Can dine very well, and I should imagine find good
sleeping accommodation. The view from the balcony outside the
dining-room is wonderful, and above is a sketch from the terrace
just in front of the church.
There is here no single building comparable to the sanctuary of
Sammichele, nor is there any trace of that beautiful Lombard work
which makes so much impression upon one in the church on the Monte
Pirchiriano; the architecture is late, and barocco, not to say
rococo, reigns everywhere; nevertheless the effect of the church is
good. The visitor should get the sacristan to show him a very fine
pagliotto or altar cloth of raised embroidery, worked in the
thirteenth century. He will also do well to walk some little
distance behind the town on the way to S. Maria dei fiori (St. Mary
of the flowers) and look down upon the town and Lombardy. I do not
think he need go much higher than this, unless he has a fancy for
climbing.
The Sacro Monte is a kind of ecclesiastical Rosherville Gardens,
eminently the place to spend a happy day. We happened by good luck
to be there during one of the great feste of the year, and saw I am
afraid to say how many thousands of pilgrims go up and down. They
were admirably behaved, and not one of them tipsy. There was an
old English gentleman at the Hotel Riposo who told us that there
had been another such festa not many weeks previously, and that he
had seen one drunken man there - an Englishman - who kept abusing all
he saw and crying out, "Manchester's the place for me."
The processions were best at the last part of the ascent; there
were pilgrims, all decked out with coloured feathers, and priests
and banners and music and crimson and gold and white and glittering
brass against the cloudless blue sky. The old priest sat at his
open window to receive the offerings of the devout as they passed;
but he did not seem to get more than a few bambini modelled in wax.
Perhaps he was used to it. And the band played the barocco music
on the barocco little piazza and we were all barocco together. It
was as though the clergyman at Ladywell had given out that, instead
of having service usual, the congregation would go in procession to
the Crystal Palace with all their traps, and that the band had been
practising "Wait till the clouds roll by" for some time, and on
Sunday as a great treat they should have it.
The Pope has issued an order saying he will not have masses written
like operas. It is no use. The Pope can do much, but he will not
be able to get contrapuntal music into Varese.
