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For several years he had been in the habit of spending six or eight weeks of the summer in Italy and the Canton Ticino, generally making Faido his headquarters. Many a page of his books was written while resting by the fountain of some subalpine village or waiting in the shade of the chestnuts till the light came so that he could continue a sketch.
Maggiore, indeed, least fortunate of the three main sheets, is being attacked by the insidious foe at three points simultaneously. At the upper end, the Ticino, that furious radical river, has filled in a large arm, which once spread far away up the valley towards Bellinzona.
"The canal named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino to Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy.
But these new great roads are desolating, more desolating than all the ruins in the world. I walked on and on, down the Ticino valley, towards Bellinzona. The valley was perhaps beautiful: I don't know. I can only remember the road. It was broad and new, and it ran very often beside the railway. It ran also by quarries and by occasional factories, also through villages.
Genoa was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia; the pope received back the states of the Church; the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena were restored; while Austria had to be content with Venetia and Lombardy as far as the Ticino. The organisation of Germany occupied the congress until June, and was the least durable part of its work.
The much which hangs on little was then set in motion: Violetta was crossing the Ticino when she met a Milanese nobleman who had received cold greeting from the king, and was returning to Milan with word that the Piedmontese declaration of war against Austria had been signed. She went back to Milan, saw and heard, and gathered a burden for the royal ears.
The vast brown level is seen narrowing in; the Ticino and the Sesia waters, nearest, quiver on the air like sleepy lakes; the plain is engulphed up to the high ridges of the distant Southern mountain range, which lie stretched to a faint cloud-like line, in shape like a solitary monster of old seas crossing the Deluge.
General Ott, notwithstanding this success, had been very ill-employed in lingering before Genoa while Napoleon was so rapidly advancing; and Melas, utterly perplexed between Suchet on the one side and the Consul on the other, had in fact lain still, and done nothing. Buonaparte, between the 1st and 4th of June, crossed the Ticino with his whole army.
And so entirely did he improve and alter the whole place that, instead of Vigevano, it might well be called Citta nova." At the same time Lodovico rebuilt on a magnificent scale the old castle which crowns the heights above the valley of the Ticino, and employed Bramante to design the lofty tower and the arcaded courts with delicate traceries and terra-cotta mouldings in the finest Lombard style.
The Constable Monsieur de Montmorenci, having at the siege of Pavia been ordered to pass the Ticino, and to take up his quarters in the Faubourg St. Antonio, being hindered by a tower at the end of the bridge, which was so obstinate as to endure a battery, hanged every man he found within it for their labour.
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