s
swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder. We turn instinctively in thought
to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war with unknown nature-forces
and malignant rulers of the universe.

Omai disprezza
Te, la natura, il brutto
Poter che, ascoso, a comun danno impera,
E l'infinita vanita dell tutto.

And then, straining our eyes southward, we sweep the dim blue distance
for Recanati, and remember that the poet of modern despair and
discouragement was reared in even such a scene as this.

The town of San Marino is grey, narrow-streeted, simple; with a great,
new, decent, Greek-porticoed cathedral, dedicated to the eponymous
saint. A certain austerity defines it from more picturesque hill-cities
with a less uniform history. There is a marble statue of S. Marino in
the choir of his church; and in his cell is shown the stone bed and
pillow on which he took austere repose. One narrow window near the
saint's abode commands a proud but melancholy landscape of distant hills
and seaboard. To this, the great absorbing charm of San Marino, our eyes
instinctively, recurrently, take flight. It is a landscape which by
variety and beauty thralls attention, but which by its interminable
sameness might grow almost overpowering. There is no relief. The
gladness shed upon far humbler Northern lands in May is ever absent
here. The German word _Gemuethlichkeit_, the English phrase "a home of
ancient peace," are here alike by art and nature untranslated into
visibilities. And yet (as we who gaze upon it thus are fain to think) if
peradventure the intolerable _ennui_ of this panorama should drive a
citizen of San Marino into outlands, the same view would haunt him
whithersoever he went--the swallows of his native eyrie would shrill
through his sleep--he would yearn to breathe its fine keen air in
winter, and to watch its iris-hedges deck themselves with blue in
spring;--like Virgil's hero, dying, he would think of San Marino:
_Aspicit, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos_. Even a passing stranger
may feel the mingled fascination and oppression of this prospect--the
monotony which maddens, the charm which at a distance grows upon the
mind, environing it with memories.

Descending to the Borgo, we found that Filippo Visconti had ordered a
luncheon of excellent white bread, pigeons, and omelette, with the best
red muscat wine I ever drank, unless the sharp air of the hills deceived
my appetite. An Italian hist