n road, and break into a
country-track across a bed of sandstone, with the delicate volcanic
lines of Monte Amiata in front, and the aerial pile of Montalcino to
our right. The pyracanthus bushes in the hedge yield their clusters
of bright yellow berries, mingled with more glowing hues of red from
haws and glossy hips. On the pale grey earthen slopes men and women
are plying the long Sabellian hoes of their forefathers, and
ploughmen are driving furrows down steep hills. The labour of the
husbandmen in Tuscany is very graceful, partly, I think, because it
is so primitive, but also because the people have an eminently noble
carriage, and are fashioned on the lines of antique statues. I
noticed two young contadini in one field, whom Frederick Walker
might have painted with the dignity of Pheidian form. They were
guiding their ploughs along a hedge of olive-trees, slanting
upwards, the white-horned oxen moving slowly through the marl, and
the lads bending to press the plough-shares home. It was a delicate
piece of colour--the grey mist of olive branches, the warm smoking
earth, the creamy flanks of the oxen, the brown limbs and dark eyes
of the men, who paused awhile to gaze at us, with shadows cast upon
the furrows from their tall straight figures. Then they turned to
their work again, and rhythmic movement was added to the picture. I
wonder when an Italian artist will condescend to pluck these flowers
of beauty, so abundantly offered by the simplest things in his own
native land. Each city has an Accademia delle Belle Arti, and there
is no lack of students. But the painters, having learned their
trade, make copies ten times distant from the truth of famous
masterpieces for the American market. Few seem to look beyond their
picture galleries. Thus the democratic art, the art of Millet, the
art of life and nature and the people, waits.

As we mount, the soil grows of a richer brown; and there are woods
of oak where herds of swine are feeding on the acorns. Monte Oliveto
comes in sight--a mass of red brick, backed up with cypresses, among
dishevelled earthy precipices, _balze_ as they are called--upon the
hill below the village of Chiusure. This Chiusure was once a
promising town; but the life was crushed out of it in the throes of
mediaeval civil wars, and since the thirteenth century it has been
dwindling to a hamlet. The struggle for existence, from which the
larger communes of this district, Siena and Montepulciano, em