Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/400

352 graves and monuments also on the second and third stories.

On the 12th December I left Genoa for Turin. We crossed the Appenines and passed through some magnificent hilly scenery and then came to the plain of Piedmont, stretching from the Appenines on the south to the Alps on the north. This plain has been the scene of some of Napoleon's most brilliant campaigns and we crossed the liver Bormida within a mile of the celebrated field of Marengo. We then came to Alexandria and then to Asti, the birth place of the poet Alfieri, and it was dark before we reached Turin the capital of Piedmont.

Turin seems to be the show town of Italy, and without boasting of natural beauty or the historical association of Florence or of Pisa, Turin is, so far as modern improvements can make it so, undoubtedly the finest town in Italy. No Italian town can boast of such magnificent and straight streets and avenues, such fine and spacious squares, such noble and imposing buildings. It has been built with all the latest improvements of modern capitals, and it takes its place therefore by the side of Paris and Brussels, of Berlin and Vienna. Nor is the natural position of the town by any means against it. Situated on the valley of the Po it is embosomed in the wide plain overlooked by the snowy Alps on the north, west and south-west. Walking along the straight and spacious roads of Turin one can look on the snowy mountains to the north, and the snowy mountains to the south!