I heard so much at Rome of various objects in the north of Italy which I had omitted, that I determined to appropriate a couple of months to supply the deficiency, and to form a judgment at least, whether these things were worth seeing or no. I therefore set off with a Vetturino on the 25th of June. My companions were an Italian country gentleman and his son, and a priest who was tutor in a gentleman’s family at Narni; all very pleasant people. A man of small landed property in this country, generally I believe, attends to the cultivation of his own estate. The rich employ something between bailiffs and tenants, the proprietor finding capital and stock, and receiving a certain portion of the gross produce, varying according to the nature of the crop, and of the soil; but a class of tenants working on their own capitals, for their own advantage, on ground belonging to another man, but of which the use is for a time secured to them, and paying only a fixed annual rent, is a character very scarce, or entirely wanting in Italy. The young gentleman had been drawn for the conscription during the authority of the French; and he gave me an account of the various methods put in practice by himself and his companions, to escape the journey. He also amused me with an account of part of the contest between the Romans, under the French government, and the Neapolitans, who at one time occupied a very strong position at Cavi, near Cività Castellana. A detachment of about 200 French were posted in the latter town, and they had raised about 800 inhabitants of the Roman states; the Neapolitans were about 5,000. When the Romans were drawn up in the square at Cività Castellana, a report was spread that the enemy was coming, and they all fell flat upon their faces. By reproaches, threats, and encouragements, and by reminding them of the ancient celebrity of the Roman name, the French at last persuaded them to rise, and to march out of the town. When the Neapolitans saw the Roman troops advancing, they thought it best to run away in time, lest they should lose the opportunity. A small body of Calabrians declared that it was a shame to decline the contest, and that let the Neapolitan commander do what he would, they should maintain their post; but they were not in sufficient number to effect anything.

As far as Monte Rosi we followed the same road as that by which I had entered Rome, over the desolate Campagna. A church there, at the entrance of the village, is of a pleasing form; it is a little whitewashed thing, so that it wants the process of an artist’s mind in separating the good from the bad, to discover that the form is beautiful. The world in general is exceedingly unwilling to acknowledge beauty of form when the material is bad, and on the other hand, where the materials are good, it is very ready to praise the form also, if that be anything tolerable; the one is a much more obvious and indisputable merit than the other. In what the beauty of form in the present case consists, I have not been able to determine. It is an octagonal dome, with four projections below, forming a Greek cross, with a little tower on each side of the entrance, inferior in height to the dome. I call them towers and not turrets because they are continued down to the ground, and turrets might be understood as only elevations raised upon the front. Some lower buildings fill up the square, and at each angle is a paltry little obelisk, not at all well shaped, yet certainly contributing to the general beauty of the composition.

Just after leaving Monte Rosi we quitted the Siena road, and keeping to the right, passed through fine groves of oak to Nepi, a town situated on the edge of a deep ravine, and slept at Cività Castellana, which stands on a point of land between two such ravines, deeper than that at Nepi, and very wild and picturesque. The country here is intersected by several of these inaccessible valleys, and the strength of the situation gave birth to a conjecture that this must be the position of the ancient Veii, which cost the Romans a ten years siege. There is a cathedral, with a portico of small columns of granite and marble, and a mosaic frieze something in the style of San Lorenzo fuori delle mura, at Rome. The middle doorway is of the Lombard architecture, with two columns on each side, the outermost of which are supported on two lions: the inside has been modernized. At Cività Castellana I left two of my companions: the next morning was very foggy, but I set out on foot before the carriage, and crossed a bridge which must be at least 120 feet high, over one of the ravines. It consists of two ranges of arches, and there was to have been a third, which would have kept the road up to a level with the banks, but this has never been executed. A little beyond I entered into conversation with a labourer going to reap for some friends of his, as he told me, on land belonging to a convent just by; he had first been a monk, then a soldier, and was now going to labour for the love he bore to religion. He assured me that he possessed a very fine picture by Giotto, but it was then at Viterbo; repeated some verses of his own composition in praise of the English, and concluded with asking me for charity. After leaving Cività Castellana I saw no more of these ravines. The road follows the valley of the Tiber, first on one side of the stream, and afterwards on the other. The scenery seems very pleasant, but it was obscured by the fogs. We passed by some Roman fragments, and afterwards by the ruins of Otriculum, but I could not stop to examine them. From the modern town of Otricoli, which stands considerably higher than the old one, the road lies among mountains and forests famous for game. Narni is near the extremity of this elevated road, on the edge of a deep limestone valley, which put me in mind of Dovedale, but it is more woody. It presents quite a different character from the deep ravines we crossed the preceding day, which are more like Shanklin Chine very much magnified. At Narni, or rather below it, are the remains of a Roman bridge, in which, besides the destruction of the arches, one of the piers has sunk perpendicularly, which breaks the ideal connexion between the different parts.

