ies. The mean dwelling, in which a poet has
battled down poverty with the ecstacy of his mighty conceptions, and the
dungeon in which a persecuted philosopher has languished, are to us
sacred; we turn aside from the palaces of kings and the battle-fields of
conquerors, to visit them. The famed miracles of San Giovanni Gualberto
added little, in our eyes, to the interest of Vallombrosa, but there
were reverence and inspiration in the names of Dante, Milton, and
Ariosto.

We left Florence early, taking the way that leads from the Porta della
Croce, up the north bank of the Arno. It was a bright morning, but there
was a shade of vapor on the hills, which a practised eye might have
taken as a prognostic of the rain that too soon came on. Fiesole, with
its tower and Acropolis, stood out brightly from the blue background,
and the hill of San Miniato lay with its cypress groves in the softest
morning light. The _Contadini_ were driving into the city in their
basket wagons, and there were some fair young faces among them, that
made us think Italian beauty was not altogether in the imagination.

After walking three or four miles, we entered the Appenines, keeping
along the side of the Arno, whose bed is more than half dried up from
the long summer heats. The mountain sides were covered with vineyards,
glowing with their wealth of white and purple grapes, but the summits
were naked and barren. We passed through the little town of Ponte Sieve,
at the entrance of a romantic valley, where our view of the Arno was
made more interesting by the lofty range of the Appenines, amid whose
forests we could see the white front of the monastery of Vallombrosa.
But the clouds sank low and hid it from sight, and the rain came on so
hard that we were obliged to take shelter occasionally in the cottages
by the wayside. In one of these we made a dinner of the hard, black
bread of the country, rendered palatable by the addition of mountain
cheese and some chips of an antique Bologna sausage. We were much amused
in conversing with the simple hosts and their shy, gipsy-like children,
one of whom, a dark-eyed, curly-haired boy, bore the name of Raphael. We
also became acquainted with a shoemaker and his family, who owned a
little olive orchard and vineyard, which they said produced enough to
support them. Wishing to know much a family of six consumed in a year,
we inquired the yield of their property. They answered, twenty small
barrels of wine, and