My impatience to arrive at Rome did not permit me to remain long at Florence, and I must postpone any account of its neighbourhood to my next visit, which I hope will be in a more favourable time of year; but I must say a few words on Fiesole, which I have visited, and found the walk to it most delightful, even on Christmas-day; as it is situated on a hill, the ascent to which completely commands the rich and beautiful valley of the Arno. There are some fragments of Ionic columns near the convent of St. Francis, which is supposed to occupy the situation of the ancient citadel of this little rival of Florence; and there are some ancient graves, hollowed in the slaty rock, about six feet long, eighteen inches wide, and two feet and a half deep. I observed also a larger pit, of a circular plan, but enlarging, like a bell, as it descends, and was informed that two other similar ones had been discovered and filled up. If these were repositories for corn, it seems singular that we should find them in such close neighbourhood with those for the dead. Here is a Cathedral which pleased me by the uniformity of its sober brown colour, after my eye had been disgusted with the gaudy dressings of the Florentine churches; but it is a rude, and not otherwise a handsome building. A little out of the road to Fiesole is the church of the Badia, said to have been built by Brunelleschi for Cosmo, P. P. Nothing of the front is finished except a portion in marble, whose style is at least as early as the lower part of the façade of Santa Maria Novella.

I left Florence, in company with Mr. Scott, on the 26th of December, at about half past ten in the morning. Our companions were two German artists. One had been travelling about for several years, drawing landscape, which he touches very prettily. The other was a young student of eighteen, who means to spend four or five years in Rome. The journey is hilly, with more cultivation and less wood than that I had passed in coming from Bologna; yet there are some woods, and some large trees (many of which are stone pines) scattered here and there, and the cultivated land is frequently shaded with olives and vines; so that the same ground produces at one time corn, wine, and oil. The Apennines run into long lines, rising frequently into obtusely conical summits, each of which is crowned by a castle, a village, or a convent. They present no precipitous faces, but their successive ranges fall in well varied, sweeping lines, with occasionally a detached hill standing out from the great body. We slept at a little place called Poggi Bonzi, once an independent republic, which we left at five the next morning. There are some very picturesque castelli on the road. The English castle is, or was, a fortified house; these Italian castelli were fortified villages. As we approach Siena, the villas are numerous; and as the Vetturino enumerated the excellences of each, he never failed to mention the ice-house and the garden-theatre.

Siena occupies the irregular summit of a commanding eminence, and contains in itself many interesting objects; but I was rather surprised to find the Florentine guttural so strongly retained in the pronunciation. The first time I heard this Tuscan peculiarity, it was in the expression Riveris-ho vossignoria, but though called a guttural, it would be more correct (in Florence, at least,) to call it a very strong aspiration. “How is this room called?” I asked at the Corsini Palace at Florence, which was the first I went to see, La sehonda antihamera was the reply. At Siena, in the chapel of the hospital, I inquired the name of the author of one of the pictures, and was told in reply, that it was Sebastiano Honha. I thought the sound more guttural than at Florence; but my guide was a native of Siena. This pronunciation is not peculiar to the common people of Tuscany; you hear it from all ranks. To make amends, they pronounce the h in Latin words as if it were k. The Florentines also pronounce ci, ce, in the manner which, in our mode of spelling, would be indicated by she, sha, and they often give a nasal tone to their words. I do not know how far these customs extend.

The Piazza, i. e. the principal opening in the city, the square, if you please, only it is frequently, as in this instance, not rectangular, is like half a great shallow basin, or rather like half a tea-saucer, with the government palace and its lofty tower at the bottom.