The road from here to Terni lies in a cultivated valley, but I believe not in general of a very good soil. At Terni I had a young guide who assured me that he was well acquainted with all the “meraviglie” in the neighbourhood; and we walked round the town to see the few antiquities it contains. There is an amphitheatre, or at least a few vaults of what has once been one, some walls of reticulated work, and a temple of the Sun, or if you wish to give it any other name, I will not dispute the point with you. It is a small circular building, the under part of which is probably of the lower empire, and the upper still later. Tacitus is said to have been a citizen of Terni, but there are no memorials of him existing. The modern buildings are hardly worth much attention. There is an unfinished elliptical church; every example of this form serves to show the superiority of the circle. I was also conducted to see a splendid altar in this church, which cost 18,000 crowns; it is rich in marbles, not handsome, yet not without something agreeable. The next morning we went to see the famous cascade. My attendant called the Nero (the “sulfureâ Nar albus aquâ” of Virgil) “un Tevere,” as if he understood that to be the general name of a river. The proper name of that at Terni he conceived to be Negro, but as he saw the waters were white, he invented a Bianco to communicate its colour. This boy gave me a good specimen of the facility with which in these parts the l, following a vowel and preceding a consonant, is turned into r, arbero for albero seems natural enough, but I was rather puzzled at first by his using morto for molto. He told me moreover, that Napoleon was a great man, it was a pity he turned out the friars, but the boy could not be persuaded that he had done anything else wrong. Under his government they used to have plenty of olives, but since that time their crops have been small, and he heartily wished him back, that they might again have abundance. You may conceive from this that he was as ignorant as possible; but he was not stupid, and probably reflected the opinions of those about him. After all, he seems to have had a most philosophical idea of causation. His sentiments may serve as proof that the common people here are not averse to the French. We do not readily associate the idea of benefits with the persons we dislike.

