ose to whom the tints of wine and jewels
give a pleasure not entirely childish, will take delight in its specific
blending of tawny hues with rose. They serve the table still, at Gubbio,
after the antique Italian fashion, covering it with a cream-coloured
linen cloth bordered with coarse lace--the creases of the press, the
scent of old herbs from the wardrobe, are still upon it--and the board
is set with shallow dishes of warm, white earthenware, basket-worked in
open lattice at the edge, which contain little separate messes of meat,
vegetables, cheese, and comfits. The wine stands in strange, slender
phials of smooth glass, with stoppers; and the amber-coloured bread lies
in fair round loaves upon the cloth. Dining thus is like sitting down to
the supper at Emmaus, in some picture of Gian Bellini or of Masolino.
The very bareness of the room--its open rafters, plastered walls,
primitive settees, and red-brick floor, on which a dog sits waiting for
a bone--enhances the impression of artistic delicacy in the table.

FROM GUBBIO TO FANO.

The road from Gubbio, immediately after leaving the city, enters a
narrow Alpine ravine, where a thin stream dashes over dark, red rocks,
and pendent saxifrages wave to the winds. The carriage in which we
travelled at the end of May, one morning, had two horses, which our
driver soon supplemented with a couple of white oxen. Slowly and
toilsomely we ascended between the flanks of barren hills--gaunt masses
of crimson and grey crag, clothed at their summits with short turf and
scanty pasture. The pass leads first to the little town of Scheggia, and
is called the Monte Calvo, or bald mountain. At Scheggia, it joins the
great Flaminian Way, or North road of the Roman armies. At the top there
is a fine view over the conical hills that dominate Gubbio, and, far
away, to noble mountains above the Furlo and the Foligno line of railway
to Ancona. Range rises over range, crossing at unexpected angles,
breaking into sudden precipices, and stretching out long,
exquisitely-modelled outlines, as only Apennines can do, in silvery
sobriety of colours toned by clearest air. Every square piece of this
austere, wild landscape forms a varied picture, whereof the composition
is due to subtle arrangements of lines always delicate; and these lines
seem somehow to have been determined in their beauty by the vast
antiquity of the mountain system, as though they all had taken time to
choose their place and we