An Apennine Valley

IF Rome is the head of Italy, her heart is among the Apennines. These branching valleys, each with its rushing river and murmuring, pulsing streamlet, are the arteries through which her life-current is sent outward into her fair extremities, to return betimes in mountain mist and rain. Just now she is taking her midsummer siesta, and the circulation is a little sluggish; but the autumnal awakening comes early among the hills, and before the end of August the shrunken channels will have filled again, the spirit of the land will be up, and leafy tresses will be shaken loose to the freshening wind, preparatory to the great frolic of the vintage.

My own private and particular valley here — the valley of the Lima —divides itself, and subdivides, and ramifies hither and yon, like a conventional vine on a piece of Kensington embroidery. All these vales and vallette have high wooded walls, overtopped at intervals by taller domes, answering to the watch-towers along an ancient rampart. As seen from the level of the stream, the hills, to their very summits, are clothed with beauteous vegetation, “ silcis, scenes corruscis.” One gets from them, at first sight, that single impression of richly heaped and gloriously displayed leafage which pater Æneas is supposed to have derived from the sheltering walls of his safe harbor on the African coast, which the wooded hills of New England are equally competent to convey. But presently you perceive, and gradually grow familiar with the idea, that these are no virgin solitudes, for all their rustic grace, but that every foot of this fair wilderness has long since been humanized. The wealthy chestnut woods about the bases of the mountains offer clear footing under their spreading boughs. White paths intersect the fine old sod. leading deviously upward to the slopes, where the silver moons of the great mountain thistle seem positively to diffuse a tempered light amid the forest shades. The slenderest rivulet, as it leaps from stone to stone to join the river, must turn a mossy old waterwheel upon its way. Those bands of brighter verdure that stripe the southern declivities, above the chestnuts, are vine pergole, every one. That indistinct patch of deep crimson in the remotest hill-cleft resolves itself, under an operaglass, into the red-tiled roofs of a closeclustered hamlet. Those golden tufts dotting the more sterile spaces, here and there, are the thatched roofs and haystacks of the humblest of small freeholds. That soft cloud of olive-gray, those black spires of the cypress, mark the site of a villa, where one would naturally look only for an eagle’s nest. The sharpest cone reveals to scrutiny a machicolated watch - tower, or slim brown campanile, at its apex. The line of the long green ridge, which cuts the sky five hundred feet overhead, is broken by the low roof and solid tower of a superannuated church, and the open logyie — they look like dove-cotes, at this distance — of another huddled mountain village. All day long, upon the great summer festivals, St. Anne’s day, St. James’s, and the Assumption, the towers of twoseore or more gray churches, near and far, call hourly to one another from among the foldings of the hills, — airily, strangely, as the chanticleers answer each other from remote farms upon still autumn days, at home. For not only has the rural region hereabout been all humanized in the years gone by, but once upon a time it was also all christianized.

We speak and think, m new countries, of the conquest of man over nature, taking it for granted that the process must be a rude and violent one; expecting nothing else than that nature shall be disheveled and long disfigured thereafter, as she always is in America, —as the Sabine women were, no doubt, after they had been wooed in a similar spirit by the men of quadrate Rome. But here, in these urbane solitudes, we learn that it is quite possible for nature to he won, and wived with humanity, without the loss of a single outward grace, — with only the added charm of a certain soft amenity and sympathetic homeliness. Do you say that this is necessarily the work of time, —that nature heals her own wounds, if only left to her own way ? I answer, No, not always. There are hurts to the outward loveliness of nature which cannot possibly be healed save by the help of man, who inflicted them. The ugly gash of a railway embankment cannot be cured without skillful treatment; and there is a species of “ settlement,” a group of wooden saw-mills, dwellings, church, and school, which neither time nor eternity can ever harmonize with any landscape.

