ed in a few nervous words.
When emotion fires their brain, they break into spontaneous eloquence,
or suggest the motive of a poem by phrases pregnant with imagery.

For the first stage of the journey out of Rimini, Filippo's two horses
sufficed. The road led almost straight across the level between
quickset hedges in white bloom. But when we reached the long steep
hill which ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out,
and we toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red
anemones and sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges
replaced the May-thorns of the plain. In course of time our _bovi_
brought us to the Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a further
ascent of seven hundred feet to the topmost hawk's-nest or acropolis
of the republic. These we climbed on foot, watching the view expand
around us and beneath. Crags of limestone here break down abruptly to
the rolling hills, which go to lose themselves in field and shore.
Misty reaches of the Adriatic close the world to eastward. Cesena,
Rimini, Verucchio, and countless hill-set villages, each isolated on
its tract of verdure conquered from the stern grey soil, define the
points where Montefeltri wrestled with Malatestas in long bygone
years. Around are marly mountain-flanks in wrinkles and gnarled
convolutions like some giant's brain, furrowed by rivers crawling
through dry wasteful beds of shingle. Interminable ranges of gaunt
Apennines stretch, tier by tier, beyond; and over all this landscape,
a grey-green mist of rising crops and new-fledged oak-trees lies like
a veil upon the nakedness of Nature's ruins.

Nothing in Europe conveys a more striking sense of geological
antiquity than such a prospect. The denudation and abrasion of
innumerable ages, wrought by slow persistent action of weather and
water on an upheaved mountain mass, are here made visible. Every wave
in that vast sea of hills, every furrow in their worn flanks, tells
its tale of a continuous corrosion still in progress. The dominant
impression is one of melancholy. We forget how Romans, countermarching
Carthaginians, trod the land beneath us. The marvel of San Marino,
retaining independence through the drums and tramplings of the last
seven centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder. We turn
instinctively in thought to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war
with unknown nature-forces and malignant rulers of the universe.

Omai dispr