of love; work of the della Robbia; pictures, too, cheerful
flowerlike things, with Madonna like a rose in the midst. Well, not far
away across Arno, where it is little, the ruins of Castel Castagnajo and
of Campo Lombardo are huddled, though Vallucciole, that tiny village, is
laughing with children. It is the same at Romena, where the church still
lives, though the castle is ruined. You pass to Pratovecchio; it is the
same story, ruins of the Guidi towers, walls, fortifications; but in the
convent church of the Dominican sisters they still sing Magnificat:

Deposuit potentes de sede: et exaltavit humiles.

So on the road to Poppi you come to Campaldino, where Dante fought,
where Corso Donati saved the day, where Buonconte fell, and died with
the fog in his throat in the still morning air after the battle. Well,
that famous field is now a vineyard; you may see the girls gathering the
grapes there any morning in early October. Where the horses of the
Aretines thundered away, the great patient oxen draw the plough; or a
man walks, singing beside his wife, her first-born in her arms. It is
the victory of the meek; here, at least, they have inherited the earth.
And Certomondo, as of old, sings of our sister the earth. Poppi
again--ah, but that fierce old place, how splendid it is, it and its
daughter! Like all the rest of these Guidi strongholds, the Rocca of
Poppi stands on a hill; it can be seen for miles up and down the valley:
and indeed the whole town is like a fortress on a hill, subject only to
the ever-changing sky, the great tide of light ebbing and flowing in the
valley between the mountains. Poppi is the greatest of the Guidi
fortresses; built by Arnolfo, it has much of the nobility of its
daughter the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Of all these castles it is the
only one that is not a ruin. It is true it has been restored, But you
may still find frescoes on its walls in the chapel and in the great
hall, work, it is said, of Jacopo da Casentino: and then it has one of
the loveliest courtyards in Italy.

It is from Poppi one may go very easily in a summer day to Camaldoli,
some eight miles or so to the north-west, where the valley comes up in a
long arm into the mountains. On that lovely road you pass many an old
ruin of the Guidi before you come at last to that monastery of the
Camaldolese Order "so beloved of Dante," which was confiscated with the
rest in 1866. The monks now hire their own house from the Gove