But when spring comes, a light and beauty break
upon this gloomy soil; the whole is covered with a delicate green
veil of rising crops and fresh foliage, and the immense distances
which may be seen from every height are blue with cloud-shadows, or
rosy in the light of sunset.

Of all the towns of Lower Tuscany, none is more celebrated than
Siena. It stands in the very centre of the district which I have
attempted to describe, crowning one of its most considerable
heights, and commanding one of its most extensive plains. As a city
it is a typical representative of those numerous Italian towns,
whose origin is buried in remote antiquity, which have formed the
seat of three civilisations, and which still maintain a vigorous
vitality upon their ancient soil. Its site is Etruscan, its name is
Roman, but the town itself owes all its interest and beauty to the
artists and the statesmen and the warriors of the middle ages. A
single glance at Siena from one of the slopes on the northern side,
will show how truly mediaeval is its character. A city wall follows
the outline of the hill, from which the towers of the cathedral and
the palace, with other cupolas and red-brick campanili, spring;
while cypresses and olive-gardens stretch downwards to the plain.
There is not a single Palladian facade or Renaissance portico to
interrupt the unity of the effect. Over all, in the distance, rises
Monte Amiata melting imperceptibly into sky and plain.

The three most striking objects of interest in Siena maintain the
character of mediaeval individuality by which the town is marked.
They are the public palace, the cathedral, and the house of S.
Catherine. The civil life, the arts, and the religious tendencies of
Italy during the ascendency of mediaeval ideas, are strongly set
before us here. High above every other building in the town soars
the straight brick tower of the Palazzo Pubblico, the house of the
republic, the hearth of civil life within the State. It guards an
irregular Gothic building in which the old government of Siena used
to be assembled, but which has now for a long time been converted
into prisons, courts of law, and showrooms. Let us enter one chamber
of the Palazzo--the Sala della Pace, where Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the
greatest, perhaps, of Sienese painters, represented the evils of
lawlessness and tyranny, and the benefits of peace and justice, in
three noble allegories. They were executed early in the fourteenth
century,