Samuel Butler 
Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) 

Published in 1881, this delightful and insightful travelogue takes readers off the beaten track and into the high, remote places of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, where forgotten masterpieces of sacred art and architecture await discovery. 

About the author

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. He wrote on Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art.  He is best known for The Way of All Flesh (1903), a semiautobiographical novel, which, with ferocious wit and palpable anger, skewers the pernicious effects of religious hypocrisy and Erewhon (1872), a science-fictional satire of Victorian society.