The celebrated Cascata delle marmore is about five miles from Terni, (7,447 metres, to be very exact); the name is said to be owing to the rapid deposition of the water “quia ibi Marmor et Saxum crescit,” and you have the authority of Pliny for this etymology. For nearly three miles the road continues along the valley of the Nar, in one part of which, by the side of the road, pozzuolana is said to be found; and this is supposed to be connected with a shower of milk, which according to Livy, fell at Terni in the year of Rome 194. After this we ascend to Papigno, whence there are two roads, the upper leading to the top, and the lower to the bottom of the fall. I first took the upper, which ascends very rapidly on the slope of a limestone hill, commanding a view up a valley, deeper and bolder than that at Narni, with less wood on its slopes, but with more trees and more cultivation at the bottom. After this the ascent is trifling, and we pass for the last three quarters of a mile nearly on a plain, which sounds hollow to the tread; bearing everywhere traces of the course of the water, and formed indeed from its concretions. The traveller is first conducted to the channel in which the water runs above the fall; the width of this is fifty-one feet and a quarter;^[11] the descent one foot in twenty; and the rapidity of the current ten feet and a half^[12] per second, or about seven miles per hour. If you are not in the secret, you will wonder at these precise dimensions, but in fact this is an artificial channel. The Velino, like the Anio, instead of continually wearing for itself a deeper channel, fills up its bed with a calcareous rock, not very hard indeed, but still a rock, and not an earthy sediment which might be displaced by the first heavy rains; and we find it very early blocking up its own course, and subjecting the valley above, to frequent inundations. In the year of Rome 481, (271 before Christ) a channel was cut by Marcus Curius Dentatus for the discharge of its waters into the Nar. In the year of Rome 700, some quarrels arose, but we know not precisely on what ground, between the inhabitants of Reati above the fall, and those of Terni below; and in the time of Tiberius a great flood happening in the Tiber, which did much mischief at Rome, commissioners were appointed to examine into the causes of this injury, and to consider the means of obviating such irregularities in future. These wiseheads reported, that in order to attain this object, it would be expedient to stop up all the rivers by which the Tiber is fed. I need not tell you that this scheme was never executed. After this the channel continued to perform its duty, till about the year 1400; that is, for the space of 1,680 years from the period of its first execution; but it appears at that time to have become so much choked up, that the superior valley was again subject to frequent inundations. The Reatines began to open a new canal, but the inhabitants of Terni opposed it, and a war between the two cities was the consequence. Braccio di Montone, tyrant of Perugia (that name is well applied in every sense to the Italian Reguli of the fifteenth century) interfered, and a new channel was made; but probably on a small scale, as it was soon filled up again, and in 1546, we find Sangallo appointed by Paul the Third to make a sufficient opening. Terni and the cities below the fall, including Rome itself, raised a great outcry against this undertaking, on the plea that they should be subject to frequent inundations, if an outlet were given to these waters. The channel was however made, but it was soon found that it had not been cut sufficiently deep, and in 1596, under the direction of Giovanni Fontana, a new work was undertaken. This architect, or rather as we should call him engineer, appears to have contented himself with re-opening for the greatest part of the way, the old channel of M. C. Dentatus, but as that made a very obtuse angle towards the fall, Fontana abandoned it there, and continued his work in a straight line to the valley of the Nar. Owing to this change the Velino joined that river at right angles, at the foot of a rock called Pennarosa, in a part where its bed was very much confined; and moreover it brought down with it some considerable fragments of rock. These causes combined forced back the Nar, and occasioned considerable inundations in the upper part of that river; new quarrels were the consequence, and numerous inconsistencies were written. Father Gaudio, on the part of the inhabitants of Terni, undertook to prove that a larger river rushing with the utmost violence into a smaller one, at right angles with the course of the latter, could not possibly occasion any rise of its waters above the junction, but on the contrary must give them an impulse which would tend to drain the superior valley. These disputes were not settled till the year 1785, when a new cut brought off the waters of the Velino obliquely into the Nar, and all complaints ceased. We are conducted to different points to look down on this tremendous fall, but the best view is from a little summerhouse, on a projecting point considerably below the brow, which is said to have been built for the accommodation of Napoleon. The lower part of the cataract is not however visible at this point, but we contemplate a most tremendous fall, rushing among rocks, and over a precipice so perpendicular, that the water is detached from it for a considerable distance, and loses itself in thunder among the foam and spray of the gulf below. The first fall takes place where the stream is yet confined among the rocks of the channel, here much broken; and may perhaps have an elevation of 40 or 50 feet. The second, or perpendicular part, has a descent of 598^[13] feet; if in fact this measure do not include also the first fall. Afterwards it strikes against a rock, and rushes down repeated falls, so close as to form one almost continued sheet of foam, for 240^[14] feet more, into the Nar, so that the whole height is 838^[15] feet. The Itinerario d’Italia, not content with this height, great as it is, assigns a fall of 1,063 French feet. I know not on what authority. Mine is a little book by Joseph Riccardi, printed at Spoleto in 1818, entitled, Ricerche istoriche e fisiche sulla caduta delle marmore, &c. a very distinct and well-written account, which bears internal marks of authenticity and correctness, though I confess that if I had to guess the height, I should not have said more than between 400 and 500 feet, including every thing; but in these great elevations the judgment gets lost for want of sufficient objects of comparison. According to the same author, the supply of water, when the river was lowest in the year 1807, was 4,640 cubic metres per minute, i. e. above 160,000 English cubic feet; the greatest quantity per minute in the same year, was 19,310 cubic metres, or 675,000 English cubic feet. The New River, I believe, yields about 3,000 cubic feet in the same time. The Thames at Laleham, after a very dry summer, was found to yield 1,155 cubic feet in a second, or 69,300 in a minute; the comparison is rather startling, and one cannot help suspecting some mistake in the measures. The width and rapidity, as before given, do not at all exceed probability; but with these, an average depth of above four feet and a half, would be required to supply the given quantity of water in dry weather. This I had no means of estimating. It is however a considerable river. After seeing the upper part of the cascade, I returned to the lower road, which conducts us along the valley to the foot of it. This approach is delightful, and is perhaps better worth seeing than the cascade itself. After the roads divide at Papigno, we descend into the bottom, cross the river, and pass a house, forming a very picturesque object in the landscape, which, as the boy told me, belonged to a milordo of the city of Terni. Thence we pass among vineyards and lofty trees, and afterwards through groves of full grown ilex, between impending rocks. We see here more of the lower part of the fall, and find that even after all we have contemplated from the upper part, the river still bounds from rock to rock, before it unites with the Nar, but the direction of the different parts is so various, that it is impossible to catch the whole at one view. The fall itself may be rivalled by those of Tivoli, though here is more water, and greater height, but nothing at Tivoli, or at any other place that I have seen, can afford a parallel to the valley by which we approach it.

