CASTLE OF ANGHIERA,

ARONA.

Thy pencil brings to mind a day,

When from Laveno and the Beuscer hill,

I over Lake Verbanus held my way;

In pleasant fellowship, with wind at will.

SOUTHEY.

THE Lago Maggiore, the Lacus Verbanus of the Romans, is celebrated not only for its extent, but for the diversified beauties it exhibits. From Locarno at the north end, to Sesto Calende at the south, the Lake measures thirty-seven English miles. On a promontory projecting into the lake, is situated the castle of Anghiera, from which the province, erected into a county by the emperor Wenceslaus, derived its name. From this castle the Alps are seen in the distance, clothed with pine and firs, and their summits crowned with snows.

All things minister delight,

The lake and land, the mountain and the vales,
The Alps, their snowy summits rear in light,
Tempering with gelid breath the summer gales;
And verdant shores and woods refresh the eye,
That else had ached beneath that brilliant sky.

One of the most attractive objects upon the Lago Maggiore is the Isola Bella, one of the Borromean Islands, so called from their forming part of the pos

sessions of the Borromean family. Isola Bella was formerly much celebrated for its singular and beautiful gardens, which were visited by Burnet just at the period of their completion. "From Lugane, I went to the Lago Maggiore, which is a noble lake, six and fifty miles long and in most places six broad, and a hundred fathom deep about the middle of it: it makes a great bay towards the westward, and there lie two islands called the Borromean Islands, which are certainly the loveliest spots of ground in the world. There is nothing in all Italy that can be compared to them. They have the full view of the lake, and the ground rises so sweetly in them that nothing can be imagined equal to the terraces here. They belong to two counts of the Borromean family. I was only in one of them which belongs to the head of the family, nephew to the famous cardinal, known by the name of St. Carlo. On the west end lies the palace, which is one of the best in Italy for the lodgings within, though the architecture is but ordinary. There is one noble apartment above four and twenty feet high, and there is a vast addition making to it, and here is a great collection of noble pictures, beyond any thing I saw out of Rome. The whole island is a garden except a little corner to the south, set off for a village of about forty little houses. And because the figure of the island was not very regular by nature, they have built great vaults and porticoes along the rock which are all made grotesque, and so they have brought it to a regular form, by laying earth over those vaults. There is first a garden to the east, that rises up from the lake by five rows of terraces : on the three sides of the garden that are watered by the