al
period, it is difficult to say. Yet the impression left by Foligno upon
the mind is different from that of Assisi, Spello, and Montefalco, which
are distinguished for a certain grace and gentleness in their
inhabitants.

My window in the city wall looks southward across the plain to Spoleto,
with Montefalco perched aloft upon the right, and Trevi on its
mountain-bracket to the left. From the topmost peaks of the Sabine
Apennines, gradual tender sloping lines descend to find their quiet in
the valley of Clitumnus. The space between me and that distance is
infinitely rich with every sort of greenery, dotted here and there with
towers and relics of baronial houses. The little town is in commotion;
for the working-men of Foligno and its neighbourhood have resolved to
spend their earnings on a splendid festa--horse-races, and two nights of
fireworks. The acacias and pawlonias on the ramparts are in full bloom
of creamy white and lilac. In the glare of Bengal lights these trees,
with all their pendulous blossoms, surpassed the most fantastic of
artificial decorations. The rockets sent aloft into the sky amid that
solemn Umbrian landscape were nowise out of harmony with nature. I never
sympathised with critics who resent the intrusion of fireworks upon
scenes of natural beauty. The Giessbach, lighted up at so much per head
on stated evenings, with a band playing and a crowd of cockneys staring,
presents perhaps an incongruous spectacle. But where, as here at
Foligno, a whole city has made itself a festival, where there are
multitudes of citizens and soldiers and country-people slowly moving and
gravely admiring, with the decency and order characteristic of an
Italian crowd, I have nothing but a sense of satisfaction.

It is sometimes the traveller's good fortune in some remote place to
meet with an inhabitant who incarnates and interprets for him the
_genius loci_ as he has conceived it. Though his own subjectivity will
assuredly play a considerable part in such an encounter, transferring to
his chance acquaintance qualities he may not possess, and connecting
this personality in some purely imaginative manner with thoughts derived
from study, or impressions made by nature; yet the stranger will
henceforth become the meeting-point of many memories, the central figure
in a composition which derives from him its vividness. Unconsciously and
innocently he has lent himself to the creation of a picture, and round
him, as around