Riccardi speaks of the admirable effect in winter from the ice formed at the bottom. The valley of Terni, measured I suppose at the city itself, is 346 feet above the sea, and the bottom of the fall may be 100 or 150 feet more, but this is not a height to account for any material difference of climate, and we certainly should not have expected much effect from the frost. As I have not seen it in that state, I will copy his description. “The appearance of the fall in winter does not deserve less attention. The ice accumulating at the bottom of the precipice, forms itself into enormous masses, which appear to be the disproportioned columns of some huge pile of building; while the icicles hanging from above, seem as if they would lengthen themselves to the bottom of the gulf. The river itself, increased in volume, brings down various substances of different colours, which unite the beautiful, to the sublime effect produced by the vast rush of water, and masses of ice; and this is farther heightened by the vertical rainbows of more than a semicircle, which exhibit themselves in the spray, and by a number of other horizontal rainbows.” What these horizontal rainbows may be, I cannot pretend to explain.

In the afternoon I hired a caratella to Spoleto. The road winds over a branch of the Apennines, and is here called the Somma; it passes in fact through a very winding opening in the mountain, which is very pleasant, but has no striking feature, and no extensive view from the upper part. Spoleto itself is situated on a rocky hill almost insulated, or I might say quite insulated, as the neck is so low that we hardly observe it. A magnificent aqueduct, said to be a Roman work, but which in fact is the work of a Roman cardinal in the fifteenth century, supplies the town with water. This passes the deep and narrow valley which separates the hill from the general mass of mountain, supported on a single range of arches near 250 feet high. Some of the arches are however divided into two in height, and others have been so, which are not so now, but I am at a loss to conceive the motive of the alteration. The water is collected from two or three springs among the mountains, and falls 30 or 40 feet before passing the aqueduct. Advantage of this fall has been taken to build a mill; and the same stream which furnishes a supply of water to the town, also grinds its corn. There are several fragments of Roman antiquity at Spoleto, one of which is a bridge lately discovered. The torrent has changed its bed, and the bridge was in consequence buried for many centuries. An ancient arch within the town is called Porta Fuga, from a tradition that Hannibal attacked the town on that side, and was obliged to retreat with great loss. If you believe all the stories told about this general in Italy, it would seem as if he had entered the country to beat the Romans, and to be beaten by every little city in the land. There is also another Roman arch within the city, and some foundations of uncertain purpose, which appear to be connected with it; and in the upper part of the town are other remains, said to have been part of a palace of Theodoric; and about the citadel we may observe some portions of Cyclopean masonry.

