yard by the river god—who is watching over
his empty urn and the fountain filled with
stones—to the salle à manger, and in a
moment you are engaged in all the confusion
of a crowded table d'hôte breakfast. At one
end of the table are four or five officers,
smart-looking stout young men buttoned up
in their grey, blue, and drab coats, busily
employed in dipping their warlike
moustaches into basins of coffee, with decanters of
Italian ordinary wine before them, heaps of
cotelettes, potatoes, grapes, green figs, melons,
and Chamounix honey; then come a sprinkling
of foreigners—one or two Poles, of course; some
goggle-eyed, spectacled, æsthetical-looking
German students; a man who looks like a
shaved Frenchman, but who turns out to be
a Yankee; a vivacious specimen of the real
Gaul, in beard, imperial, and moustache;
some Italians, deep in dishes half oil half
garlic; and a strong detachment of our own
countrymen, women, and children, regarding
each other with that aversion which a true
Briton always exhibits to a fellow-subject
when on foreign travel.

Breakfast over—and in spite of tumult
and imperfect grammar, you can make a
very comfortable one at this same table
d'hôte, always supposing tobacco smoke is
not offensive to you, for each man takes
a cigar out of the box on the table, and
lights one the instant he is done eating—
plunge out into the streets, and taking the
first turn to the left from the Fedor Inn, you
are at once in a comfortable arcade, safe from
wind, rain, or sun. It is sure to traverse the
sides of a great square with some statue or
fountain in the centre. To my eyes, the
shops in these galeries or arcades are more
interesting, as they are certainly more novel,
than those of the Palais Royal. The arcade
is filled with them on both sides; that
which is towards the square being pierced
here and there with passages for the
people, and through these you can see the
houses on the other side of the rectangle,
rising above the arcade—which only reaches
to the drawing-room window—and rearing
their stone and stuccoed fronts to an amazing
height. The people, who pass you on foot,
are mostly of the lower order; the men
dressed very much like French mechanics;
whom they resemble, only that they are more
powerful and muscular-looking men—indeed,
there is an annual migration of Piedmontese
to Paris, where they act as porters—some of
them indulging, however, in full suits of blue
velvet; the women with gaudily-coloured
handkerchiefs tied round their heads, and with
red, yellow, and pea-green umbrellas under
their arms, and gowns and cloaks of equally
dazzling and forcible hues. But you soon lose
all thought of them in staring at the priests.

Surely, if ever there was a city in which
holiness should flourish, it is Turin. The
enemy of mankind must have but little
footing there, and on the whole must lead a
hard life of it. The bells never cease; and, as
there are about one hundred churches in the
city, if there is the smallest efficacy in their
ringing (as was supposed in old times), evil
spirits ought to regard the capital of Sardinia
with great disfavour. The attendant priests
in these numerous churches—conjoined with
padres, who are their friends or who want to
get berths, or who are acting as family
confessors—make up a most formidable body. At
every ten paces you meet, without the smallest
exaggeration, at least two priests. The clerical
costume is here in its greatest splendour.
Nowhere else is the three-cornered shovel hat
of such tremendous dimensions. In no other
city are cassocks so flowing and eccentric in
their cut; or coats so severe in architecture;
or silver shoe-buckles and black silk stockings
in such size and perfection. Of course, the
size of the stocking depends on the size of
the legs; and, I am bound to say, there is
a great choice of neatly-turned limbs among
the church militant of Turin. Wherever
you look you see a padre: he is crossing
the street, and coming out of the
confectioner's, and looking in at the workshop, and
standing at the corner, and bowing out of that
carriage-window, and staring at that trattoria
doorway, and buying snuff at the tobacconist's
counter, and inspecting the tinman at work, and
holding conversations with his own duplicates
in all variety of attitudes in every sort of
perspective. Gliding along, less frequently,
come friars, Cordeliers, and Dominicans, with
their ugly shaven crowns, and sandalled feet,
for the most part as dirty as extreme sanctity
can make them; perspiring profusely in their
long woollen robes, and glancing uneasily at
the passers-by out of the corner of a sensual
and suspicious eye. These gentlemen do not
seem on very good terms with the secular
clergy; and, it is said, the latter would be by
no means displeased by an order for the
suppression of their brethren—the regulars.

Hark! The crash of a band—out of the way,
quickly; for here the military take the wall
of the civilians very unceremoniously, and
you would find the great leathern caliga of
these Piedmontese braves a very unpleasant
plaster for corns. Here they come at a
rattling pace, equal to our double-quick
march; bunches of long cock's feathers, dyed
green, in their shakos, close-fitting green
frocks, long and heavy-looking rifles, and the
tight trousers gathered at the end inside the
gaiter; a corps of riflemen, all fine square-
built active mountaineers. Then follow some
light cavalry on foot, with blue feathers,
powder-blue coats, and red trousers slashed
with leather. A regiment of the line bring
up the rear in their long grey coats, all
marching for their morning's exercise outside
the town, where there is a grand review every
day. Many of these are soldierly-looking men,
whose decorations evince that they served in
the last disastrous campaign against the
Austrians, or in its glorious precursor. When