itive, less spiritual rites,
involving less of tragic awe and deep-wrought symbolism, should be
here performed. It is better suited for Polifilo's lustration by
Venus Physizoe than for the mass on Easter morning. And in this
respect, the sentiment of the architecture is exactly faithful to
that mood of religious feeling which appeared in Italy under the
influences of the classical revival--when the essential doctrines of
Christianity were blurred with Pantheism; when Jehovah became
_Jupiter Optimus Maximus_; and Jesus was the _Heros_ of Calvary, and
nuns were _Virgines Vestales_. In literature this mood often strikes
us as insincere and artificial. But it admitted of realisation and
showed itself to be profoundly felt in architecture.

After leaving Madonna di San Biagio, the road strikes at once into
an open country, expanding on the right towards the woody ridge of
Monte Fallonica, on the left toward Cetona and Radicofani, with
Monte Amiata full in front--its double crest and long volcanic slope
recalling Etna; the belt of embrowned forest on its flank, made
luminous by sunlight. Far away stretches the Sienese Maremma; Siena
dimly visible upon her gentle hill; and still beyond, the pyramid of
Volterra, huge and cloud-like, piled against the sky. The road, as
is almost invariable in this district, keeps to the highest line of
ridges, winding much, and following the dimplings of the earthy
hills. Here and there a solitary castello, rusty with old age, and
turned into a farm, juts into picturesqueness from some point of
vantage on a mound surrounded with green tillage. But soon the dull
and intolerable _creta_, ash-grey earth, without a vestige of
vegetation, furrowed by rain, and desolately breaking into gullies,
swallows up variety and charm. It is difficult to believe that this
_creta_ of Southern Tuscany, which has all the appearance of
barrenness, and is a positive deformity in the landscape, can be
really fruitful. Yet we are frequently being told that it only needs
assiduous labour to render it enormously productive.

When we reached Pienza we were already in the middle of a country
without cultivation, abandoned to the marl. It is a little place,
perched upon the ledge of a long sliding hill, which commands the
vale of Orcia; Monte Amiata soaring in aerial majesty beyond. Its
old name was Cosignano. But it had the honour of giving birth to
AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who, when he was elected to the Papacy
and