There are other facts which appear to bear, more or less remotely, on the same point. “ Whene’er I take my walks abroad” in the neighborhood of the saw-mill, should I meet the sawmiller or any of his “ hands,” they will not fail to convey to me, in the righteous absence of all salutation, the emphatic assurance that they are quite as good as I am. Possibly they may he, or even better, but I feel for the moment that I would very much like to show them some reasons to the contrary. On the other hand, when the pair shall have passed me whom I perceive approaching along the box-bordered bridle-path which zigzags up the sweet Lucchese mountain side, — the man, with swarthy cheek and blue-black elf-locks, bending a little under his enormous fagot; the woman, with her dark brows and her bright smile, and her circular crate, or cesto, of vine-leaves poised lightly upon her shapely head, — they will have given me “good-even ” and “good passage,” as a matter of course; and I shall be wondering, as the distance widens between us, wondering wistfully and with a touch of something like compunction, why they should instinctively have said. “ Buona sera, signora.” But they are gone, upon their swift, sure feet, and I am alone once more, and free to speculate on the quaint corollary to my reflections afforded by the wayside flowers, which are all such as we associate with trim old-fashioned garden beds at home, — sweet-william, bachelor’s button, candy-tuft, and ladies’-delight. No, indeed! all men are not born equal, any more than all countries are born equal; and Italy — beautiful, free-handed, ever gracious and graceful Ilaly — is the lady of all lands.

A good test of the “ quality ” of a country should be the manner in which her lowliest give hospitality. Let me tell you of a visit which I paid, on a regularly received and accepted invitation, bien entendu, to one of the little freeholds on the hillside aforesaid. Our hostess — for we were a party of three — was also our guide to her friendly bower ; and a needful one, for I have seldom seen, off the mimic stage, a more blindly romantic little foot-way than the one we followed. Plunging suddenly into the wildest of our tributary valleys, that of the Camajore, it led us a mazy dance, through thickets bittersweet with clematis, and over slippery stepping-stones ; bade us walk a tightrope between the bed of the brook and a miniature flume, scale a perpendicular precipice, happily short, and cross a most “distinctly precious” little log bridge, ten inches wide, and about twice as many feet above the water, all sodded by time, and waving with feathery grasses. The home of our hostess, which had looked so insignificant from the opposite side of the valley, and which, in the color of its gray stone walls and its tiled roof, rich with lichen, bore so strong a “ protective resemblance ” to the mountain side on which it leaned, proved to consist of four contiguous dwellings, forming two sides of a square, which braced themselves, so to speak, against one another, and turned their hacks upon the stream, while they were entered through the triangular space which they partially inclosed. They had also a little threshing-floor in common, which five small gypsies were vigorously sweeping; while the steep grade thence to the house door was beset by thrice as many more infants, all more or less Peruginesque in their style, and by the stately and slow-moving figure of a domestic pet, pink-skinned, blackhaired, gruff - voiced, but immaculate, con respecto parlando, as the natives are wont to say, — a pig.

But what a room was that into which we were ushered! — the huge projecting fire-place with its pyramidal flue, the iron dogs and crane, the oaken benches and table, the dull red line designing a wainscot on the smoky wall, the antique earthen and copper vessels nameless, the dresser with its unclassitlable bits of ugly faience. We were politely requested to seat ourselves in the gentle draught of air between the door and the open casement, where we could see the green tree-tops far beneath us moving in the summer wind, and where the bambini and the respectable one could have a good view of us from the threshold. Meanwhile, our hostess briskly proceeded to the preparation of the dainty which we had been specially invited to partake. She tossed a fagot into the gaping fire-place, and kindled it. She fetched chestnut flour from a loft overhead, and sifted and swiftly kneaded and shaped it into flat, round cakes. Memories of King Alfred in the neat-herd’s hut assailed us, as she withdrew from a sort of iron plate-warmer by the fireside sundry flat stones and shards, and threw them upon the blaze. And then she stirred, and then — ah then ! — she blew the fire ; not with that bourgeois instrument, a bellows, nor even with a Japanese fan, but through a ennna, or dry, hollow reed, some four feet long. King Alfred yielded precedence to Prometheus, whose myth vanished in smoke, as so many others have done, and escaped by the chimney. They thought that the fire was in the reed, and that he blew it forth, as one blows an egg, — how very natural ! Somebody will of course dispute the merit of the discovery, but at least I call the whole aesthetic world to witness the noble generosity with which I offer to enthusiasts in household art everywhere a new thing in sincere decoration. If I can but see, some day, beside the reformed firesides of England and my native country, a tall reed leaning against the mantelpiece, and adorned with a broad bow of blue or crimson ribbon, I shall not have lived in vain. And now the hot stones and shards are being deftly withdrawn from the fire and ranged upon the hearth, and the great fresh chestnut leaves come into play, which our hostess kept stripping from the overhanging boughs — idly, we fancied — as we came along. Two leaves are laid upon each heated disk, then a chestnut cake, or necce, then two more chestnut leaves, then another disk. The pile, when complete, is restored to the plate - warmer, and set aside to cook comfortably in a corner. By the time that our Caterina had spread over her oaken table a homespun table-cloth, of a fine ecru shade, and set forth her miscellaneous faience and a flask of pale red wine, the necci were done. Light brown, piping hot, and beautifully printed by tlie chestnut leaves, they were tossed upon the table out of the plate - warmer, received with gratitude, and tasted in faith. They were sweet; a little tough, but no more so than the average “ buckwheat; ” and the juices of the fresh leaves added a slightly astringent but not unpleasant flavor. By the help of a bit of Bologna sausage and a sip of sour wine, they made an excellent lunch, — such an one as may have been discussed upon this hill side any day since the age of stone; precisely such an one, no doubt, as Hannibal’s scouts regaled themselves withal, when he descended out of Cisalpine Gaul into Italy proper, by the valley of the Serchio, two thousand years ago.

