aps of horns?

It is market day, and the costumes in the streets are brilliant. The
women wear a white petticoat, a blue skirt made straight and tightly
bound above it, a white richly-worked bodice, and the white
square-folded napkin of the Abruzzi on their heads. Their jacket is of
red or green--pure colour. A rug of striped red, blue, yellow, and black
protects the whole dress from the rain. There is a very noble quality of
green--sappy and gemmy--like some of Titian's or Giorgione's--in the
stuffs they use. Their build and carriage are worthy of goddesses.

Rain falls heavily, persistently. We must ride on donkeys, in
waterproofs, to Monte Cassino. Mountain and valley, oak wood and ilex
grove, lentisk thicket and winding river-bed, are drowned alike in
soft-descending, soaking rain. Far and near the landscape swims in rain,
and the hill-sides send down torrents through their watercourses.

The monastery is a square, dignified building, of vast extent and
princely solidity. It has a fine inner court, with sumptuous staircases
of slabbed stone leading to the church. This public portion of the
edifice is both impressive and magnificent, without sacrifice of
religious severity to parade. We acknowledge a successful compromise
between the austerity of the order and the grandeur befitting the fame,
wealth, prestige, and power of its parent foundation. The church itself
is a tolerable structure of the Renaissance--costly marble incrustations
and mosaics, meaningless Neapolitan frescoes. One singular episode in
the mediocrity of art adorning it, is the tomb of Pietro dei Medici.
Expelled from Florence in 1494, he never returned, but was drowned in
the Garigliano. Clement VII. ordered, and Duke Cosimo I. erected, this
marble monument--the handicraft, in part at least, of Francesco di San
Gallo--to their relative. It is singularly stiff, ugly, out of place--at
once obtrusive and insignificant.

A gentle old German monk conducted Christian and me over the
convent--boy's school, refectory printing press, lithographic workshop,
library, archives. We then returned to the church, from which we passed
to visit the most venerable and sacred portion of the monastery. The
cell of S. Benedict is being restored and painted in fresco by the
Austrian Benedictines; a pious but somewhat frigid process of
re-edification. This so-called cell is a many-chambered and very ancient
building, with a tower which is now embedded in the massive
su