nvent gateway. A substantial tower of red brick, machicolated
at the top and pierced with small square windows, guards this portal,
reminding us that at some time or other the monks found it needful to
arm their solitude against a force descending from Chiusure. There is an
avenue of slender cypresses; and over the gate, protected by a jutting
roof, shines a fresco of Madonna and Child. Passing rapidly downwards,
we are in the courtyard of the monastery, among its stables, barns, and
out-houses, with the forlorn bulk of the huge red building spreading
wide, and towering up above us. As good luck ruled our arrival, we came
face to face with the Abbate de Negro, who administers the domain of
Monte Oliveto for the Government of Italy, and exercises a kindly
hospitality to chance-comers. He was standing near the church, which,
with its tall square campanile, breaks the long stern outline of the
convent. The whole edifice, it may be said, is composed of a red brick
inclining to purple in tone, which contrasts not unpleasantly with the
lustrous green of the cypresses, and the glaucous sheen of olives.
Advantage has been taken of a steep crest; and the monastery, enlarged
from time to time through the last five centuries, has here and there
been reared upon gigantic buttresses, which jut upon the _balze_ at a
sometimes giddy height.

The Abbate received us with true courtesy, and gave us spacious rooms,
three cells apiece, facing Siena and the western mountains. There is
accommodation, he told us, for three hundred monks; but only three are
left in it. As this order was confined to members of the nobility, each
of the religious had his own apartment--not a cubicle such as the
uninstructed dream of when they read of monks, but separate chambers for
sleep and study and recreation.

In the middle of the vast sad landscape, the place is still, with a
silence that can be almost heard. The deserted state of those
innumerable cells, those echoing corridors and shadowy cloisters,
exercises overpowering tyranny over the imagination. Siena is so far
away, and Montalcino is so faintly outlined on its airy parapet, that
these cities only deepen our sense of desolation. It is a relief to mark
at no great distance on the hill-side a contadino guiding his oxen, and
from a lonely farm yon column of ascending smoke. At least the world
goes on, and life is somewhere resonant with song. But here there rests
a pall of silence among the oak-grove