ng either from the soil or the water,
and amid vineyards all the time. Here and there a white villa is seen,
but for the most part this is peasants' district: one such villa
on the left, before Pontassieve, having about it, and on each side
of its drive, such cypresses as one seldom sees and only Gozzoli or
Mr. Sargent could rightly paint, each in his own style. Not far beyond,
in a scrap of meadow by the road, sat a girl knitting in the morning
sun--with a placid glance at us as we rattled by; and ten hours later,
when we rattled past again, there she still was, still knitting, in
the evening sun, and again her quiet eyes were just raised and dropped.

At Pontassieve we stopped a while for coffee at an inn at the corner
of the square of pollarded limes, and while it was preparing watched
the little crumbling town at work, particularly the cooper opposite,
who was finishing a massive cask within whose recesses good Chianti
is doubtless now maturing; and then on the white road again, to the
turning, a mile farther on, to the left, where one bids the Arno
farewell till the late afternoon. Steady climbing now, and then a
turn to the right and we see Pelago before us, perched on its crags,
and by and by come to it--a tiny town, with a clean and alluring
inn, very different from the squalor of Pontassieve: famous in art
and particularly Florentine art as being the birthplace of Lorenzo
Ghiberti, who made the Baptistery doors. From Pelago the road descends
with extreme steepness to a brook in a rocky valley, at a bridge over
which the real climb begins, to go steadily on (save for another swift
drop before Tosi) until Vallombrosa is reached, winding through woods
all the way, chiefly chestnut--those woods which gave Milton, who was
here in 1638, his famous simile. [6] The heat was now becoming intense
(it was mid-September) and the horses were suffering, and most of this
last stage was done at walking pace; but such was the exhilaration of
the air, such the delight of the aromas which the breeze continually
wafted from the woods, now sweet, now pungent, and always refreshing,
that one felt no fatigue even though walking too. And so at last the
monastery, and what was at that moment better than anything, lunch.

The beauty and joy of Vallombrosa, I may say at once, are Nature's,
not man's. The monastery, which is now a Government school of
forestry, is ugly and unkempt; the hotel is unattractive; the few
people one meets want