fragments, and dust from his winter's work were
carried by spring floods down to the circumscribed
bay, until at last its bottom rose to the
surface by the accumulation of worn material,
and dry land appeared. First, Piedmont partly
raised herself and partly slipped down from the
mountain-side at the head of the bay, where the
two opposite angles formed by the walls favoured
the more speedy heaping up of their dilapidated
fragments. Secondly, came the great
plain of Lombardy, composed of the finer washings
from the giant mass; lastly, were
deposited the marshy lands where the self-choking
Po struggles hard to find an outlet, and where
ever-growing marshes will continue to creep
onward and onward, long after the deeds of the
present generation of men shall be forgotten.

This tracing of the birth and pedigree of
Piedmont is not foreign to the events of the day;
for the difficulties of modern warfare, and
consequently the balance of power in Europe, are
dependent on the natural formation of a country.
The convulsions of nature, and her wear and tear,
continuing for centuries after centuries, form
valleys, and brooks, and finally rivers. When
the mouth of a deeper valley than usual is
blocked up by an impediment, the brooks, still
pouring in, form a lake; the lake, when filled to
the brim, finds an outlet, whence issues a
full-grown river. The rivers that burst from
the lower extremity of lakes are almost all
remarkable for their volume, force, breadth, beauty,
or other notable characteristic. Witness the
Niagara and the Rhône. Scotland, on a minor
scale, is adorned with a number of like examples.
To this class of streams belongs the Ticino, the
boundary between Piedmont and her invaders,
born of the lovely Lago Maggiore;—the Greater
Lake, as compared with others not far off.
Neither soldier nor civilian in Piedmont and
Lombardy will be wise in forgetting the watercourses
that are fed by the Alps. The ramification
of tributary streams, all intent upon joining
the Po by a more or less tangled and tortuous
course, form a combination of almost-islands,
which seriously hamper the progress of large
bodies of men, in whatever direction they may
desire to move. All war in the plains of Piedmont
is necessarily a peninsular war, in
consequence of the natural constitution of the whole
locality. Austria may threaten fire and sword;
but fire, and sword, and angry threats can
neither dam the stream of the Piedmontese
watercourses, nor fill up the gaps which
prevent skipping from one division of the military
chess-board to another. Consequently, bridges
play an important part in the strategy of
Northern Italy. For instance, Marengo has a
celebrated bridge. At the historical battle of
eighteen hundred (prepared by the local engagement
of Montebello, repeated on the twentieth of
May last), the Austrians streamed on to the plain
where they were to meet their doom, by means
of this most fatal bridge. The whole of this
grand Italian battle-field is remarkable for its
memorable bridges; thus, there is the bridge of
Lodi, and the bridge of Arcola. Finally—
would it were really the last!—the world is now
ringing with the bridge of Magenta.

Verdure, everywhere verdure, as we follow
the movements of armies that have gone before
us. The road from Alessandria to Tortona
(passing in front of the Château of Marengo)
traverses a country as smooth and as green as a
meadow in spring, and runs straight before us,
direct as a plumb-line, till it tapers off to a
needle's-point and disappears over the horizon.
The children are taking the morning dust-bath
which seems indispensable to the health of every
little Lombard rogue, and which has the effect
of changing the hue of their complexion from
dingy soot-colour to ashy grey. The luxuriant
vines, festooned from tree to tree, contrast
with the mournful and winterly aspect of the
mulberry-trees stripped of their leaves, which
the women carry off by apronfuls, to feed
silkworms. Some two years ago, an idea was
started, either in Paris or Turin, of presenting
the Emperor of the French with this Château
and estate of Marengo. The project fell to the
ground, and the property now belongs to Count
Castaldi, a Genoese nobleman, who rarely visits
it; which is not much to be wondered at.
Although the environs may be rich and verdant,
and the park (not quite an English park, nor
even a French garden) abounding in shade, the
mansion itself is a ridiculous absurdity, daubed
outside with architectural frescoes of the order
adopted by fair-going theatres, combining Gothic
arches with Moorish domes overtopped by
battlements, and based by colonnades, forming
altogether a pictorial Babel enough to break the
heart of a professor of perspective. Fresco-
painting, which has frighted your soul on the
front and sides of the house, still pursues your
bewildered eyesight in-doors. A room on the
ground floor, where General Bonaparte signed
the armistice, is transformed into a museum.
Whatever they could find on the field of battle—
sabres, guns, bayonets, spurs, cannon-balls,
bullets, helmets, lance-heads, scabbards, swords,
pistols, bridles, bomb-shells, and a hundred
other relics—have been collected, to the
edification of the tourist, and the profit of the
porter. The green-house had served for a
temporary bivouac; voltigeurs took the place of
lilies and roses. In a sort of ugly, vulgar-shaped
cenotaph are exposed to view a heap of bones
and skulls gathered on the plains of Marengo
which seem to be begging hard for a little wholesome
earth to cover them. A footpath, winding
between clumps of trees, leads you to a
rustic pavilion, from which you behold the vast
extent of the plain, covered with interminable
fields of wheat. The mulberry-trees alone betray
that you are not in some corn-growing district
of Central Europe. The yellow waters of the
Bormida make a narrow chink in the unbroken
level, and then the plain stretches out and away
without visible limit on this side of the horizon.

Although a difference exists in the aspect of
Piedmont as compared with Lombardy and the
Venetian provinces, there is no actual or natural
line of demarcation between them. The Ticino,