correspondents, had a villa. "How is Como looking," Pliny writes to him, "your darling spot and mine? And that most charming villa of yours, what of it, and its portico where it is always spring, its shady plane trees, its fresh crystal canal and the lake below that gives so lovely a view?"

Yet it is not of Pliny that we think there but of a later time than his, the time of the disaster. For here, alone perhaps in all Lombardy, the Latin tradition and perhaps the Latin art were preserved during the invasion and the rule of the barbarian Lombards. From the middle of the sixth century until Europe was well re-established in the twelfth, this little island stood for Europe, a refuge for civilisation from barbary, holding ever to the Imperial cause. When at last after a sixth months' siege it capitulated, it was with honour, for in every real sense it had achieved its end; it had, during some six hundred years, borne witness for civilisation and upheld the European tradition. And remembering this, it is fitting that for centuries a miracle play which represented the life and death of S. John the Baptist, the witness and the forerunner, should have been played here upon his festa in June. The Isola Comacina may well be called S. Giovanni.

Who shall describe the way from Isola Comacina to Como is it not one of the most luxurious beauties of the world? Argegno with the Val d' Intelvi, Nesso with its waterfall, what can be said of them?

It is only when below Nesso, in a great bay on the eastern bank, we come to the Villa Pliniana, majestic in the shadow and silence under the cliffs where the cypresses stand on guard, that we are recalled to that old world which seems so real to us and about which Pliny gossiped so delightfully. For the Villa Pliniana, though now an affair of the sixteenth century at farthest, is undoubtedly the site of another of those retreats that Pliny had in so great a plenty by the Larian shore:

and it possesses a remarkable intermittent spring which he describes and begs Licinius Sera 1 to explain to him :

"I have brought you as a present from my native district a problem which is fully worthy of your profound learning. A spring rises in the mountain-side; it flows down a rocky course, and is caught in a little artificial banqueting-house. After the water has been retained there a time it falls into the Larian Lake. There is a wonderful phenomenon connected with it, for thrice very day it rises and falls with fixed regularity of volume. Close by it you may recline and take a meal, and drink from the spring itself, for the water is very cool, and meanwhile it ebbs and flows at regular and stable intervals. If you place a ring or anything else on a dry spot by the edge the water gradually rises to it, and at last covers it, and then just as gradually recedes and leaves it bare, while if you watch it for any length of time you may see both processes twice or thrice repeated. Is there any unseen air which first distends and then tightens the orifice and mouth of the spring, resisting its onset and yielding at its withdrawal ? We observe something of this sort in jars and other similar vessels which have not a direct and free opening, for these, when held either perpendicularly or aslant, pour out their contents with a sort of gulp, as though there were some obstruction to a free passage. Or is this spring like the ocean, and is its column enlarged and lessened alternately by the same laws that govern the ebb and flow of the tide ? Or, again, just as rivers on their way to the sea are driven back on themselves by contrary rivers and the opposing tide, is there anything that can drive back the outflow of this spring? Or is there some latent reservoir which diminishes and retards the flow while it is gradually collecting the water that has been drained off, and increases and quickens the flow when the process of collection is complete ? Or Ep. iv. 30.

1

is there some curiously hidden and unseen balance which when emptied raises and thrusts forth the spring, and when filled checks and stifles its flow? Please investigate the causes which bring about this wonderful result, for you have the ability to do so; it is more than enough for me if I have described the phenomenon with accuracy. Farewell."

From Argegno, indeed, to Como it is villa and garden and grove all the way. Who is there that knows Como that has not floated at evening under those balconies heavy with roses, those terraces stately with cypresses and myrtles, those hanging gardens of azaleas and lilies and geraniums, where the magnolias shine in the twilight and the night is heavy with sweetness? Perhaps the best known of these palaces beside the lake are the Villa Taverna at Torno and the Villa d'Este, now an hotel, where the unfortunate Queen of George IV. passed so much of her time, at Cenobbio. But if these are the most famous, they are not exceptional, in their beauty, and even the cypresses of the Villa d'Este can be easily matched at the Villa del Pizzo near Torriggia.

No one, I suppose, comes to Como, that shining city under the Brunate at the lake's head, for history. There is plenty of it if one does; but apart from the fact that it is the last place in which to find any leisure, for the country around, the olive-clad hills, the entrancing byways and the lake itself, entice one to be ever up and about, what time one can save from these is given, and I think without any hesitation, to the Duomo, which Street so unaccountably failed to appreciate, but which has plenty of lovers nevertheless.

The Duomo and the Broletto, an earlier work of black and white marble, beside it, make up a group of buildings as picturesquely lovely as any in Lombardy, and few there be who do not straightway fall in love with them. As for the church, it is, I suppose, one of the finest examples of married Gothic and Renaissance