slowly have waned to less and less. At
the present day Fiesole has degenerated into a mere suburb of Florence,
which, indeed, it had almost become when Lorenzo the Magnificent held
his country court at the Villa Mozzi, or even earlier, when Boccaccio's
lively narrators fled from the plague to the gardens of the Palmieri,
though it still retains the dignity of its ancient cathedral, its
municipal palace, its gigantic seminary, and its great overgrown
Franciscan monastery, that replaces the citadel on the height above the
town. Nay, more, with its local museum, its bishop's palace, and its
quaint churches, it keeps up, to some extent, all the airs and graces
of a real living town. But in reality these few big buildings, and the
graceful campanile which makes so fair a show in all the neighbouring
views, are the best of the little city. Fiesole looks biggest seen from
afar. All that is vital in it is the ecclesiastical establishment,
which still clings, with true ecclesiastical conservatism, to the
hill-top city, and the trade of the straw plaiters, who make Leghorn
straw goods and pester the visitor with their flimsy wares, taking no
answer to all their importunities save one in solid coin of good King
Umberto.

One last question. How does it come that in these southern climates the
hill-top town has survived so much more generally to our own day than
in Northern Europe? The obvious answer seems at first sight to be that
in the warmer climates life can be carried on comfortably, and
agriculture can yield good results, at a greater height than in a cold
climate. Olives, vines, chestnuts, maize will grow far up on Italian
hill sides, and that, no doubt, counts for something; but I do not
believe it covers all the ground. Two other points seem to me at least
equally important, especially when we remember that the hill-top town
was once as common in the north as in the south, and that what we have
really to account for in Italy is not its existence merely, but rather
its late survival into newer epochs. One point is that in Southern
Europe the state of perpetual internal warfare lasted much longer than
in the feudal north. The other point is that each little patch of
country in the south is still far more self-supporting, has had its
economic conditions far less disturbed by modern rearrangements and
commercial necessities, than in Northern Europe. In England every town
and village stands upon some high road; the larger stan