will show that he possesses a fine natural
taste for things of beauty. The speech of such men, drawn from the
common stock of the Italian people, is seasoned with proverbial sayings,
the wisdom of centuries condensed in a few nervous words. When emotion
fires their brain, they break into spontaneous eloquence, or suggest the
motive of a poem by phrases pregnant with imagery.

For the first stage of the journey out of Rimini, Filippo's two horses
sufficed. The road led almost straight across the level between quickset
hedges in white bloom. But when we reached the long steep hill which
ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out, and we
toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red anemones and
sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges replaced the
May-thorns of the plain. In course of time our _bovi_ brought us to the
Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a further ascent of seven hundred
feet to the topmost hawk's-nest or acropolis of the republic. These we
climbed on foot, watching the view expand around us and beneath. Crags
of limestone here break down abruptly to the rolling hills, which go to
lose themselves in field and shore. Misty reaches of the Adriatic close
the world to eastward. Cesena, Rimini, Verucchio, and countless hill-set
villages, each isolated on its tract of verdure conquered from the stern
grey soil, define the points where Montefeltri wrestled with Malatestas
in long bygone years. Around are marly mountain-flanks in wrinkles and
gnarled convolutions like some giant's brain, furrowed by rivers
crawling through dry wasteful beds of shingle. Interminable ranges of
gaunt Apennines stretch, tier by tier, beyond; and over all this
landscape, a grey-green mist of rising crops and new-fledged oak-trees
lies like a veil upon the nakedness of Nature's ruins.

Nothing in Europe conveys a more striking sense of geological antiquity
than such a prospect. The denudation and abrasion of innumerable ages,
wrought by slow persistent action of weather and water on an upheaved
mountain mass, are here made visible. Every wave in that vast sea of
hills, every furrow in their worn flanks, tells its tale of a continuous
corrosion still in progress. The dominant impression is one of
melancholy. We forget how Romans, countermarching Carthaginians, trod
the land beneath us. The marvel of San Marino, retaining independence
through the drums and tramplings of the last seven centuries, i