We learned, as we lingered over our feast, that our tiny hospice had also its thread of connection with contemporary history. The freehold was Caterina’s own, whether by inheritance or purchase I cannot say. Her husband was a professed cook, and had served at times in neighboring villas and inns. Finally, he and their sons struck out into the world, opened a restaurant in Marseilles, and the whole family had removed thither. Marseilles, Caterina gave us clearly to understand, was an anxious place of residence for a single-minded wife and mother, and her own hair had rapidly whitened there. All had gone well with them financially, however, until that hot midsummer day in 1881, when the dozing tiger in the Masillian breast had been aroused by the refusal of the Italian colony to join in the public jollification over the appropriation of Tunis. We had a graphic and ghastly story of such incidents of the ensuing riots as fell under Caterina’s own observation. Her country folk were driven out of Marseilles, under circumstances of great brutality; and those were happy who, like themselves, escaped with life and limb, but with the sacrifice of all their worldly goods. So they had been well-nigh ruined, and had come back to her little house. Luigi had been burning charcoal all the winter past, and had also reclaimed a triangular bit of garden ground on a ledge just below the dwelling, where Caterina had already raised that year a half dozen table-cloths from the seed. We saw the returned native pottering in the garden, as we descended, — a tall, comely, brown-cheeked, vigorous man, who handled his hoe somewhat disdainfully, we thought, as though he felt the ennui of the situation, and hankered after the flesh-pots of fierce Marseilles.

Apropos of Hannibal, as one grows more familiar with the high-ways and by-ways, the ancient seats and curious monuments, of this region, one comes to feel that there is a something more wonderful yet than the abundance of the human associations everywhere deposited, and that is their dumbness. The scores of generations that have seen the light and lost it on these fair slopes and in these leafy glens cannot literally be said to have died and made no sign; but the signs they have left are written in a character strangely archaic and illegible, and tradition preserves a dreamy, one might almost say an obstinate, silence. Your afternoon stroll across the flax - fields and under the pergole on the shady side of the hill takes you somewhat abruptly into a tiny piazza, smoothly paved and remarkably clean, though the grass is growing thickly between the flag-stones. Two sides of the square are occupied by a church and campanile and an adjacent dwelling, — the priest’s house, no doubt, — which is connected with the church by a sort of rude cloister, surmounted by an open loggia, gay with flowering plants. The basilica — for such it proves to be — is so low, and retires under the greenery of its overhanging hill so modestly; the tower is so particularly hoary, and the waving grass and wild flowers, growing freely in the soil which has accumulated upon its summit, go so far toward blending it with its leafy environment, that you had never made a landmark of that particular campanile, and had hardly realized its existence. Bright, silent, serious, venerable, and unspeakably serene, the aspect of the little piazza goes straight to your heart; but you must be content to feel the sentiment of it, for not a soul is by to assist you in reading its riddle. Your footsteps echo faintly as you cross the sunny flags, and step within the open doorway of the aged temple, lifting the full curtain of blue and white linen, which hangs inside, swayed lightly by the summer breeze. Silence is here, also, and cool shadow, but not quite solitude. There are two kneeling figures,—you will rarely find less at the loneliest shrine in this part of Italy, — a white-haired man at your elbow, and yonder a spare and weary-looking contadina, with a basket by her side. The single lamp, burning dimly amid the dusk around the sacramental altar, may have been alight — must have been, you think, from the whole aspect of the interior—for nigh eight hundred years. For the basilica form is perfect, though the proportions of the edifice are small, the beams of the roofing are black, and the holy-water font inside the door, and the squat columns which upbear the low round arches of the aisles, are as rude in their workmanship as any you shall find upon the islands of the Venetian lagunes. Creeping softly down the nave, you leave the church by a side door, and find yourself confronted by a high lichened wall, with a cross above its closed gateway. The rude forefathers of the red-roofed hamlet, hard by, are all collected within, and you long, in the rapt or somnolent silence of the living, for some legitimate method of obtaining from them the satisfaction of your wistful curiosity.

