onk Florentius brings a bevy
of fair damsels to the convent. There is one group, in particular, of
six women, so delicately varied in carriage of the head and suggested
movement of the body, as to be comparable only to a strain of concerted
music. This is perhaps the painter's masterpiece in the rendering of
pure beauty, if we except his S. Sebastian of the Uffizzi.

We tire of studying pictures, hardly less than of reading about them! I
was glad enough, after three hours spent among the frescoes of this
cloister, to wander forth into the copses which surround the convent.
Sunlight was streaming treacherously from flying clouds; and though it
was high noon, the oak-leaves were still a-tremble with dew. Pink
cyclamens and yellow amaryllis starred the moist brown earth; and under
the cypress-trees, where alleys had been cut in former time for pious
feet, the short firm turf was soft and mossy. Before bidding the
hospitable Padre farewell, and starting in our waggonette for Asciano,
it was pleasant to meditate awhile in these green solitudes. Generations
of white-stoled monks who had sat or knelt upon the now deserted
terraces, or had slowly paced the winding paths to Calvaries aloft and
points of vantage high above the wood, rose up before me. My mind, still
full of Bazzi's frescoes, peopled the wilderness with grave monastic
forms, and gracious, young-eyed faces of boyish novices.

MONTEPULCIANO.

I.

For the sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of Tuscan
hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without circumlocution
what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line from Empoli to
Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway station is at the
distance of at least an hour and a half's drive from the mountain upon
which the city stands.

The lumbering train which brought us one October evening from Asciano
crawled into this station after dark, at the very moment when a storm,
which had been gathering from the south-west, burst in deluges of rain
and lightning. There was, however, a covered carriage going to the town.
Into this we packed ourselves, together with a polite Italian gentleman
who, in answer to our questions, consulted his watch, and smilingly
replied that a little half-hour would bring us easily to Montepulciano.
He was a native of the place. He knew perfectly well that he would be
shut up with us in that carriage for two mortal hours of darkness and
down-pour. A