ARCO DELLA CONCA, PERUGIA.
A handsome dark-eyed girl kept on sweeping dust from the mosaic, and was eager to point out that the brick-work on one side has not been examined, and probably hides a good deal more of the pavement, as yet unexcavated. The girl was so bright and good to look at, that she seemed quite a part of the show. Turning through the arch, we very soon reached Piazza Grimani, which has on one side the Palazzo Antinori. Close by is the wonder of Perugia—the Etruscan gateway, or, as it is called from the inscription set over it by the Romans when they took the city, the Porta Augusta. It was growing dusk, and the effect of this grand mass of stone-work was stupendous. On each side of the arched gateway are massive towers,—the upper part of the structure is less ancient than the towers are; one of them is surmounted by a loggia. Some of the blocks of stone in the Etruscan part of the wall are enormous, many of them four feet long, and within the gloom of the arch is the wall, built on the same gigantic scale.
As we went home through the narrow, dark Via Vecchia, we saw a very quaint scene. In a long, dark room, dimly lighted by two oil-lamps hanging from the ceiling, a man and woman were selling soup and cold meat at a sort of counter. The brown characteristic faces and shining eyes of their ragged customers told out wonderfully as occasional gleams from the lamps above singled them from the semi-darkness. In this street we saw many examples of the walled-up doors by which the dead had been formerly carried out, closed up, so that the living might never pass by the same way.
PORTA AUGUSTA, PERUGIA.
Our next view of Porta Augusta was by daylight. We had been told by some one staying in Perugia where to seek a special point of view from the old walls near this arch. The Porta Augusta is even finer in full light, which reveals the immense strength of its construction. When one considers that these great blocks of stone must have been brought from a long distance, it is sad to think of the poor slaves whose labour brought them and set them in their places for their Etruscan masters. Near here must have been the house of that chief citizen who, seeing the Romans, headed by Octavius Cæsar, masters of his native city, and that there was no longer a hope of freedom from the detested yoke, set fire to his dwelling, and burned himself and his whole family therein, heedless that the blaze spreading in all directions destroyed the chief part of Etruscan Perugia.
Instead of following the Via Lungari, or Garibaldi, on this occasion, our instructions sent us down a narrow street in a parallel direction, until we were stopped by the inward curve of the city wall. Just before we reached this, our way was blocked by two wine carts laden with barrels of new-made wine, and drawn by a pair of huge cream-coloured oxen, with soft dark eyes and long horns reaching from one side of the street to the other. I delight in these splendid creatures; they look so gentle, and though so huge they seem unconscious of their power. They moved on at last, and permitted us to reach our bourne.