At Varallo, since I took the photographs I published in my book Ex Voto, an angry pilgrim has smashed the nose of the dwarf in Tabachetti’s Journey to Calvary, for no other reason than inability to restrain his indignation against one who was helping to inflict pain on Christ.  It is the real hair and the painting up to nature that does this.  Here at Oropa I found a paper on the floor of the Sposalizio Chapel, which ran as follows:—­

“By the grace of God and the will of the administrative chapter of this sanctuary, there have come here to work —–­ —–­, mason, —–­ —–­ , carpenter, and —–­ —–­, plumber, all of Chiavazza, on the twenty-first day of January, 1886, full of cold (pieni di freddo).

“They write these two lines to record their visit.  They pray the Blessed Virgin that she will maintain them safe and sound from everything equivocal that may befall them (sempre sani e salvi da ogni equivoco li possa accadere).  Oh, farewell!  We reverently salute all the present statues, and especially the Blessed Virgin, and the reader.”

Through the Universal Review, I suppose, all its readers are to consider themselves saluted; at any rate, these good fellows, in the effusiveness of their hearts, actually wrote the above in pencil.  I was sorely tempted to steal it, but, after copying it, left it in the Chief Priest’s hands instead.

Art in the Valley of Saas {188}

Having been told by Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, that there were some chapels at Saas-Fee which bore analogy to those at Varallo, described in my book Ex Voto, I went to Saas during this last summer, and venture now to lay my conclusions before the reader.

The chapels are fifteen in number, and lead up to a larger and singularly graceful one, rather more than half-way between Saas and Saas-Fee.  This is commonly but wrongly called the chapel of St. Joseph, for it is dedicated to the Virgin, and its situation is of such extreme beauty—­the great Fee glaciers showing through the open portico—­that it is in itself worth a pilgrimage.  It is surrounded by noble larches and overhung by rock; in front of the portico there is a small open space covered with grass, and a huge larch, the stem of which is girt by a rude stone seat.  The portico itself contains seats for worshippers, and a pulpit from which the preacher’s voice can reach the many who must stand outside.  The walls of the inner chapel are hung with votive pictures, some of them very quaint and pleasing, and not overweighted by those qualities that are usually dubbed by the name of artistic merit.  Innumerable wooden and waxen representations of arms, legs, eyes, ears and babies tell of the cures that have been effected during two centuries of devotion, and can hardly fail to awaken a kindly sympathy with the long dead and forgotten folks who placed them where they are.