Sienna is said to be the best place for learning the language. Just between Florence and Rome, it combines the "lingua Toscano," with the "bocca Romano"—the Roman pronunciation with the Florentine purity of language. It looks like a dull place, however, and I was very glad after dinner to resume my passport at the gate and get on.
The next morning, after toiling up a considerable ascent, we suddenly rounded the shoulder of a mountain, and found ourselves at the edge of a long glen, walled up at one extremity by a precipice with an old town upon its brow, and a waterfall pouring off at its side, and opening away at the other into a broad, gently-sloped valley, cultivated like a garden as far as the eye could distinguish. I think I have seen an engraving of it in the Landscape Annual. Taken together, it is positively the most beautiful view I ever saw, from the road edge, as you wind up into the town of Acquapendente. The precipice might be a hundred feet, and from its immediate edge were built up the walls of the houses, so that a child at the window might throw its plaything into the bottom of the ravine. It is scarce a pistol-shot across the glen, and the two hills on either side lean off from the level of the town in one long soft declivity to the valley—the little river which pours off the rock at the very base of the church, fretting and fuming its way between to the meadows—its stony bed quite hidden by the thick vegetation of its banks. The bells were ringing to mass, and the echoes came back to us at long distances with every modulation. The streets, as we entered the town, were full of people hurrying to the churches; the women with their red shawls thrown about their heads, and the men with their immense dingy cloaks flung romantically over their shoulders, with a grace, one and all, that in a Parisian dandy, would be attributed to a consummate study of effect. For outline merely, I think there is nothing in costume which can surpass the closely-stockinged leg, heavy cloak, and slouched hat of an Italian peasant. It is added to by his indolent, and, consequently, graceful motion and attitudes. Johnson, in his book on the climate of Italy, says their sloth is induced by malaria. You will see a man watching goats or sheep, with his back against a rock, quite motionless for hours together. His dog feels, apparently, the same influence, and lies couched in his long white hair, with his eyes upon the flock, as lifeless, and almost as picturesque, as his master.
The town of San Lorenzo is a handful of houses on the top of a hill which hangs over Lake Bolsena. You get the first view of the lake as you go out of the gate toward Rome, and descend immediately to its banks. There was a heavy mist upon the water, and we could not see across, but it looked like as quiet and pleasant a shore as might be found in the world—the woods wild, and of uncommonly rich foliage for Italy, and the slopes of the hills beautiful. Saving the road, and here and there a house with no sign of an inhabitant, there can scarcely be a lonelier wilderness in America. We stopped two hours at an inn on its banks, and whether it was the air, or the influence of the perfect stillness about us, my companions went to sleep, and I could scarce resist my own drowsiness.
The mist lifted a little from the lake after dinner, and we saw the two islands said by Pliny to have floated, in his time. They look like the tops of green hills rising from the water.
It is a beautiful country again as you approach Montefiascone. The scenery is finely broken up with glens formed by columns of basalt, giving it a look of great wildness. Montefiascone is built on the river of one of these ravines. We stopped here long enough to get a bottle of the wine for which the place is famous, drinking it to the memory of the "German prelate," who, as Madame Stark relates, "stopped here on his journey to Rome, and died of drinking it to excess." It has degenerated, probably, since his time, or we chanced upon a bad bottle.
The walls of Viterbo are flanked with towers, and have a noble appearance from the hill-side on which the town stands. We arrived too late to see anything of the place. As we were taking coffee at the café the next morning, a half hour before daylight, we heard music in the street, and looking out at the door, we saw a long procession of young girls, dressed with flowers in their hair, and each playing a kind of cymbal, and half dancing as she went along. Three or four at the head of the procession sung a kind of verse, and the rest joined in a short merry chorus at intervals. It was more like a train of Corybantes than anything I had seen. We inquired the object of it, and were told it was a procession to the vintage. They were going out to pluck the last grapes, and it was the custom to make it a festa. It was a striking scene in the otherwise perfect darkness of the streets, the torch-bearers at the sides waving their flambeaux regularly over their heads, and shouting with the rest in chorus. The measure was quick, and the step very fast. They were gone in an instant. The whole thing was poetical, and in keeping, for Italy. I have never seen it elsewhere.
We left Viterbo on a clear, mild autumnal morning; and I think I never felt the excitement of a delightful climate more thrillingly. The road was wild, and with the long ascent of the Monte-Cimino before us, I left the carriage to its slow pace and went ahead several miles on foot. The first rain of the season had fallen, and the road was moist, and all the spicy herbs of Italy perceptible in the air. Half way up the mountain, I overtook a fat, bald, middle-aged priest, slowly toiling up on his mule. I was passing him with a "buon giorno," when he begged me for my own sake, as well as his, to keep him company. "It was the worst road for thieves," he said, "in all Italy," and he pointed at every short distance to little crosses erected at the road-side, to commemorate the finding of murdered men on the spot. After he had told me several stories of the kind, he elevated his tone, and began to talk of other matters. I think I never heard so loud and long a laugh as his. I ventured to express a wonder at his finding himself so happy in a life of celibacy. He looked at me slily a moment or two as if he were hesitating whether to trust me with his opinions on the subject; but he suddenly seemed to remember his caution, and pointing off to the right, showed me a lake brought into view by the last turn of the road. It was Lake Vico. From the midst of it rose a round mountain covered to the top with luxuriant chestnuts—the lake forming a sort of trench about it, with the hill on which we stood rising directly from the other edge. It was one faultless mirror of green leaves. The two hill sides shadowed it completely. All the views from Monte-Cimino were among the richest in mere nature that I ever saw, and reminded me strongly of the country about the Seneca lake of America. I was on the Cayuga at about the same season three summers ago, and I could have believed myself back again, it was so like my recollection.
We stopped on the fourth night of our journey, seventeen miles from Rome, at a place called Baccano. A ridge of hills rose just before us, from the top of which we were told, we could see St. Peter's. The sun was just dipping under the horizon, and the ascent was three miles. We threw off our cloaks, determining to see Rome before we slept, ran unbreathed to the top of the hill, an effort which so nearly exhausted us, that we could scarce stand long enough upon our feet to search over the broad campagna for the dome.
The sunset had lingered a great while—as it does in Italy. Four or five light feathery streaks of cloud glowed with intense crimson in the west, and on the brow of Mount Soracte, (which I recognised instantly from the graphic simile[2] of Childe Harold), and along on all the ridges of mountain in the east, still played a kind of vanishing reflection, half purple, half gray. With a moment's glance around to catch the outline of the landscape, I felt instinctively where Rome should stand, and my eye fell at once upon "the mighty dome." Jupiter had by this time appeared, and hung right over it, trembling in the sky with its peculiar glory, like a lump of molten spar, and as the color faded from the clouds, and the dark mass of "the eternal city" itself mingled and was lost in the shadows of the campagna, the dome still seemed to catch light, and tower visibly, as if the radiance of the glowing star above fell more directly upon it. We could see it till we could scarcely distinguish each other's features. The dead level of the campagna extended between and beyond for twenty miles, and it looked like a far-off beacon in a dim sea. We sat an hour on the summit of the hill, gazing into the increasing darkness, till our eyes ached. The stars brightened one by one, the mountains grew indistinct, and we rose unwillingly to retrace our steps to Baccano.