marks in the form of protest, in the event of
my being arrested by the French Carabiniers.

The jealousy on the part of the French of
the presence of strangers, especially English,
within their sphere of operations, is carried to
an extreme. Being in the remotest manner con-
nected with the press, is a fault understood to
entail upon any one a danger similar to the fate
of the unlucky gentleman convicted by Jack
Cade of clerkdom, and ordered to be hung with
his inkhorn round his neck.

As I advance, appearances become more war-
like: I overtake French officers and Sardinian
recruits—the former for militia, the latter for
Alessandria and Genoa, to be drilled. Three
months will train these willing lads, and send
them to their soldier-king fit for any work he
may require of them.

Our train, with the delightful irregularity
which governs such matters at such a time, halts
for the day at Alessandria, a place swarming
with national guards and fleas.

Guilty of the absurdity of deeming it neces-
sary to be punctual, I am at the station at eight
in the morning. Here, for two hours, the crowd
and the confusion are indescribable. Trains
seem to arrive and depart every ten minutes,
yet mine, for Novara, neither comes nor goes.
There is a long train of French twelve-pounder
brass guns and some mortars, intended, the men
say, " for Mantua," perpetually intruding itself,
first at one end of the station then at the other.
Now we hope it is at last fairly off, Now it
comes whizzing and shrieking back into the very
heart of the crowd which has long since filled
the platform, and boiled over. There is a body
of several hundred French and Sardinian
pioneers, another body of Austrian prisoners, and
at least a thousand miscellaneous travellers. But
all are at last disposed of, in one way or another,
and we are off. Stopping an hour at Valenza,
nobody knows why—apparently, however, to pur-
chase cherries—we reach Mortara at two and
Novara at three.

Here, although the railway, partly destroyed
by the Austrians, has been relaid and reopened
to-day, I prefer the slow, but certain, progress
of a carriage to Magenta—about fifteen miles—
and two hours of a flat and dusty road bring
me to that henceforth celebrated field. Just
beyond Trecate the defensive works thrown up
by the Austrians begin to be visible, and pre-
sently we are on the granite bridge that spans
the rushing Ticino, passing gingerly over the
temporary arch that supplies the chasm made by
the enemy, but pausing to admire the beautiful
bridge of boats—a perfect model of neatness
and solidity—constructed by the French in two
days.

From the deserted custom-house buildings—
terribly scored with shot—to Buffalora, and
thence to the village of Magenta, there are
constant traces of the battle. The crops, gar-
dens, and vineyards, however, seem to have
escaped surprisingly, considering the immense
bodies of troops that have manoeuvred and
fought in the neighbourhood. With the ex-
ception of these strips of land immediately
bordering the road, no material damage has been
suffered.

The alternative originated by the celebrated
Hobson induced me to take refuge at the
Hôtel de la Poste, at Magenta, whose pretty
landlady immediately proceeded to point out, as
one of the objects best worth notice, the little
corner chamber in which she—the padrona—took
shelter on that terrible day of battle, till—the
fight drawing nearer—she descended, as did every
other wise inhabitant of the place, to the cellar.
That large house, with the ten window-places
(there is not an inch of glass left in Magenta),
is, she tells me, likewise her property. It is
pierced and scored with glancing shot from roof
to ground; and in it more than five hundred
Austrian soldiers were either killed or made pri-
soners.

It is too late to view the field to-night—but the
evening is tempting—and I stroll back in the
direction of Buffalora, intending to examine a
remarkable wooden cross I had observed by the
roadside in coming, which seemed to denote the
death-place of one of the fallen.

From Magenta to Buffalora are two good
roads, diverging in a broad arc towards the
centre; a cross-path, winding through the vines
and orchards, and connecting the two. Strolling
as far as Buffalora, from whence, literally,

Swang the deep bell in the distant tower,
And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft—

for the entire village, on their knees within and
about the grey old church, were engaged in
prayers for the success of the national cause—I
returned towards Magenta by the other road.
Entertaining, however, at that time, some doubts
of its leading direct to Magenta, I deemed it
safer, on arriving at the cross-road, to follow
that, and so regain the road by which I had
come. This part of the walk was melancholy
enough. It led directly across what had been
one of the most fiercely contested portions of
the field, and none but the dead were near.
Scores of knapsacks, shakos, canteens, and bat-
tered objects, such as the growing darkness
forbade to classify, huge black graves heaving
up in every direction, and a horrible scent, not
unlike, and yet perfectly distinguishable from,
that of a decomposing body, which, on recog-
nising it the following day in a place where the
wounded had been collected, the peasants
affirmed was the smell of blood. In this
Aceldama—in the vicinity of which, ten days
since, fourteen thousand gallant hearts were laid
to their eternal rest—I lingered till it suddenly
struck me that I had lost my way. The perpe-
tual twistings of the path had entirely con-
founded my ideas as to its general direction, and
I was on the point of retracing my steps, when
a friendly flash from a thunder-cloud that had
been brooding all the evening on the Alps,
showed me the white line of the road to Ma-
genta close ahead.

Early next morning, accompanied by an in-
telligent native of the place, I set out to take a
more extended survey. My guide, who had