top-heavy mass above us. After leaving the gateway, with its massive
fortifications and frescoed arches, the road passes into a dull earthy
country, very much like some parts--and not the best parts--of England.
The beauty of the Sienese contado is clearly on the sandstone, not upon
the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated farms--all were English in their
details. Only the vines, and mulberries, and wattled waggons drawn by
oxen, most Roman in aspect, reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such
_carpenta_ may the vestal virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the
primitive war-chariot also, capable of holding four with ease; and
Romulus may have mounted with the images of Roman gods in even such a
vehicle to Latiarian Jove upon the Alban hill. Nothing changes in Italy.
The wooden ploughs are those which Virgil knew. The sight of one of
them would save an intelligent lad much trouble in mastering a certain
passage of the Georgics.

Siena is visible behind us nearly the whole way to Buonconvento, a
little town where the Emperor Henry VII. died, as it was supposed, of
poison, in 1313. It is still circled with the wall and gates built by
the Sienese in 1366, and is a fair specimen of an intact mediaeval
stronghold. Here we leave the main road, and break into a country-track
across a bed of sandstone, with the delicate volcanic lines of Monte
Amiata in front, and the aerial pile of Montalcino to our right. The
pyracanthus bushes in the hedge yield their clusters of bright yellow
berries, mingled with more glowing hues of red from haws and glossy
hips. On the pale grey earthen slopes men and women are plying the long
Sabellian hoes of their forefathers, and ploughmen are driving furrows
down steep hills. The labour of the husbandmen in Tuscany is very
graceful, partly, I think, because it is so primitive, but also because
the people have an eminently noble carriage, and are fashioned on the
lines of antique statues. I noticed two young contadini in one field,
whom Frederick Walker might have painted with the dignity of Pheidian
form. They were guiding their ploughs along a hedge of olive-trees,
slanting upwards, the white-horned oxen moving slowly through the marl,
and the lads bending to press the plough-shares home. It was a delicate
piece of colour--the grey mist of olive branches, the warm smoking
earth, the creamy flanks of the oxen, the brown limbs and dark eyes of
the men, who paused awhile to gaze at us, with shadows cast up