Excerpt from The Cities of Lombardy The traveller who, on a day of early spring, descends towards the south from the cruel ice and snow Of the St. Gothard, or the barren loneliness Of the Simplon, will presently see stretched out before him, as far as the eye can reach, a vast green and golden plain the waveless plain of Lombardy -scattered with many fair cities and broken in the south by a range of faint, far-away mountains. In his first enthusiasm he takes this to be Italy in fact, it is Cisalpine Gaul. This vast plain, everlastingly defended on the north against the Germanies and less brutally on the west against Gaul by the Alps, is closed on the east by the sea. From Italy it is divided by those far-away mountains - the Apennines. I say that this country between the Alps, the Apen nines and the sea, does not really form a part Of Italy, though to-day it is united to her, and may be said, ever since the Roman Conquest, to have depended upon Italy, and to have drawn all that was really vital in its life from her. Let me explain myself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.