Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ begins—here men first mingled blood with its unsullied waves. On another little tributary is Anghiara, where in 1440 a terrible battle was fought between the Milanese troops, under command of the gallant free-lance Piccinino, and the Floren-tines, led by Giovanni Paolo (commonly called Giampaolo) Orsini; and a little farther, on the main stream, Città di Castello recalls the story of a long siege which it valiantly sustained against Braccio da Montone, surnamed Fortebraccio (Strongarm), another renowned soldier of fortune of the fifteenth century.

      As the widening flood winds on through the beautiful plain, a broad sheet of water on the right spreads for miles to the foot of the mountains, whose jutting spurs form many a bay, cove and estuary. It was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes, stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark, blurred outlines of the landscape and trees. The monotonous noise and motion of the train had put our fellow-travelers to sleep, and when it gradually ceased they did not stir. There was no bustle at the little station where we stopped; a few drowsy figures stole silently by in the dim light, like ghosts on the spectral shore of Acheron; the whole scene was strangely unreal, phantasmal. "What can it be?" we asked each other under our breaths. "There is but one thing that it can be—Lake Thrasimene." And so it was. Often since, both by starlight and daylight, we have seen that watery sheet of fatal memories, but it never wore the same shadowy yet impressive aspect as on our first night-journey from Florence to Rome.

      Not far from here one leaves the train for Perugia, seated high on a bluff amid walls and towers. We had been told a good deal of the terrors of the way—how so steep was the approach that at a certain point horses give out and carriages must be dragged up by oxen. It was with some surprise, therefore, that we saw ordinary hotel omnibuses and carriages waiting at the station. But we did not allow ourselves to feel any false security: by and by we knew the tug must come. We set off by a wide, winding road, uphill undoubtedly, but smooth and easy: however, this was only the beginning; and as it grew steeper and steeper, we waited in trepidation for the moment when the heavy beasts should be hitched on to haul us up the acclivity. We crawled up safely and slowly between orchards of olive trees, which will grow wherever a goat can set its foot: beneath us the great fertile vale of Umbria spread like a lake, the encircling mountains, which had looked like a close chain from below, unlinking themselves to reveal gorges and glimpses of other valleys. Thus by successive zigzags we mounted the broad turnpike-road, now directly under the fortifications, now farther off, until we saw them close above us, with the old citadel and the new palace. And now surely the worst had come, but the carnage turned a sharp corner, showing two more zigzags, forming a long acute angle which carried us smoothly to the rocky plateau on which the city stands, and we bowled in through the old gate-way at a round trot, with the usual cracking of whips and rattling and jingling of harness which announces the arrival of travelers at minor places on the Continent.

      We were not comfortable at Perugia—and let no one think to be so until there is a new hotel on a new principle—but it is a place where one can afford to forego creature comforts. Of all the towns on the Tiber, so rich in heirlooms of antiquity and art, none can boast such various wealth as this. The moment one leaves the centre of the town, which is built on a table of rock, the narrow streets plunge down on every side like dangerous broken flights of stairs: they disappear under deep cavernous arches, so that if you are below they seem to lead straight up through the darkness to the soft blue heaven, while from above they seem to go straight down into deep cellars, but cellars full of slanting sunshine. And whether you look up or down, there is always a picture in the dark frame against the bright background—a woman in a scarlet kerchief with a water-vessel of antique form, or a ragged brown boy leading a ragged brown donkey, or a soldier in gay uniform striking a light for his pipe. As soon as you leave the live part of the town, with the few little caffès and shops, and the esplanades whence the thrice-lovely landscape unfolds beneath your gaze, you wander among quiet little paved piazzas with a bit of daisied grass in their midst, surrounded by great silent buildings, whence through some opening you descry a street which is a ravine, and the opposite cliff rising high above you piled close with gray houses overhung with shrubs and creepers, and little gardens in their crevices like weeds between the stones of a wall; or you come out upon a secluded gallery with tall, deserted-looking mansions on one hand—except that at some sunny window there is always to be seen a girl's head beside a pot of carnations or nasturtiums—and on the other a parapet over which you lean to see the town scrambling up the hillside, while a great breadth of valley and hill and snow-covered mountain stretches away below.

      Then what historical associations, straggling away across three thousand years to when Perugia was one of the thirty cities of Etruria, and kept her independence through every vicissitude until Augustus starved her out in 40 B.C.! Portions of the wall, huge smooth blocks of travertine stone, are the work of the vanished Etruscans, and fragments of several gateways, with Roman alterations. One is perfect, imbedded in the outer wall of the castle: it has a round-headed arch, with six pilasters, in the intervals of which are three half-length human figures and two horses' heads. On the southern slope of the hill, three miles beyond the walls, a number of Etruscan tombs were accidentally discovered by a peasant a few years ago. The outer entrance alone had suffered, buried under the rubbish of two millenniums: the burial-place of the Volumnii has been restored externally after ancient Etruscan models, but within it has been left untouched. Descending a long flight of stone steps, which led into the heart of the hill, we passed through a low door formerly closed by a single slab of travertine, too ponderous for modern hinges. At first we could distinguish nothing in the darkness, but by the uncertain flaring of two candles, which the guide waved about incessantly, we saw a chamber hewn in the rock, with a roof in imitation of beams and rafters, all of solid tufa stone. A low stone seat against the wall on each hand and a small hanging lamp were all the furniture of this apartment, awful in its emptiness and mystery. On every side there were dark openings into cells whence came gleams of white, indefinite forms: a great Gorgon's head gazed at us from the ceiling, and from the walls in every direction started the crested heads and necks of sculptured serpents. We entered one by one the nine small grotto-like compartments which surround the central cavern: the white shapes turned out to be cinerary urns, enclosing the ashes of the three thousand years dead Volumnii. Urns, as we understand the word, they are not, but large caskets, some of them alabaster, on whose lids recline male figures draped and garlanded as for a feast: the faces differ so much in feature and expression that one can hardly doubt their being likenesses: the figures, if erect, would be nearly two feet in height. The sides of these little sarcophagi are covered with bassi-rilievi, many of them finely executed: the subjects are combats and that favorite theme the boar-hunt of Kalydon; there was one which represented the sacrifice of a child. The Medusa's head, as it is thought to be, recurs constantly, treated with extraordinary power: we were divided among ourselves whether it was Medusa or an Erinnys with winged head. The sphinx appears several times: there are four on the corners of an alabaster urn in the shape of a temple, exquisite in form and features, and exceedingly delicate in workmanship. Bulls' heads, with garlands drooping between them, a well-known ornament of antique altars, are among the decorations. But far the most beautiful objects were the little hanging figures, which seemed to have been lamps of a green bronze color, though we were assured that they are terra-cotta: they are male figures of exquisite grace and beauty, with a lightness and airiness commonly given to Mercury; but these had large angel pinions on the shoulders, and none on the head or feet. There was not a scholar in the party, so we all returned unenlightened, but profoundly interested and impressed, and with that delightful sense of stimulated curiosity which is worth more than all Eurekas. With the exception of a few weapons and trinkets, which we saw at the museum, this is all that remains of the mighty Etruscans, save the shapes of the common red pottery which is spread out wholesale in the open space opposite the cathedral on market-days—the most graceful and useful which could be devised, and which have not changed their model since earlier days than the occupants of those tombs could remember.

      The conquering Roman has left his sign-manual everywhere, but one is so used to him in Italy that the scantier records of later ages interest us more here. Like every other old Italian town, Perugia had its great family, the Baglioni, who lorded it over the place, sometimes harshly and cruelly enough, СКАЧАТЬ