various animals, battles, rocky scenes, seas, clouds, words, and
the like. It may be compared to the sound of bells which may seem
to say whatever we choose to imagine. In the same manner these
spots may furnish hints for composition, though they do not teach
us how to finish any particular part." {6} No one can hate
drunkenness more than I do, but I am confident the human intellect
owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great
measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to imagination--
imagination being little else than another name for illusion. As
for wayside chapels, mine, when I am in London, are the shop
windows with pretty things in them.

The flowers on the slopes above Prato are wonderful, and the
village is full of nice bits for sketching, but the best thing, to
my fancy, is the church, and the way it stands, and the lovely
covered porch through which it is entered. This porch is not
striking from the outside, but I took two sketches of it from
within. There is, also, a fresco, half finished, of St. George and
the Dragon, probably of the fifteenth century, and not without
feeling. There is not much inside the church, which is modernised
and more recent than the tower. The tower is very good, and only
second, if second, in the upper Leventina to that of Quinto, which,
however, is not nearly so well placed.

The people of Prato are just as fond of cherries as those of
Primadengo, but I did not see any men in the trees. The children
in these parts are the most beautiful and most fascinating that I
know anywhere; they have black mouths all through the month of July
from the quantities of cherries that they devour. I can bear
witness that they are irresistible, for one kind old gentleman,