Perugia and Foligno by peaked and
rolling ridges. This amphitheatre, which forms its source of wealth
and independence, is admirably protected by a chain of natural
defences; and Gubbio wears a singularly old-world aspect of antiquity
and isolation. Houses climb right to the crests of gaunt bare peaks;
and the brown mediaeval walls with square towers which protected them
upon the mountain side, following the inequalities of the ground, are
still a marked feature in the landscape. It is a town of steep streets
and staircases, with quaintly framed prospects, and solemn vistas
opening at every turn across the lowland. One of these views might be
selected for especial notice. In front, irregular buildings losing
themselves in country as they straggle by the roadside; then the open
post-road with a cypress to the right; afterwards, the rich green
fields, and on a bit of rising ground an ancient farmhouse with its
brown dependencies; lastly, the blue hills above Fossato, and far away
a wrack of tumbling clouds. All this enclosed by the heavy archway of
the Porta Romana, where sunlight and shadow chequer the mellow tones
of a dim fresco, indistinct with age, but beautiful.

Gubbio has not greatly altered since the middle ages. But poor people
are now living in the palaces of noblemen and merchants. These new
inhabitants have walled up the fair arched windows and slender portals
of the ancient dwellers, spoiling the beauty of the streets without
materially changing the architectural masses. In that witching hour
when the Italian sunset has faded, and a solemn grey replaces the
glowing tones of daffodil and rose, it is not difficult, here dreaming
by oneself alone, to picture the old noble life--the ladies moving
along those open loggias, the young men in plumed caps and curling
hair with one foot on those doorsteps, the knights in armour and the
sumpter mules and red-robed Cardinals defiling through those gates
into the courts within. The modern bricks and mortar with which that
picturesque scene has been overlaid, the ugly oblong windows and
bright green shutters which now interrupt the flowing lines of arch
and gallery; these disappear beneath the fine remembered touch of a
sonnet sung by Folgore, when still the Parties had their day, and this
deserted city was the centre of great aims and throbbing aspirations.

The names of the chief buildings in Gubbio are strongly suggestive of
the middle ages. They abut upon a Piazza d