Among the erections of a later period is a Gothic cathedral, modernized internally, and partially so on the outside. These alterations in the style and character of a building never produce a good effect. A little out of the town there are some remains of an ancient temple, now included in a convent. The plan seems to have been of a very complicated form, but the Romans did not preserve the Grecian simplicity of design in their sacred edifices; and this has not been an edifice of the good time of Roman taste. There are several columns, but all misplaced.

The Temple of Clitumnus by the road side, a few miles beyond Spoleto, is likewise a building of a late style, probably not much more ancient than Constantine. I might have known what it was from the prints which have been published, yet I expected a prettier thing, both in itself and its situation. There seems no deficiency in the number of columns externally, and I do not understand to what the story, related by Hobhouse in his Notes to Childe Harolde, alludes. He tells us that a certain brother Hilarion, with the approbation of the bishop of Spoleto, demolished great part of the porticos, and sold four of the columns for eighteen crowns. Four small shafts have indeed been removed from the inside, but these could only have been about nine inches in diameter, and had nothing to do with any portico. The outer columns are covered with leaves slightly waved, and marked with a mid-rib, and not with fish scales, as has been supposed. The lowest range is raffled. The bases of the pilasters have no projection towards the column. The entrances must have been on the sides, and not in the front. The walls of the cella are thicker than the width of the pilasters. The parts unite badly together, and the workmanship is as bad as the design. The country however is rich and beautiful, though the situation of the temple commands no view of it; the road passes by the edge of a fine plain, bounded by mountains, which are partly cultivated, and partly covered with wood.

At Foligno there is a cathedral whose outside is Gothic, but the interior is modernized as usual. I could not however enter, for an epidemic fever was very prevalent, and owing to the practice of burying the dead very slightly in the churches, the cathedral and some others had become so offensive, that it was thought proper to shut them up.^[16] At Narni they had found a saint (San Rocco) who had power over the disease; (you might doubt whether they were talking of a magician, or a quack medicine) and by making a few processions in his honour, they had speedily got rid of it. At Terni, the first rains had washed it away, but at Foligno it was still raging with considerable violence.

Perugia is at the top of a very high hill, where the vetturini usually employ the additional strength of a pair of bullocks, but my light caratella did not require that assistance, especially since I as usual, walked up myself. It commands noble views over two rich and extensive valleys, watered by the Clitumnus and the Tiber. I stayed there all Sunday, and had the opportunity of seeing some very fine paintings, especially of Pietro Perugino, who has left many admirable works in his native city; and some very curious architecture. There is a Roman arch said to have been built by Augustus, but we can hardly acknowledge this, since the frieze of its entablature is ornamented with pilasters, instead of triglyphs; a licence which cannot be supposed to have taken place so early, though the Roman architects indulged themselves in a good deal of whim and caprice, especially in these provincial cities. A circular building, covered by a wooden roof, like that of the church of San Stefano rotondo at Rome, and not by a dome, is said to have been an ancient temple, and is doubtless a Roman building, but of late times. The columns have been taken from buildings still more ancient; they are sixteen in number, of granite, cipollino, bigio antico, and marmo greco; differing in their sizes, and in their capitals. The cathedral is Gothic; the vault of the side aisles springing at the same height as that of the nave. The piers are round, and very slender, and all the arches are tied with iron; yet it would be beautiful, if it were not so party-coloured. The Palazzo pubblico may also deserve notice, as an example of Italian Gothic; but it is not handsome. At the church of San Domenico I had the pleasure of seeing a continued vault, uninterrupted even by a window. These experiments in design are invaluable to an architect; and here, in spite of the disadvantages arising from the building never having been terminated, and from the whitewash which covers what is finished, the effect is very fine. Behind the altar were crimson hangings which shut out the choir, and the scene was certainly improved by them; in such a case the interruption of the transept between the nave and the altar is not objectionable, and at times, when the transept is lighter than the nave, even produces an uncommonly beautiful effect; but then the altar should only be in a slight recess, and receive the full effect of the light of the transept, and the architecture of the nave must by no means be resumed. The front of the church of San Francesco is an interesting, and very handsome specimen of the early Italian architecture. A simple rectangular front, surmounted by a pediment, includes the large arch; and this simplicity of design, and apparent correspondence with the construction and internal disposition, is very pleasing. There is here indeed too much ornament, but it is well disposed and well executed.

