The Sculptor Evidently Neither
Understood Them Nor Liked Them, And Could Never Get Beyond
Silliness; But The Artist Who Has Lately Done Them Up Has Made Them
Still Weaker And Sillier By Giving Them All Pink Noses.
Shortly after the sixth chapel has been passed the road turns a
corner, and the town on the hill (see preceding page) comes into
full view.
This is a singularly beautiful spot. The chapels are
worth coming a long way to see, but this view of the town is better
still: we generally like any building that is on the top of a
hill; it is an instinct in our nature to do so; it is a remnant of
the same instinct which makes sheep like to camp at the top of a
hill; it gives a remote sense of security and vantage-ground
against an enemy. The Italians seem hardly able to look at a high
place without longing to put something on the top of it, and they
have seldom done so with better effect than in the case of the
Sacro Monte at Varese. From the moment of its bursting upon one on
turning the corner near the seventh, or Flagellation chapel, one
cannot keep one's eyes off it, and one fancies, as with S. Michele,
that it comes better and better with every step one takes; near the
top it composes, as on p. 254, but without colour nothing can give
an adequate notion of its extreme beauty. Once at the top the
interest centres in the higgledy-pigglediness of the houses, the
gay colours of the booths where strings of beads and other
religious knick-knacks are sold, the glorious panorama, and in the
inn where one can dine very well, and I should imagine find good
sleeping accommodation.
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