Whatever brevity may be as regards wit it is certainly the soul of
all agreeable poetry.

But again to return to Varallo, or rather to the way of reaching it
by the Colma. There is nothing in North Italy more beautiful than
this walk, with its park-like chestnut-covered slopes of undulating
pasture land dotted about with the finest thatched barns to be found
outside Titian. We might almost fancy that Handel had it in his mind
when he wrote his divine air "Verdi Prati." Certainly no country can
be better fitted either to the words or music. It continues in full
beauty all the way to Civiasco, where the carriage road begins that
now goes down into the main road between Varallo and Novara, joining
it a mile and a half or so below Varallo.

Close to the point of juncture there is a chapel of singularly
graceful elegant design, called the Madonna di Loreto. To this
chapel I will again return: it is covered with frescoes. Near it
there is an open triangular piece of grass land on which a murderer
was beheaded within the memory of persons still living. A wild old
man, who looked like an executioner broken loose from the
flagellation chapel on the Sacro Monte, but who was quite tame and
kind to us when we came to know him, told Jones and myself this last
summer that he remembered seeing the murderer brought here and
beheaded, this being as close as might be to the place where the
murder had been committed. We were at first rather sceptical, but on
inquiry at Varallo found that there had been an execution here, the
last in the open country, somewhere about the year 1835.

From this spot two roads lead to Varallo; one somewhat circuitous by
Mantegna, a village notable for a remarkable fresco outside the