The local guide-books come to your assistance with two items only. In the eleventh century this comatose little hamlet of Corsena was already well known for the healing virtues of its mineral springs. The whole renown of the Baths of Lucca, save for some very slight fragments of Roman tradition, did iu fact begin here. In the last year of that century, otherwise memorable for the culmination of the first crusade, the renowned Countess Matilda, chatelaine of all the country round, including a portion of the Lombard plain, mistress of Canossa and right hand of Gregory VII., — a mighty shade, who still fulfills the functions of tutelary genius to the whole region, — caused a bridge to be built across the Serchio, about three miles hence, for the accommodation of the poor patients who resorted in numbers to the waters. This is the first item. The second is to the effect that a century and a half later than Matilda’s day, in 1245, the holy Roman Emperor Frederic II. tarried for some da}^s at the springs of Corsena, thereby moving to so great jealousy the local governors of Lucca, lest he might be meditating some encroachment upon their rights, that they straightway ordered the demolition of the Castello of Corsena. Where, then, was that castello ? Not the faintest trace of it remains, and Echo, proverbially unsatisfactory in her replies, answers neither lo here nor lo there.

The next day, it may be, in your wanderings, you strike what seems a very different sort of trail, a new road absolutely, —a fine, new carriage road upon a mountain side, — magnificently built, like almost all the vie carrozzabile of Italy ; broad and hard and smooth, defining the sweep of the frequent curves whereby it accomplishes its ascent by a wall of firm masonry, five or six feet high, upon the inner or mountain side, and a solid and extremely handsome granite parapet upon the outer. Here, sure enough, is the pathway of progress ; but whither can it lead ? Let us by nil means go and see. There must be plenty of people who would thank us to let them know.

The road leads gently upward for a matter of a mile, indulging the pedestrian with admirable views by the way, and ends in a sand-bank, where the woods are thickest! There is not a man in sight, nor yet a tool, still less that business-like monster, a derrick ; only a few blocks of granite, carefully squared, and a party of speckled lizards, holding a picnic among them. For the time being, at least, the piece of engineering thus elaborately begun has evidently been abandoned. By permission of the lizards we sit down on one of the granite blocks, and muse on the arrested march of civilization, until a clatter of small hoofs becomes audible overhead ; and looking up among the chestnut trunks, we discern a heavily laden donkey, led by a contadina, descending the narrow paved way which our pompous new road had superseded to this point. We hail the man.

“ Buon giorno ! ”

“ Buon giorno, signora ! ”

“Where does that path lead? ”

“ To Benabbio, signora.”

“ How far is it ? ”

“ Half a mile.”

“ Is it really no more than that? ”

“ Ah yes, a little more.”

“ Thanks, so much ! ” (grazie tanto) to the man, and to one’s self, “ Excelsior ! ”

We think we know now that our sumptuous road can never have dreamed of being a thoroughfare, since Benabbio must be the last town upon its line, this side of heaven. It is not, therefore, a government road. Can it be merely a matter of private enterprise, and will the fortes colonnce return and work upon it, between the vintage and the snow ? The granite parapet seems to smile at us for the supposition ; but how can an innovator ever have come out of Benabbio ? We find little enough in the aspect of the village itself (it scarcely deserves the name of town) to suggest an answer to the question. The box hedges bordering the steep mule-track, and set for the purpose of defining the pathway amid the winter snows, are, indeed, uncommonly tall and trim, and the vine trellises beyond them beautifully trained and flourishing. At a certain point, we are startled to see descending upon as a single file of rustling yellow towers. Can it be that the wheat sheaves have arisen, and are going in procession to the threshing-floor ? But no ; they are only big bundles of golden straw, borne each upon the head of a sturdy contadina, and bound for a manufactory of coarse wrapping-paper, on the river-side below. This, again, looks like industry. Nevertheless, Benabbio, when we attain it, appears old, old, lazy, untidy, lying supine in the light of the sinking sun, — a perfect picture in the outlines of its tumble-down architecture, beautiful for situation on its high mountain spur. The valley which it commands opens upon a distinct range of mountains, more slender, symmetrical, and alpine in their character than ours, — the three tall summits of the Appuane falling one behind another, and fading into the evening glow, like repeated aerial reflections of one solid peak.

