Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 6/Turin and its "Chamber"
TURIN AND ITS "CHAMBER."
Constitutional Italy presents many a gladdening contrast to the bygone era of despotic strait-waistcoatism, but nowhere is the alteration more conspicuous than in the streets of pugnacious little Turin. The place is pretty, but its beauty is not of a fascinating order, being too much like that of some very correct Greek faces, whose regular features convey the impression of something rather strong-minded than sympathetic. Some three years ago it was easy for the stranger to catch the gloom of brooding mischief which hung about the aspect of scanty passers-by in the great thoroughfares, and the Alpine snow that looked down upon him in every odd street seemed in chilling unison with all around. When he had communed with the past in the capital Egyptian Museum, and taken in the mountainous panorama from the Superga, or the less distant eminence of the Monte of the Capuchins, he was content to depart with a growing conviction that the long Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/523