way from Florence to Rome, and the next half
hour, through savage gorges and black tunnels, ever beside the tormented
waters of the Nar until they meet the Tiber, swollen by the tributes of
the Paglia and Chiana, is singularly fine.

[Illustration: ORVIETO.]

Where the Paglia and Chiana flow together, at the issue of the charming
Val di Chiana, stands Orvieto on its steep and sudden rock, crowned with
one of the triumphs of Italian Gothic, the glorious cathedral. After
toiling up the ladder-like paths which lead from the plain to the summit
of the bluff, and passing through the grand mediaeval gateway along the
slanting streets, where even the peasants dismount and walk beside their
donkeys, seeing nothing within the whole small compass of the walls save
what speaks of the narrowest and humblest life in the most remote of
hill-fastnesses, a few deserted and dilapidated palaces alone telling of
a period of importance long past, nothing can describe the effect of
coming out of this indigence and insignificance upon the silent,
solitary piazza where the incomparable cathedral rears its front,
covered from base to pinnacle with the richest sculpture and most
brilliant mosaic. The volcanic mass on which the town is built is over
seven hundred feet high, and nearly half as much in circumference: it
would be a fitting pedestal for this gorgeous duomo if it stood there
alone. But it is almost wedged in among the crooked streets, a few paces
of grass-grown stones allowing less than space enough to embrace the
whole result of proportion and color: one cannot go far enough off to
escape details. An account of those details would require a volume, and
one has already been written which leaves no more to be said;[1] yet
fain would we take the reader with us into that noble nave, where the
"glorious company of the apostles" stands colossal in marble beside the
pillars whose sculptured capitals are like leafy branches blown by the
wind; where the light comes rich and mellow through stained glass and
semilucent alabaster, like Indian-summer sunshine in autumn woods; where
Fra Angelico's and Benozzo Gozzoli's angelic host smile upon us with
ineffable mildness from above the struggle and strife of Luca
Signorelli's "Last Judgment," the great forerunner of Michael Angelo's.
It added greatly to the impressiveness that there was never a single
human being in the cathedral: except one afternoon at vespers we had it
all to ourselves. There i