Here, however, one stumbles upon fragments of mediaeval construction everywhere, — massive walls and arches, either standing alone or incorporated with the buildings of the later town. The church is surrounded by a sort of rampart, and you climb to its principal entrance by a flight of stone steps, two thirds as long, perhaps, as that which fronts the Ara Coeli at Rome. The campanile in this instance is Gothic, and really beautiful ; more modern, evidently, than the body of the church, which again is a Romanesque basilica, on a larger scale and of a somewhat later date than that of Corsena. The capitals of the columns are roughly but freely sculptured, and no two are alike; resembling thus the rich and infinitely varied capitals in the renowned old Lombard churches of the city of Lucca. There is a triptych here, of the school of Giotto, of which the stiff, pure figures and the mellow tints oiler strange contrast, alike with the sickly contemporary painting above the high altar and with a blatant monstrosity of eighteenth-century work at one of the side altars, all flaunting scrolls and kicking cherubs, carved in wood and painted and gilded, whereon a Ricci informs us, in large gold letters upon a black ground, that he, and he only, is responsible for “ hoc elegantissimum opus.”

It seems that yesterday there was a festa at Benabbio, and as we look down from the church rampart into the central piazza of the village the attitudes of the masculine loungers thereabout suggest that they are all suffering more or less from that peculiar lassitude which is wont to accompany the reaction from hilarity. There are certainly no outward and visible tokens of nineteenth-century enterprise among them, if we except a rather conspicuous sign over one of the larger doorway arches opening upon the piazza, which reads Societa Agraria, Libreria Circotante, and which, owing to our previous associations with the word agrarian, wears, at first sight, a rather startling subversive and communistic aspect. We learn subsequently, however, that the Societa Agraria is only a farmers’ club, supporting a species of agricultural school ; and when we are also assured that the banner of the Libreria Circotante was carried in the saint’s procession yesterday, we perceive clearly that no offense to antiquity is here intended, but that the church lion and the state lamb lie down together upon the steep hillside of Benabbio.

Our informant in this instance was a woman (the women in general seemed much less demoralized by the festa than the men), and a woman of rare beauty. There are many such in this Apennine region ; indeed, the majority are far more than comely, and some, like our present interlocutor, are a joy to behold. She was tall and very brown, straight-browed, straight-featured, large-eyed, with a slow, sweet smile and a marvelous dignity of bearing. They are not all in one style, however, and there is a slighter and more piquant type, with brown eyes, arched eyebrows, and richly curling bright auburn hair, who are like Titian’s models come to life. One such I saw on a Sunday evening, sitting with her lover under the chestnuts, upon a stone seat beside an ancient fountain, and the picture was so perfect as to make me doubt if I were awake. Our brunette beauty is also able to tell us that the arrested road is a provincial road, and will someday connect the valley of the Lima with that of the Nievole; and to point out the ruins of a castello antichissimo on the very pinnacle of the mountain, a mile above Benabbio. Shall she conduct us thither ? But alas, the day is too far spent, and we have to reject her gracious guidance. This castle, it appears, was a stronghold of the great Ghibelline family of the Lupari, the head of whose house, Luparo Lupari, was driven into exile by the victorious Guelphs in 1306, like Dante.

But he who would see church and state on perfect terms with each other, enjoying a free, careless, happy, and, so to speak, jovial intimacy, should go to Barga. Barga is twelve miles distant, upon a mountain-top, of course, or rather upon an altipiano, a lofty and fertile piece of table-land, commanding an extensive and unspeakably lonely, though comparatively civilized prospect: winding river and aerial height, summer splendor of all beauteous growth,

Only here the hamlets are not snowwhite, but far more beautiful: dim yellow, instead, and pale red and brown blended, of all sorts of soft, fine colors, blending themselves with “ the nature,” and gently subserving the sumptuous unity of the entire effect. And Barga is equal to its rare situation. It is not a nameless nobody of a hamlet, but an episcopal town, with a cathedral and archives, and an intelligible connection with the history of Italy and of the world. Its lofty position adjacent to the boundary line between the republics of Florence and Lucca gave it military importance in the stormy days gone by, insomuch that it was coveted, besieged, assaulted ; it resisted, surrendered, rebelled, and was again assailed, a score or more of times. But ten centuries of mediaeval misery and modern insignificance have had absolutely no perceptible effect in subduing the buoyant animal spirits of Barga, which remains the most frolicsome and insouciant little community it has ever been our lot to observe. The brilliant midsummer day of our own visit did certainly chance to be a festal day, but do any but the constitutionally happy ever find pleasure in public rejoicings ? The very fact that not a soul in Barga, old or young, rich or poor, lay or clerical, seemed in the least depressed by the obligation to be merry — quite the contrary, indeed — appeared to us to speak volumes for their habitual cheerfulness.

