But I do not mean to treat my readers to lectures on history, instead of chapters on travel. It is not an abstract disquisition on the influence of religion and government, such as one might compose without stirring from his own fire-side, which I intend to write. It is a real journey we are about to undertake. You shall have facts as well as reflections,--incidents as well as disquisitions. I shall be grave,--as who would not at the sight of fallen nations?--but "when time shall serve there shall be smiles." You shall climb the Alps; and when their tops begin to burn at sunrise, you shall join heart and song with the music of the shepherd's horn, and the thunder of a thousand torrents, as they rush headlong down amid crags and pine-forests from the icy summits. You shall enter, with pilgrim feet, the gates of proud capitals, where puissant kings once reigned, but have passed away, and have left no memorial on earth, save a handful of dust in a stone-coffin, or a half-legible name on some mouldering arch. The solemn and stirring voice of Monte Viso, speaking from the midst of the Cottian Alps, will call you from afar to the martyr-land of Europe. You shall worship with the Waldenses beneath their own Castelluzzo, which covers with its mighty shadow the ashes of their martyred forefathers, and the humble sanctuary of their living descendants. You shall count the towns and campaniles on the broad Lombardy. You shall pass glorious days on the top of renowned cathedrals, and sit and muse in the face of the eternal Alps, as the clouds now veil, now reveal, their never-trodden snows. You shall cross the Lagunes, and see the winged lion of St Mark soaring serenely amid the bright domes and the ever calm seas of Venice, where you may list
"The song and oar of Adria's gondolier, Mellowed by distance, o'er the waters sweep."
You shall travel long sleepless nights in the _diligence_, and be ferried at day-break over "ancient rivers." You shall tread the grass-grown streets of Ferrara, and the deserted halls of Bologna, where the wisdom-loving youth of Europe erst assembled, but whose solitude now is undisturbed, save by the clank of the Croat's sabre, or the wine-flagon of the friar. You shall visit cells dim and dank, around which genius has thrown a halo which draws thither the pilgrim, who would rather muse in the twilight of the naked vault, than wander amid the marble glories of the palace that rises proudly in its neighbourhood. You shall go with me, at the hour of vespers, to aisled cathedrals, which were ages a-building, and the erection of which swallowed up the revenues of provinces,--beneath whose roof, ample enough to cover thousands and tens of thousands, you may see a solitary priest, singing a solemn dirge over a "Religion" fallen as a dominant belief, and existing only as a military organization; while statues, mute and solemn, of mailed warriors, grim saints, angels and winged cherubs, ranged along the walls, are the only companions of the surpliced man, if we except a few beggars pressing with naked knees the stony floor. You shall see Florence,--