In our journey from Milan to Venice (1816) we passed through Brescia. The decayed fortifications, the narrow arcaded streets, and the tall towers and battlements, gave an air of antiquity to this town; but the welldressed crowd, the gay equipages, and the new theatre, one of the most magnificent in Europe, bespoke prosperity and a large population. The famous pistol manufactory had lost much of its former renown, but there were still 40,000 inhabitants in Brescia, and there was trade enough to supply many well-furnished shops. The palaces, a name given in Italy to the mansions of the higher nobility, were numerous, and the houses in the principal streets were handsome and of a good size.

The immediate neighbourhood of Brescia appeared extremely populous. The interminable plain below it was studded with houses of every description, from the spacious villa to the vine-dresser's cottage; and villages embosomed in fruit-gardens rose one above the other on the sides of the hills as far as the eye could reach. From Rezzato, where the high road leaves the hills, the country did not seem so thickly inhabited, but was equally well cultivated. The road itself, from Milan to the Adriatic, was one of the many works of the French—a noble contrast with the old Venetian road, which was one of the worst in Europe. After Ponte St. Marco we again approached the hills, and beyond Lonato, a small town with a military post on a height, the scenery changed at once, and gave us a view of the high Alps, rising round a dark deep basin, to the north.