There is at Perugia a most capital ground for playing at pallone, but it is never used. This game consists in driving backwards and forwards a large leather ball, filled with compressed air, and made as tight as possible; but it soon wants re-filling. The blow is given by the wrist or lower part of the arm, which is armed for this purpose with a large wooden cylinder, covered with knobs externally, that the ball may not slip upon it.

On Monday morning I quitted Perugia, again in a caratella, which is a four-wheeled chaise, with a head, and a seat in front for the driver. The whole ride to Cortona is very pleasant, but the descent to the lake of Perugia, the ancient Thrasymene, and the ascent again from it, are exquisitely beautiful. The lake itself is a large irregular piece of water, of which the general outline is roundish; the hills slope gently towards it, gradually rising as they recede into mountains, neither very bold, nor very high, yet you would not call them tame. They are well varied in their forms, and almost everywhere covered by wood or cultivation.

Soon after leaving the lake, we enter Tuscany, and the advantage here both in cultivation and picturesque beauty, is in favour of the papal states. Cortona is on the top of a high hill, and commands a view of an extensive valley, but its situation is not to be compared to that of Perugia. I expected to have found more interest at Cortona than was really the case; the principal antiquities are the walls of the city, of Cyclopean masonry, not of the earliest style, but of that where the stones lie for the most part in courses nearly horizontal; and a small sepulchral chamber, a little below the town, called the grotto of Pythagoras. It is built of large blocks of sandstone; the doorway remains, and the rebate for the door, and two holes in the sill and lintel for the pivot on which it turned. It is arched over, the arch being composed of four, or perhaps five stones, each of which is the whole length of the edifice, and rests upon a rudely semicircular stone at each end. These arch-stones are really wedge-shaped in the section, though in this case such a form would not be necessary for their support; but the builders, whoever they were, were without doubt acquainted with the principle of the arch, though perhaps afraid to confide much to it. The room is internally about seven feet square, and has had small square recesses at the sides, perhaps for cinerary urns. I had been taught to expect a good museum of antiquities, but it had been dispersed in order to save it from the Neapolitans, and seemed not likely to be ever restored. The fever had driven the gentlemen of the place to their country residences, and I could not gain admission to the private collections.

From Cortona I proceeded to Arezzo, where there are the remains of an amphitheatre, but not of much consequence. The cathedral, and the church of the Pieve, interested me much more. The latter is a very singular building. The front has four stories of ornament, and the tower which arises from it at one angle, has five stories more, each of which has two double windows. The upper story of the front presents a range of thirty-three openings, and thirty-two little columns with fancy capitals; most of them are octangular, but some are cylindrical, and one is a statue, some of them have zigzag, and others spiral flutes. They stand on plinths of different sizes, and support a horizontal architrave. The next story is a series of twenty-five arches on twenty-four columns, very little, if at all, bigger than those above. There is equal or greater variety in their forms, for in addition to those above mentioned, we find one fasciculated shaft, and one covered with ascending leaves. Below this, is a range of thirteen larger arches, also on columns, with the same irregularity of shape; some standing on bases, with plinths, some without plinths, and some with neither. In this story there is a small wheel window. The lower range is of five arches only, of which the middle is the highest; there is a corbel over each spandril, which perhaps has supported a statue; and some unconnected, and irregularly disposed portions of ornament. You see from this account that the whole has amazingly the air of being made up of fragments, but it is difficult to imagine where such a multitude of different things in so small a scale could have been found. The Aretines say, that the building as it stands, was an ancient temple, which it certainly was not.

