ar down into harmony. The effect of tempered
sadness was heightened for us by stormy lights and dun clouds, high in
air, rolling vapours and flying shadows, over all the prospect, tinted
in ethereal grisaille.

After Scheggia, one enters a land of meadow and oak-trees. This is the
sacred central tract of Jupiter Apenninus, whose fane--

Delubra Jovis saxoque minantes
Apenninigenis cultae pastoribus arae

--once rose behind us on the bald Iguvian summits. A second little pass
leads from this region to the Adriatic side of the Italian water-shed,
and the road now follows the Barano downward toward the sea. The valley
is fairly green with woods, where misletoe may here and there be seen on
boughs of oak, and rich with cornfields. Cagli is the chief town of the
district, and here they show one of the best pictures left to us by
Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. It is a Madonna, attended by S. Peter,
S. Francis, S. Dominic, S. John, and two angels. One of the angels is
traditionally supposed to have been painted from the boy Raphael, and
the face has something which reminds us of his portraits. The whole
composition, excellent in modelling, harmonious in grouping, soberly but
strongly coloured, with a peculiar blending of dignity and sweetness,
grace and vigour, makes one wonder why Santi thought it necessary to
send his son from his own workshop to study under Perugino. He was
himself a master of his art, and this, perhaps the most agreeable of his
paintings, has a masculine sincerity which is absent from at least the
later works of Perugino.

Some miles beyond Cagli, the real pass of the Furlo begins. It owes its
name to a narrow tunnel bored by Vespasian in the solid rock, where
limestone crags descend on the Barano. The Romans called this gallery
Petra Pertusa, or Intercisa, or more familiarly Forulus, whence comes
the modern name. Indeed, the stations on the old Flaminian Way are still
well marked by Latin designations; for Cagli is the ancient Calles, and
Fossombrone is Forum Sempronii, and Fano the Fanum Fortunae. Vespasian
commemorated this early achievement in engineering by an inscription
carved on the living stone, which still remains; and Claudian, when he
sang the journey of his Emperor Honorius from Rimini to Rome, speaks
thus of what was even then an object of astonishment to travellers:--

Laetior hinc fano recipit fortuna vetusto,
Despiciturque vagus praerupta valle Metaurus,