The Cathedral is only a small part of what was intended. It was founded, as we are told, in the thirteenth century, but it is not all of one date; and the tower appears to be older than the rest, as it much resembles that of S. Zeno at Verona. The front was erected in 1284 by Giovanni di Pisa. It a good deal resembles that of the cathedral at Orvieto, erected probably about the same time by Lorenzo Maytani, a Sienese, whose name I have met with on no other occasion; it is ornamented with horizontal bands of black and white marble; and this disposition, which prevails all through the building, is said to have been adopted because the banner of Siena is in black and white stripes; but the Italians are fond of stripes, and they frequently occur where no such explanation can be given. It is a rich, but hardly handsome front. Its great defect is that the apparent solids are not placed well above each other. A great many fragments remain, of the parts once intended, and begun, but not completed. They prove the immense size of the design. The present nave and choir were to have formed the two arms of the cross; but as the dome at the intersection rises on an hexagonal plan, two sides of which open into the present nave and choir, it follows that an angle and its supporting pier would have been in the middle of the opening of the new nave. The walls are striped internally, in the same manner as on the outside, but in the lower part this is not very offensive, because the marble has there acquired a warm tinge, which does not extend equally to the upper part; however, the effect is much softened by the painting and gilding of the vaults. The piers are crippled, and it appears by the swelling of the pavement, that they have sunk a little into the ground. The lower arches of the nave are semicircular, but those of the clerestory, and the windows in them, are painted; with tracery such as in England we might refer to the beginning of the reign of Edward III. The continued vaulting of the nave, as well as of the side aisles, is semicircular. The capitals are ornamented with foliage and figures. There is no triforium.

A series of heads of popes, alternating with triglyphs, forms a sort of entablature over the lower arches; and circular niches with busts, occur in the spandrils. Some change of design seems to have taken place in the progress of the work; and in the choir, some of the arches appear to be obtusely pointed; they spring from a pedestal above the capital, and the lower capitals are omitted. Here then is another style of the architecture of the middle ages, which can hardly be classed either with our Norman or Gothic, and which, in a large building like this, where all the parts are rich, splendid, and harmonious, can hardly fail to be magnificent. Yet I would by no means recommend it as a model. The pavement is covered with a sort of engraving on a large scale, by lines upon the marble, from designs of Beccafiumi. There is some shading produced by a pale gray marble, and a small quantity of black and of buff, of which latter, however, little use is made. In order to preserve the work, the best part is covered with boards, and instead of a rich effect, we have the appearance of poverty. The sacristy is adorned with a history of Eneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., partly painted by Raphael at a very early age, and partly from his designs; and in the same room, is a most beautiful antique groupe of the three graces, one of which in particular, is an exquisite figure.

Under the cathedral is a subterranean church dedicated to San Giovanni, to which you obtain a level access from a lower street: we visited it, but did not find any thing particularly worthy of observation.

After having surveyed the cathedral, we were conducted to the Hospital, from the back window of whose hall, is a very beautiful view. In the church, or chapel of this establishment, the circular tribune is painted so as to represent a perspective of straight-lined architecture. An ingenious and difficult folly, which can only look well just in one point of view, and everywhere else is distorted, or rather indeed, totally unintelligible.

The church of San Domenico deserves a visit from the architect. The nave is about seventy-five feet wide, and three times as much in length, and the transept is not much less; and this unencumbered space has a noble effect. Beyond the transept is a range of seven chapels; in one of which is a painting by Guido di Siena, a cotemporary of Giotto: but he was rather a maker of pictures in the Greek style, than a restorer of the art. There is an interesting gallery in the city, containing a great number of very early paintings.

Siena is said at one time to have had a population of a hundred thousand inhabitants, which are now reduced to seventeen thousand. I suspect some exaggeration in the first number; but there can be no doubt that a very great change has taken place. It was the rival of Florence, and like the other Italian republics, always at war with its neighbours, or wasted by internal dissensions. Then it was commercial, flourishing, and populous. Now under a peaceable government, and very far from an oppressive one, grass grows in the deserted streets. How is this to be accounted for? After leaving Siena, the country became less pleasing, consisting of bare clay hills, the highest of which, as at Siena itself, are crowned with a sandy stratum, which rarely can deserve to be called rock. It contains shells, but they are very tender, and I did not succeed in procuring any.

The tops and flatter spaces of these hills are not unproductive. I met indeed some Italians who complained of the barrenness of this country. I remarked to them that the remaining stubble proved it to have been cultivated; but perhaps, said I, the grain is in small quantity, or of bad quality. No, it was both plentiful and good, but the soil produced nothing else; neither vines nor olives. There is no wood. The rain is continually moving the soil, and furrowing the slopes of the hills in various directions, leaving or making, conical points of naked earth, with hardly any trace of vegetation. Earthquakes are frequent, but they seem rather to be landslips arising from the nature of the material which forms the hills, than the violent convulsions we usually understand by that name.

