excavated in the brown volcanic rock, here and
there fringed with a few cork-trees; the approach, very much, to
Toscanella. But raced along by carriages, bicycles and motor-cars, and
leading to a luncheon tent, a car full of hounds, school of cavalry
officers, and the redcoats preparing to start. The cloud banks sat
on the horizon as on the sea; the sky very pale and blue, moist, with
song of larks descending from it. And as the horses cantered along the
soft grass, the scent of last year's mint and fennel rose from
stubble-fields, and the rank, fresh smell of crushed succulent
asphodels.

_February_ 27.

IV.

The cabman who, yesterday evening, took me to Palazzo Gabbrielli
instead of Palazzo Orsini, excused himself saying that priests even
blunder at the altar--"anche li preti sbajano all' altare." Very
Roman!

V.

MONTE MARIO.

With E. de V. on Monte Mario. The weather has cleared; slight
tramontana, pure sky, with white storm- or snow-clouds collected like
rolled-up curtains, everywhere on the horizon. Great green slopes of
grass appear as far as one could see, here and there a little valley
full of ilex scrub; in the mist of the distance conical shepherds'
huts, with smoke wreath. We sat on a piece of turf, cut in by horses'
hoofs, by a stack of faggots; song of lark and bleating of sheep. But
for the road, the carriage, it might have been in the Maremma for
utter loneliness and freshness. Turning round a few yards further,
carriages and motor-cars, and all Rome, with its unfinished new
quarters nearest, stretched under us.

_March_ 3.

VI.

VIA OSTIENSE.

Day before yesterday with dear Paso along Via Ostiense. Perhaps the
most solemn of all those solemn Roman roads, with the solemnity and
desolation of the great brimful brown Tiber, between barren banks of
mud, added to the solemnity of the empty green country. It is the
refusal of vegetation in great part which makes this country strange
and solemn. Such vegetation as there is, the asphodels and rare
blackthorn along the road, the stumpy oaks or cork-trees or the bends
of the river, gaining an importance, a significance out of all
proportion; and the thinnest little distant spinny, looking like a
mysterious consecrated wood. We got to the top of a hill, and there,
far off against the grey flatness, was the lavender line of the sea.
It was a brilliant day of freshly fallen distant snow; the air keen
and windless, with a feel