of serving-men, the songs of
pages; horse-hooves struck upon the pavement of the court; spurs
jingled on the staircases; the brocaded trains of ladies sweeping
from their chambers rustled on the marbles of the loggia; knights
let their hawks fly from the garden parapets; cardinals and
abbreviators gathered round the doors from which the Pope would
issue, when he rose from his siesta to take the cool of evening in
those airy colonnades. How impossible it is to realise that scene
amid this solitude! The palazzo still belongs to the Piccolomini
family. But it has fallen into something worse than ruin--the
squalor of half-starved existence, shorn of all that justified its
grand proportions. Partition-walls have been run up across its halls
to meet the requirements of our contracted modern customs. Nothing
remains of the original decorations except one carved chimney-piece,
an emblazoned shield, and a frescoed portrait of the founder. All
movable treasures have been made away with. And yet the carved
heraldics of the exterior, the coat of Piccolomini, 'argent, on a
cross azure five crescents or,' the Papal ensigns, keys, and tiara,
and the monogram of Pius, prove that this country dwelling of a Pope
must once have been rich in details befitting its magnificence. With
the exception of the very small portion reserved for the Signori,
when they visit Pienza, the palace has become a granary for country
produce in a starveling land. There was one redeeming point about it
to my mind. That was the handsome young man, with earnest Tuscan
eyes and a wonderfully sweet voice, the servant of the Piccolomini
family, who lives here with his crippled father, and who showed us
over the apartments.

We left Pienza and drove on to S. Quirico, through the same wrinkled
wilderness of marl; wasteful, uncultivated, bare to every wind that
blows. A cruel blast was sweeping from the sea, and Monte Amiata
darkened with rain-clouds. Still the pictures, which formed
themselves at intervals, as we wound along these barren ridges, were
very fair to look upon, especially one not far from S. Quirico. It
had for fore-ground a stretch of tilth--olive-trees, honeysuckle
hedges, and cypresses. Beyond soared Amiata in all its breadth and
blue air-blackness, bearing on its mighty flanks the broken cliffs
and tufted woods of Castiglione and the Rocca d'Orcia; eagles' nests
emerging from a fertile valley-champaign, into which the eye was led
for rest. It so cha