A second carriage had been following us for some time, and on arriving at our sleeping place at Buon Convento, we found that it contained two brothers, Frenchmen, the younger of whom was very handsome, and perfectly conscious of it. We had all united round the same fire, when the elder brother started up, exclaiming there was a mouse, and in fact something seemed to be running about the room, and hiding itself occasionally in the clothes of the company. The younger German almost fancied himself bitten, and had pulled off his coat to shake off the troublesome animal, before we discovered that our companion was a ventriloquist. He amused us afterwards with various stories of tricks that he had put upon custom-house officers, by one of which lately at Scaricalasino, he had prevented the examination of his luggage; and once in the south of France he frightened away some robbers, who were going to rifle his trunk. On another occasion he amused himself with making a Jew believe he had a rat about him, till the poor fellow stript himself almost naked, to get rid of it. The next day the Jew came into a coffee-house where our ventriloquist was seated, and without seeing him, abused him violently for the trick he had played. The day after, our companion procured a living rat, and wrapped it up very carefully in paper, except the head; he then returned to the coffee-house, and finding the Jew there, secretly slipt the rat into his pocket. He afterwards advanced in front of the poor Jew, and saluted him. The Jew immediately began his invectives: the ventriloquist coolly defended himself, and said at last, “Why you had a rat about you, and I’ll lay you a wager that you have one now.” The Jew flew into a furious passion, and offered to bet twenty-five louis. “No,” says the ventriloquist, “I will not lay twenty-five louis, but I will bet you two.” The bet was accepted, and the money produced, and given to a bystander; when the ventriloquist began to imitate the squeaking of a rat from the pocket. “Ah! it is you, you cursed ventriloque; I saw you.” “Well, but only just empty your pocket and see if it be not there.” The Jew put his hand in, in order to do so, and then began dancing about the room. “Oh! oh! this is no ventrilo, this is no ventrilo.” Our companion however restored him the money, being contented with the laugh he had raised against him. All this he told admirably, imitating the Jew’s passion, and his bad French. From this place the two carriages accompanied each other as far as Viterbo, stopping at the same places; and our ventriloquist amused himself and us, by pretending to catch chickens, and to hide them under his coat; frightening the maid-servants with his imaginary mice, making people appear to come down the chimney, or advance with threatening language to the door, and then burst it open.

We left Buon Convento at half past four, and passed through a dreary country, like the worst of that of the preceding day, to Radicofani. The village stands on the summit, and the posthouse at the foot of a mass of volcanic tufo, which crowns a lofty hill of Siena clay. This group of mountains is entirely detached from the Apennines, and rises like an island between the Arno, the Tiber, and the sea. A rapid descent, still on the same barren clay, brought us to Torricelli, a miserable place, where we had a bad supper, bad attendance, and bad beds. At half past four, on the 29th, we set out again, and reached Acquapendente in the dark. Here our passports were examined, and the luggage bollata, that is, it had seals of lead put upon it, to secure us from any interference of other custom-houses till our arrival at Rome. Papers were brought for us to sign. I read mine, which seemed to be considered rather an unusual degree of curiosity, and found that it contained the substance of my passport, with a statement, that having been asked whether I should stay at Acquapendente, I had replied in the negative, but professed my intention to stay a month at Rome: what was the object of this form I have not been able to learn. These things detained us above an hour, and it began to dawn as we left the town. The soil of the elevated plain on which we were travelling is a volcanic tufo, but the clay still forms all the low parts, and may be traced even to Rome. The country is pleasant, the ground gradually rising for some miles till we reach the brow of the hill, above the Lake of Bolsena, a noble expanse of water thirty miles in circumference, bounded everywhere by woody hills, here and there mingled with rocks. The scenery on the descent is exquisitely beautiful, the road passing among fine trees; and the ruined town of San Lorenzo seated on a low rocky point, but abandoned on account of the mal aria, formed a most picturesque object. A little farther, the town and castle of Bolsena were hardly inferior. The character of the scenery was that of the highest beauty, with enough of the rugged and picturesque to keep off any idea of the insipidity, which according to Uvedale Price, belongs to the beautiful. I believe all the lakes in this part of Italy are unwholesome; they are pools of still water, in a rich soil, and warm climate, and the abundant vegetation, and its consequent rapid decay, are the sources of the evil. Some of them are of a noble size, but in summer they have hardly any change of water, and the Italian atmosphere is not sufficiently exercised by winds to purify them.

