Apennines, but
which in summer-time shrink up, and leave bare beds of sand and
pestilential canebrakes to stretch irregularly round their dwindled
waters.

The weary flatness and utter desolation of this valley present a
sinister contrast to the broad line of the Apennines, swelling tier
on tier, from their oak-girdled basements set with villages and
towers, up to the snow and cloud that crown their topmost crags. The
time to see this landscape is at sunrise; and the traveller should
take his stand upon the rising ground over which the Roman road is
carried from the town--the point, in fact, which Turner has selected
for his vague and misty sketch of Orvieto in our Gallery. Thence he
will command the whole space of the plain, the Apennines, and the
river creeping in a straight line at the base; while the sun, rising
to his right, will slant along the mountain flanks, and gild the
leaden stream, and flood the castled crags of Orvieto with a haze of
light. From the centre of this glory stand out in bold relief old
bastions built upon the solid tufa, vast gaping gateways black in
shadow, towers of churches shooting up above a medley of
deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid them all, the marble
front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its unfamiliar Gothic
state. Down to the valley from these heights there is a sudden fall;
and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow there can
support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.

Our mind, in looking at this landscape, is carried by the force of
old association to Jerusalem. We could fancy ourselves to be
standing on Mount Olivet, with the valley of Jehoshaphat between us
and the Sacred City. As we approach the town, the difficulty of
scaling its crags seems insurmountable. The road, though carried
skilfully along each easy slope or ledge of quarried rock, still
winds so much that nearly an hour is spent in the ascent. Those who
can walk should take a footpath, and enter Orvieto by the mediaeval
road, up which many a Pope, flying from rebellious subjects or
foreign enemies, has hurried on his mule.[1]

[1] Clement VII., for example, escaped from Rome disguised
as a gardener after the sack in 1527, and, to quote the
words of Varchi (St. Flor., v. 17), 'Entro agli otto di
dicembre a due ore di notte in Orvieto, terra di sito
fortissimo, per lo essere ella sopra uno scoglio pieno di
tufi posta, d' ogni intorno scosceso e dirupato,'