Leaving our carriage just inside the gates, we began climbing the tortuous and narrow streets, often resolving themselves into actual stairs, which lead to the acropolis of Barga, — the broad and massive rampart which sustains her hoary duomo. Every door of church or chapel was gay with fresh garlands and scarlet drapery. The dark stone dwellings had quaint loggie and fantastic chimney-pots, and always some religious symbol carved upon the front. As we neared the summit, a little white-haired, agile old man ran past us, threw open the cathedral door, and then fell hack, with a delicacy we had never before observed in one of the race of ciceroni, and began pacing the grassy plateau, as though lost to all consciousness of our existence in an agreeable reverie. But when we had given one look at the exceeding strangeness of the vast, silent, venerable, yet far from sombre interior, we returned, and beckoned from the doorway ; whereupon the dreamer woke up radiant, and assumed enthusiastically the office of our guide. It was little enough that he could really tell us beyond what we saw, — a Lombard basilica, whose general effect slightly resembles that of San Miniato in Florence, minus the monuments and graves. The strong pillars of the nave are constructed of alternate courses of black and white marble. The apse is occupied by a stiff colossal figure of St. Christopher, the patron of the church, rudely carved in wood and painted. “ Antichissima,” said our guide; and Byzantine, surely, by its ugliness, we thought, yet wearing a certain look of sturdy friendliness on its absurd features. There is a beautiful choir-screen, of ancient form and fashion, low and solid, with panels of pale red marble, surrounded by borders of exquisite mosaic in black and white, and surmounted by a row of miniature heads in high relief, which reveal, when scrutinized, a most realistic variety of commonplace feature and expression, and arc evidently portraits of some of the artist’s contemporaries. Our genial guide pointed out this fact with silent glee, and was also highly gratified to show us, when we admired the polish of the screen panels, that they had been infinitely brighter once, but had been at one time purposely scratched and dimmed, because the women of the congregation had been wont to use them as mirrors, and to prink before them; and he illustrated the action by a dainty and affected motion of disposing his own silvery locks.

But when it came to doing the honors of the elaborate marble pulpit, our sprightly old cicerone fairly exploded with delight; and we were not far from following his example, for that pulpit is indeed a wonder. Of the time of the Pisani, or earlier, and vying in richness with their most renowned work, it is in absolutely perfect preservation. The procession of scriptural characters around it and the symbols of the four Evangelists on the front are in high relief, with the hue and polish of brown alabaster. Though childishly conceived, and archaic in their outlines, they are full of life. The pulpit rests upon four solid porphyry pillars, of which the two foremost are again upborne by rude figures of crouching lions, with mighty manes conventionally curled, and eyes painted to increase their fierceness. One of them has a dragon — the old enemy of all mankind, of course — well under control, and his countenance expresses a grim content. The other is engaged with the typical heretic, — and a most collected and dangerous-looking heretic he is, in this instance, lying flat under the paws of the beast, with an expression of the utmost sang froid, and firmly seizing the lion’s tongue with one hand, while with the other he scientifically plants a dagger just under his left ear. Of the two posterior pillars, one rests upon a plain base, and the other upon the hack of a crouching human figure, exceedingly grotesque, and awakening anew, as he introduced it, the ready risiblcs of our guide.

