Nothing can be more lifelike than the following picture
of the tract around Siena: "Scarcely do we pass beyond the rose-hung
walls which encircle the fortifications than we are in an upland desert,
piteously bleak in winter, but most lovely when spring comes to clothe
it. The volcanic nature of the soil in these parts gives a softer tint
than usual to the coloring. The miles upon miles of open gray-green
country, treeless, hedgeless, houseless, swoop toward one another with
the strangest sinuosities and rifts and knobs of volcanic earth, till at
last they sink in faint mists, only to rise again in pink and blue
distances, so far off, so pale and aerial, that they can scarcely be
distinguished from the atmosphere itself. Only here and there a lonely
convent with a few black cypress spires clustered round it, or a
solitary cross which the peasants choose as their midday resting-place,
cuts the pellucid sky. Here in these great uplands, where all is so
immense, the very sky itself seems more full of space than elsewhere: it
is not the deep blue of the South, but so soft and aerial that it looks
as if it were indeed the very heaven itself, only very far away."

The chapter on Ravenna is the best in the book: it is an admirable
piece of work, a complete monograph. Everything is there--history,
legends, art--and the quotations and illustrations are peculiarly
beautiful and convincing.

Mr. Hare, like many gentlemen of similar tastes and tendencies, does not
seem to have a strong sense of humor, although now and then he
condescends to smile as he repeats some local legend, such as that of
the crucifix at S. Francesco delle Cariere, which awoke an overwearied
devotee, who had fallen asleep on his knees before it, with "un
soavissimo schiaffo," the gentlest slap, and bade him go to sleep in the
dormitory. He speaks of an ancient custom, not mentioned by _Murray_, of
harboring lost cats in the cloister of San Lorenzo at Florence: "The
feeding of the cats, which takes place when the clock strikes twelve, is
a most curious sight.... From every roof and arch and parapet-wall,
mewing, hissing and screaming, the cats rush down to devour." It sounds
like a wicked parody on the poetic assembling of the Venetian pigeons at
the daily scattering of grain in the square of St. Mark's.

There are a few little slips--so few that it is strange there should be
any--among which is his mention of the "St. Christopher" of the doges'
palace as "t