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 change 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.

There were one or two other things in that book, of which, while I am
about it, I should like to deliver my mind. A certain man who wrote
a bold round hand signed his name "Tom Taylor"--doubtless not the
late well-known art critic and dramatic writer, but some other person
of the same name--in the visitors' book of the Hotel Leone d'Oro at
Orta, and added the word "disgusted." I saw this entry, then