One more treasure — by far the loveliest of all — the old duomo of Barga had yet to show. Built into the wall, at the left-hand side of the sacramental altar, is the front of a tabernacle, or cibortum, in vitrified porcelain, by one of the Della Robbias ; some say, the elder Luca himself, while others ascribe it to that younger member of the same gifted race, who wrought the winsome bambini on the spandrils of the arcade of the foundling hospital, in the piazza of the Santissima ’Nunziata at Florence. You may examine scores of these renowned works without finding another which shall compare with this of Barga for bright and tender beauty. A glow of sinless content, a joyous inspiration, suffuses every countenance and sways every figure. The infant Jesus above the little portal smiles; the angel guardians on either side stand as if lost in an exquisite reverie ; the cherubs underneath and round about are fairly radiant with baby glee. The sight of all this happiness was overpowering, and suddenly started our tears; whereat our sympathetic servitor again effaced himself, merely requesting us, rather apologetically, to give a look in passing, before we left the church, at what was evidently his own favorite, a small Della Robbia Madonna,— or so he said, — very sweet and gracious indeed, but greatly inferior to the other work. I may add that we were afterwards told that the very finest of all the Della Robbias in Barga we missed seeing, that day, on account of the festal throng in the church of the Capuccini.

Once in the open air again, the spirits of our cicerone revived with a bound. Throwing a cotton handkerchief over his bald crown, as a protection from the sun, but really with the air of a father playing bo-peep with a parcel of children, he proceeded to inform us that half the population of the town was wont to gather upon the high church rampart on summer evenings: the men to play games, while “ phalanxes of women ” ( falange di donne) came with their knitting work to inspect the games and to gossip. A low massive building, occupying an angle of the rampart opposite the duomo, was, it seemed, the ancient municipality, now used as a jail; and under its quaint porch we were shown a series of pots sunken in a stone slab, the primitive standards of solid measure for the community. It seemed to us quite consistent with the universal good - nature of Barga that the prison windows commanded an excellent view of the sports aforesaid. Our guide himself was in the service of the nuns of Sta. Elisabetta, and occupied a little room in a house adjoining their convent, just at the foot of the rampart, whence they could summon him by means of a bell and a wire (a grimace) at any hour of the night. He helped at the services in their chapel, also, and must be off now, for the bell would presently ring. Yet he lingered to point out the arms of Savoy above the convent door, and to impart the fact that the nuns of St. Elizabeth now kept the town or public school,—an arrangement highly satisfactory to all parties. Only, in order to qualify themselves to answer all modern requirements, two of the sisters had had to go to Turin and learn gymnastics,— ”povere rogazze, in their straight gowns!” — and our humorous informant lifted his hands and eyebrows with infinite expression. At this point he was called off rather sharply to his duties in the chapel, and, promising to attend the service, we stepped aside into the shade to await the summons of the bell. Straying through a wicket gate, which stood enticingly open, we found ourselves upon a dreamy, flowery, vinedraped little terrace, opening full upon the northern quarter of Barga’s matchless view. A cherub baby (Perugino, again) was rolling about among the flower-pots ; a soft-eyed, modest young woman, who seemed to be “minding” him, came forward at our approach, not hurriedly, and yet evidently attracted by our foreign clothes and tongue. “ Would we sit and rest in the shade? Were we from England, or perhaps from America? Ah, from America! Then, could we possibly tell her something of her husband, Fabio, who had gone there eleven years ago, and found work in Providenza, near Boston, and prospered well, only he had omitted writing her for about six years past? ” She let her pretty eyes fall for a moment, as she asked the question, and we ourselves conceived a sufficiently vicious feeling toward the faithless Fabio ; yet the deserted one had not spoken plaintively, only with a certain light wistfulness, and she looked serene and well cared for, and by no means unhappy. The spell of Barga’s invincible content rested even upon her. Oddly enough, it appears that the ties of association between this happy hill-top and the United States have been quite numerous in years gone by. The making of plaster figurines was once a chief industry of Barga ; and of those dark-browed image-vendors, who used to make so picturesque an effect along our summer ways, almost all came from the province of Lucca, and not a few from Barga itself ; and they found their way back thither, in most cases, also, when their gaudy wares were sold. Pausing, earlier in the day, under the blazing oleanders of a little beer-garden, to refresh ourselves with some highly-diluted gelati, we had been accosted by one of these returned wanderers, who had all the air of a man of substance, being in fact the proprietor of the garden, and who spoke very intelligible English. What gratified him most of all was to learn that we had personal knowledge of a townsman of his, one Gairey, who had kept, years ago. what he succinctly described as a figgermakershop in Boston.

Even the vesper services in the convent chapel were conducted with a kind of subdued hilarity. The povere regazze, unseen in their gallery, chanted loudly and with spirit. The kneeling worshipers contrived to supply us with fans, as we took our places beside them. When one of the three venerable figures officiating at the altar dropped his candle for the second time, they all smiled frankly. The fair Della Robbia Madonna beamed faintly, also, behind the altar lights.

