city. Soon the path of light traced by her rays upon the waters began to shine like the Israelites' guiding pillar in the wilderness, and we felt tempted to try a water-excursion as a fitting ending to our day. The beauty of the scene, as the shadows grew darker and the moonlight more intense, is indescribable. Our silent party in the boat did not even attempt to admire it _out loud_. The hills, purple-black in the foreground, rising out of the lake as walls of onyx from a crystal floor, grew stone-gray as they receded from sight and mingled their colors with the unearthly white of the Alpine snow-peaks in the far distance. These last seemed as though hung like a bridal wreath between earth and heaven, resting on the dark, undistinguishable masses of the chestnut woods covering the lower spurs. Now and then a bell would ring out in the still night air--a brazen voice rolling from some village belfry--and waking the mountain echoes till its sound died away in a silver murmur, mingling with the plashing of our steady oars, and gently reminding us that our lives had floated one hour nearer to God. But lovely as the scene was by night, it is difficult to call it less lovely by day.