It Is Made In
Long Sticks, Rather Thicker Than A Tobacco Pipe, And Eats Crisp
Like Toast.
It is almost universally preferred to ordinary bread
by the inhabitants of what was formerly Piedmont, but beyond these
limits it is rarely seen.
Why so? Either it is good or not good.
If not good, how has it prevailed over so large an area? If good,
why does it not extend its empire? The Reformation is another case
in point: granted that Protestantism is illogical, how is it that
so few within a given area can perceive it to be so? The same
question arises in respect of the distribution of many plants and
animals; the reason of the limits which some of them cannot pass,
being, indeed, perfectly clear, but as regards perhaps the greater
number of them, undiscoverable. The upshot of it is that things do
not in practice find their perfect level any more than water does
so, but are liable to disturbance by way of tides and local
currents, or storms. It is in his power to perceive and profit by
these irregularities that the strength or weakness of a commercial
man will be apparent,
One day I made an excursion from Lanzo to a place, the name of
which I cannot remember, but which is not far from the Groscavallo
glacier. Here I found several Italians staying to take the air,
and among them one young gentleman, who told me he was writing a
book upon this neighbourhood, and was going to illustrate it with
his own drawings. This naturally interested me, and I encouraged
him to tell me more, which he was nothing loth to do. He said he
had a passion for drawing, and was making rapid progress; but there
was one thing that held him back - the not having any Conte chalk:
if he had but this, all his difficulties would vanish.
Unfortunately I had no Conte chalk with me, I but I asked to see
the drawings, and was shown about twenty, all of which greatly
pleased me. I at once proposed an exchange, and have thus become
possessed of the two which I reproduce here. Being pencil
drawings, and not done with a view to Mr. Dawson's process, they
have suffered somewhat in reproduction, but I decided to let them
suffer rather than attempt to copy them. What can be more
absolutely in the spirit of the fourteenth century than the
drawings given above? They seem as though done by some fourteenth-
century painter who had risen from the dead. And to show that they
are no rare accident, I will give another (p. 138), also done by an
entirely self-taught Italian, and intended to represent the castle
of Laurenzana in the neighbourhood of Potenza.
If the reader will pardon a digression, I will refer to a more
important example of an old master born out of due time. One day,
in the cathedral at Varallo, I saw a picture painted on linen of
which I could make nothing.
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