Outside, when we issued into the air, we found the dust, raised by the merrymakers in the piazza, now ruddy with sunset, and the crowd growing ever more vivacious and vehement, yet with no touch of rudeness. Lovers ambled hand in hand, like children, and ogled one another openly. Buxom contadine, their broad shoulders adorned by kerchiefs of bobbin lace, dyed sulphuryellow, elbowed their way to the seats of the fennel-vendors, and returned nibbling at their green nosegays. Knots of men, of all ages, engaged in vociferous dispute, accompanied by showers of speaking and unstudied gestures, but without a shade even of serious purpose or conviction, — far less a sparkle of wrath. There were but two solemn objects visible in all the precincts of Barga : a magnificent cedar of Lebanon, which sighed unutterable things from a green terrace at the head of the piazza ; and a deserted church, more ancient even than the Barga duomo, and having itself almost the dimensions of a cathedral, which is planted in so deep a hollow at the foot of the mount that the Carriage-way by which one descends from Barga sweeps round upon a level with the highest stage of its venerable campanile. It must once have been the great central church of the lower town, of which Barga was the more secure acropolis ; but the town itself, with its denizens, has lain for centuries under the sod, while the gray temple remains lonely, forsaken, forgetful, even, of its own exceeding fair proportions, embowered in the encroaching wilderness, and deaf to the voices of praise and prayer, yet indestructible, seemingly, as the Apennines themselves. Tradition ascribes the building of this church to the omnipresent Matilda, 1050-1100.

It gives one an odd sensation to roll rapidly down out of the very infancy of our millennium into the slightly shabby sophistication of the Ponte al Serraglio, the midmost of the three modern villages which collectively constitute the Bagni di Lucca. Fashion has forsaken the Bagni. There is a princely villa for sale and a ducal villa to let, among the “ desirable residences ” hereabout ; but the place was all the mode within the memory of man, and still affects, at its centre, the manners of the great world. Walled gardens overflow with oleanders and pomegranates; big hotels, a world too wide for their shrunk company, throw out their picturesque ranges of gay striped awnings ; cafes essay to glitter after night-fall, and streetlamps to twinkle amid the foliage of winding carriage-ways ; groups of fiacres contend for the shadiest spots on the piazza, where horses and drivers may doze away the sunny hours with least danger of interruption by an order. There is even a stately white marble casino, from whose wide-open windows, on two or three evenings in each week, issue longdrawn strains of melancholy dance music. An adventurous youth, penetrating upon one occasion these scenes of ghostly gayety, reported the company to consist of two English mammas, with four tall daughters each, two rheumatic elderly gentlemen of the same brave nation, and three Italian officers, imported for the occasion from the barracks at Lucca. There are English families, long resident in Italy, who regularly spend their summers at the Bagni ; not at all, as it would seem, for the sweetness of the air or the glory of the hills, nor yet for the virtue of the waters, but because of the tales which their grandsires and grandames have told them of the height of the jinks here prevalent in the thirties and the forties before fortyeight, — the days of the last princes of Lucca, and of the genial and tasteful Grand Dukes of Tuscany, when the prodigal Demidoffs built beside the Camajore the roomy hospital, still swarming with charity patients ; for the rich fluctuate, but the poor remain.

Predominant over all the ghosts out of the recent past which haunt the Baths of Lucca, elbowing and displacing the softly bred and long descended, as they always did in life, arise the restless revenants of the line of Buonaparte. Eliza Baccioehi, the parvenite Princess of Lucca and Queen of Etruria, though highly disgusted, as the world knows, with the trumpery bit of royalty awarded her in the fraternal distribution, yet fixed her summer residence here, and benefited the place by many costly improvements. Afterwards, and indeed yearly until her death, was wont to come hither from the frowning palace in the Piazza Venezia, at Rome, the grim old mother of that mighty race. A street upon the right-hand bank of the Lima still bears her name, — the Via Letizia. It is a poor street enough, within the town itself, but issues in a beautifully shaded road along the water-side, which was Madam Laititia’s favorite evening promenade. The sunset stroller of today may consider it his own fault if he does not sometimes meet her there, — tall and gaunt and all unbent by years, with dark brows knitted over piercing eyes, and chiseled lips curving downward ; leaning lightly on her staff, with which she would hardly, so long as he lived, have hesitated to chastise the great Napoleon, and musing on the ravages of the monstrous brood which it had been her singular destiny to rear and let loose for the rectification of Europe.

Harriet W. Preston.