Bolsena is the ancient Volsinium; and there are said to be traces of the Etruscan city on the slope of the hill above, but we did not visit them; and there are Roman arches, and abundance of architectural fragments, nearer the lake; from the description of an amphitheatre, and various fragments of brickwork, I suspect that the remains on the hill, are, in part at least, also of Roman times. Just out of the town is a church, more celebrated for being the scene of the famous miracle of the bloody wafer, in 1263, than for the beauty of its architecture. It is a triple church, and a gloomy vault, which forms a sort of chapel to one of them, is pointed out as the scene of the miracle. One of the buildings has a façade of the cinque cento, with some very beautiful ornaments, but it has been sadly abused. In the court in front is a portion of a large granite basin, and other fragments of antiquity.

The road from Bolsena runs along the shores of the lake, and in one place passes by some basaltic columns on the steep slope of the hill which descends to it. On leaving the lake, we again mount a high, steep, woody^[42] hill, with beautiful views behind us, over the expanse of water. The road passes on the outside of Monte Fiascone, which stands on a summit commanding the whole country. The cathedral is said to be an early work of Sanmicheli. The front is unfinished, and the parts are not very beautiful, yet it has an air of magnificence, inside and out. An old castle occupies the apex of the hill; and this, and the church and town, combine together into a fine object. A little out of the city is a curious old church, which contains the well known inscription:

The stone makes part of the pavement at the foot of the altar, is much broken at the edges, and seems hardly to be in its place. The church is in two heights, the intermediate floor having a large opening in the middle. It is partly of an ornamental pointed architecture, and partly of what we might call Saxon or Norman, of which style we also find a little church within the town. There is a road from Bolsena to Orvieto, but it is very bad; part of it is on an old Roman way, formed of large blocks of lava, many of which have been displaced. From Monte Fiascone the road is good, and towards Orvieto, beautiful. This city stands upon an insulated hill, or rather on a perpendicular rock of tufo, resting on a considerable hill of the Siena clay. The hills towards Bolsena are formed in the same manner, and where the tufo is of small extent, it offers very striking features. The approaches to Orvieto seem entirely artificial; and the only entrance for carriages is of recent construction. The city abounds in large palaces, which announce its former prosperity, but our first object is of course the cathedral. This was founded in 1290, in memory of the miracle at Bolsena, and dedicated to Santa Maria Annunziata. The first stone was laid by Pope Nicolas IV., and the first mass was celebrated in 1297, so that part at least seems to have been run up very quickly. The following inscription is on the outside:

We had letters to a Signor Palazzi, who seemed to have all the dates of every thing in Orvieto at his command. This gentleman assured us, that the whole body of the edifice, including the front, was the work of one man; and moreover that there were entries in the church books, of certain sums of money paid to Laurentius Maytani for drawings on parchment of the façade. He had found in an old lumber-room, among other things belonging to the church, two drawings on parchment, one very nearly resembling the present front, and the other somewhat more different. They are worm-eaten, and otherwise damaged, and the drawing partly obliterated, and he concludes these to be the very drawings mentioned and paid for. The evidence seems pretty strong, yet it is not quite decisive, and the styles of the front and sides are so different, that I can hardly believe them to be the designs of the same person. The work not only does not unite, but the heights do not correspond. The front is highly ornamented and very rich, but hardly pleased me as well as I expected. Some large faces at the bottom of the piers, which are enriched with sculpture, must be condemned, because they interrupt the apparent construction. Perhaps it was to obviate such an objection, that they are not plane surfaces, but form a sort of sculptured tapestry, indicating in some degree the form of the piers below. This contrivance injures the effect of the sculpture, without doing any thing for the building, but I will not enumerate all the little faults. In the middle is a great square with numerous figures, and in the centre of this is a large rose-window, which is beautiful both on the outside, and on the inside. This disposition forms at once the finest and most peculiar feature in the design. There are two windows over the side-doors, which are filled with slabs of alabaster, and there are others partially filled in the same way. Externally, this has very much the appearance of a blank, but internally the effect is good, where the slabs fill the divisions of the architecture; but where they are composed of small pieces, whose colours and veinings do not correspond, it is bad. The sculpture is in general very good, and some of the figures are even beautiful. There is a row of leaves on one of the mouldings surrounding each doorway, which is executed at once with freedom and delicacy; while a similar decoration to one of the side-doors, has all the hardness and dryness you would expect in the thirteenth century. The stone chiefly employed is a yellowish marble, with veins of a colour somewhat deeper: a beautiful material. A reddish brown limestone, or marble, is also employed, and there is a small quantity of very dark serpentine. The whole effect of colour is very beautiful. There are mosaic ornaments and pictures of the same material. The latter do not harmonize very well, and perhaps do not belong to the original design. The body of the church is striped with alternate courses of a whitish limestone, and dark gray lava. A semicircular rib goes up each pier, but there are no buttresses exposed; the lower windows do not correspond in position with those of the clerestory, and are more ornamented; they have a mullion which the others have not. The mass of the building inside retains its original form, but the details of the side-aisles have been sadly modernized. The length of the transept is only equal to the width of the nave and aisles. This and the choir are vaulted, but there is no preparation for vaulting the nave or side aisles. There are two magnificent marble monuments at the altars opposite the aisles, where many of the architectural enrichments are beautifully designed and exquisitely executed. If they have a fault it is, that the precision and fineness of the edge gives them something of a metallic appearance. At each end of the transept is a small chapel. That on the left, called the Chapel of the Sacrament, is said to have been added about 1350. The other, dedicated to the Madonna, in 1500. On comparing them, we find that the first has some marks of a higher antiquity than the other, but the two openings from the church are exactly alike, and I must confess, if I had not been told the contrary, I should have considered both as nearly coeval with the body of the building, except in a few mouldings, which might have been added or altered afterwards. Besides the drawings attributed to Lorenzo Maytani, Sr. Palazzi shewed us others, also on parchment, exhibiting projects of alterations by Ippolito Scalzi. I at first suspected that they were all by this artist, but a more careful consideration convinced me of the contrary. Scalzi’s have no feeling of the character and expression of Gothic architecture. We were shown also the ancient robes, the pianeti and the tondinella, embroidered about the year 1200, and ornamented with figures which have considerable merit.

