easant. All around lay the neglected
land, thinly besprinkled with forlorn olives, but without signs of man,
save where a crumbling village might be seen crowning the summit of the
little conical hills that form so striking a feature in the Etrurian
landscape. When we had reached the spurs of the Apennines the storm
fell. The air was thickened with alternate showers of sleet and snow. We
had to encounter torrents in the valleys, and drifted wreaths on the
heights; in short, the journey was to the full as dreary as one through
the Grampians would have been at the same season. There was little to
tempt us to leave our vehicle at the few villages and towns where we
halted, for they seemed half-drowned in rain and mud. Late in the
afternoon we reached Viterbo, and stopped to eat a wretched dinner. We
found in the hotel but little of that abundance of which the magnificent
vine-stocks in the adjoining fields gave so goodly promise. Starting
again at dusk, the ladies of the party inquired where the patrol was
that used to accompany travellers through the brigand-haunted country of
Radicofani, on which we were about to enter; but could get no
satisfactory answer. We skirted the lake of Bolsena, with its rich but
deserted shores, and its fine mountains of oak. Soon thereafter darkness
hid from us the country; but the frequent gleams of lightning showed
that it was wild and desolate as ever traveller passed through. It was
naked, and torn, and scathed, as if fire had acted upon it, which,
indeed, it had, for our way now lay amidst extinct volcanoes. Towards
midnight the _diligence_ suddenly stopped. "Here are the brigands at
last," said I to myself. I jumped out; and, stretched on the road,
pallid and motionless, lay the foremost postilion. Had he been shot, or
what had happened? He was a raw-boned lad of some eighteen, wretchedly
clad, and worse fed; and he had swooned through fatigue and cold. We
brought him round with a little brandy; and, setting him again on his
nags, we continued our journey.

I recollect of awaking at times from troubled sleep, to find that we
were zig-zagging up the sides of mountains tall and precipitous as a
sugar-loaf, and entering beneath the portals of towns old and crumbling,
perched upon their very summit. A more desolate sight than that which
met the eye when day broke I never saw. Every particle of soil seemed
torn from the face of the country; and, as far as the eye could reach,
plain and hill-