comparatively recent, in 1871, and on going on to the Hotel d'Italia
at Varallo, found it repeated--"Tom Taylor disgusted." The entries
in each case were probably aimed at the Sacro Monte, and not at the
inn; but they grated on me, as they must have done on many other
English visitors; and I saw with pleasure that some one had written
against the second of them the following epigram, which is too neat
not to be preserved. It ran:-


"Oh wretched Tom Taylor, disgusted at Orta,
At Varallo we find him disgusted again;
The feeling's contagious, I really have caught a
Disgust for Tom Taylor--he travels in vain."


Who, I wonder, was it who could fling off such an apt impromptu, and
how many more mute inglorious writers have we not who might do
anything they chose if they would only choose to do anything at all?
Some one else had written on an earlier page; -


1.

"While you've that which makes the mare go
You should stay at this albergo,

Bona in esse and in posse
Are dispensed by Joseph Rossi.

2.