Ch. 20: Sacro Monte, Varese

From Mendrisio we took a trap across the country to Varese, passing through Stabbio, where there are some baths that are much frequented by Italians in the summer. The road is a pleasant one, but does not go through any specially remarkable places. Travellers taking this road had better leave every cigarette behind them on which they do not want to pay duty, as the custom-house official at the frontier takes a strict view of what is due to his employers. I had, perhaps, a couple of ounces of tobacco in my pouch, but was made to pay duty on it, and the searching of our small amount of luggage was little less than inquisitorial.

From Varese we went without stopping to the Sacro Monte, four or five miles beyond, and several hundred feet higher than the town itself. Close to the first chapel, and just below the arch through which the more sacred part of the mountain is entered upon, there is an excellent hotel called the Hotel Riposo, kept by Signor Piotti; it is very comfortable, and not at all too hot even in the dog-days; it commands magnificent views, and makes very good headquarters.

Here we rested and watched the pilgrims going up and down. They seemed very good-humoured and merry. Then we looked through the grating of the first chapel inside the arch, and found it to contain a representation of the Annunciation. The Virgin had a real washing-stand, with a basin and jug, and a piece of real soap. Her slippers were disposed neatly under the bed, so also were her shoes, and, if I remember rightly, there was everything else that Messrs. Heal & Co. would send for the furnishing of a lady's bedroom.

I have already said perhaps too much about the realism of these groups of painted statuary, but will venture a word or two more which may help the reader to understand the matter better as it appears to Catholics themselves. The object is to bring the scene as vividly as possible before people who have not had the opportunity of being able to realise it to themselves through travel or general cultivation of the imaginative faculties. How can an Italian peasant realise to himself the notion of the Annunciation so well as by seeing such a chapel as that at Varese? Common sense says, either tell the peasant nothing about the Annunciation, or put every facility in his way by the help of which he will be able to conceive the idea with some definiteness.

We stuff the dead bodies of birds and animals which we think it worth while to put into our museums. We put them in the most life- like attitudes we can, with bits of grass and bush, and painted landscape behind them: by doing this we give people who have never seen the actual animals, a more vivid idea concerning them than we know how to give by any other means. We have not room in the British Museum to give a loose rein to realism in the matter of accessories, but each bird or animal in the collection is so stuffed as to make it look as much alive as the