Internally, the vaulting is composed of a mixture of semicircular, and of very obtusely pointed arches, like some of that at the church of St. Mark at Venice, and probably it is nearly of the date of the front galleries of that edifice (about 1100). The nave is not vaulted. The back of the choir shows the beautiful effect sometimes produced by a range of small columns placed over a high wall, either plain, or slightly recessed. I would not engage that in many cases, this strong contrast should not be disagreeable, but I think it succeeds best when, as in this instance, the plan is circular.

The cathedral is a fine Gothic building; that is, fine as an edifice of the Italian Gothic, but not to be compared with the best examples of that style in France and England. It is very dark, but that darkness, the first time I visited it, set off to great advantage a side chapel of this form,

producing the effect of a Greek cross with shallow recesses; it was evening, but the candles at the altar were bright points, which could hardly yet be said to give any light; behind the altar there were crimson hangings, which hid the windows of the little recesses behind them, and the external daylight had no other effect than to give brilliancy to their colour. The only light diffused through the chapel proceeded from the upper part. The richness of the altar increased by the candles, and by the hangings; the light and elegant proportions of the chapel sufficiently illuminated, but not glaring; and its contrast with the gloomy magnificence of the cathedral, whose bounds were totally lost among the clustered columns, produced an effect quite magical. Seen by full daylight, however, the architecture of the chapel, of a mixed style, did not please me so well, and it then appeared too gaudily painted. Still the justness of its general proportions may claim for it the praise of an elegant building, though quite out of all acknowledged rules.

The cloisters of the convent at the Badia, consist of a range of arches supported on columns; and over these there is a range of small columns, very wide apart, supporting the roof. It is, I believe, an advantage that these supports are so far asunder, as they thereby assist the idea of lightness attributed to the roof. Where the slenderness and wide separation of the supports below can persuade the spectator that the parts above are very light, it is a beauty; one indeed not to be sought on every occasion, but admirable in its proper place. But where this persuasion is not accomplished, and the upper parts are manifestly heavy, the slenderness of the lower is a very great defect. Where columns stand over arches, it is absolutely necessary to have a considerable space over the latter; otherwise the effect is poor and meagre.

I left Arezzo on Tuesday, and slept at Monte Varco, travelling through a country of clay hills, singularly intersected by deep ravines. Where the soil is not held together by the roots of trees, broom, &c. the lower part of the bank seems to get washed away by the torrent at the bottom, and the earth falls, so as to leave perpendicular precipices, and broken and detached points. My vetturino was very unwilling to proceed so far, yet we got in by nine o’clock, which at this time of year is not late. In the morning he came to me with the tale of a man who had been murdered in the night, in going from here to Florence. I thought at first that he only wanted to alarm me, as a punishment for having urged him to go on in the dusk, the evening before, but I found afterwards that his tale was too true. A young man going alone in a sort of one horse chaise, from San Giovanni to Florence, in order to make some purchases there, for which he carried the money with him, was attacked, about one o’clock in the morning, by some robbers, who appear to have been aware of the circumstances. They broke his skull with the blow of some blunt instrument, and had taken the key, and inserted it in the lock of the box which contained the money, but something must have alarmed them, as they proceeded no farther. The horse returned home with his master, who lived a few hours afterwards, but unable to speak, and nearly insensible. We learned these particulars in passing through San Giovanni. The attack took place at a bridge close by a picture of the Madonna, as was judged by the blood found on that spot. We saw the bridge and the Madonna, but no blood; and I confess I do not understand the feelings of my driver, who kissed the little chapel with great emotion, and put some money into the box. If the poor fellow’s life had been saved I should have comprehended him better. We reached Florence about three o’clock that afternoon, and I dismissed my driver, whom I had found very civil and attentive, and I believe very honest, and now I shall dismiss my letter.