Adjoining to the cathedral is the ancient palace of the bishop. The great hall seems to have been a fine Gothic edifice, but is now a store-house, and we could not persuade the owner to admit us. Another part has pointed windows divided by mullions, and with an immense width of ornament in brickwork surrounding them. This was erected in 1417. Similar windows abound in Orvieto, except that the arch is generally semicircular.

There have been several other Gothic churches in Orvieto, but they have been modernized, and present nothing remarkable. The church of San Michele must have been an elegant little Saxon edifice in its original form, but it is cut to pieces in all directions. Under the church of San Domenico is a sepulchral chamber, by the architect Sanmicheli. Its form is octagonal, with a double square appended to one side; the effect is pleasing. A little out of the town is the church of San Lorenzo, erected by the same architect. This is also octagonal, and put me in mind of that at Fiascone, but it is a much superior performance. The outside has a face of four pilasters, with a pediment over the two central ones. The middle space is about double that of the sides, and the arch occupying it seems to give a reason for the difference. The ornamental façade appears to be inscribed in a square, and the proportion is pleasing, but there is a high, plain, stuccoed octagon above, which injures the effect. The inside also is very good. The order is Corinthian, but with a cornice so plain that it might almost be called Tuscan; yet it is by no means offensive.

We of course visited the famous Pozzo of San Gallo, which was dug in order to supply Orvieto with water during a siege. It consists of a well of brickwork, surrounded by two spiral, inclined planes, one of which you may go down, and ascend by the other. In the outer cylinder, the upper part is cut through the volcanic tufo which supports itself; but the lower part being in the clay, is executed in brickwork, so that in the same well, you have bricks below, and the native rock above. This well is now useless, as the inhabitants prefer going out of the town for their good water. San Gallo built the Palazzo Soliana in this city, which is a very elegant structure; it is now a convent. Most of the palaces of Orvieto were designed by Ippolito Scalzi, and if there is nothing very striking in the architecture, they may be praised for just proportions and a pleasing distribution of the parts. Some of them are very large. The Palazzo Gualtieri contains some very admirable large chalk drawings, and the owner was polite enough to show us a small collection of gems of first-rate excellence.

From Monte Fiascone, a long descent brought us into the naked plain of Viterbo. Before arriving at the town, we pass the Bollicame, a pool, whence some sort of gas escapes in such quantity as to give the water the appearance of boiling with great violence in several places. In shallow parts near the edges, the water was hardly tepid; but approaching as nearly as I could to those places where the agitation was considerable, I found it as warm as my hand could well bear. It has but little smell.