312 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



are without the least tincture of the reading instinct, so what force they 

 have goes to practical things. 



I found my mountain hard to get access to on account of the wide fringe 

 of walled grounds around its base. At length despairing of flanking these 

 barriers, I asked my way at a farmhouse. At first I found only a boy of ten, 

 who, unlike Italian children in general, was afraid of the stranger; he, how- 

 ever, was induced to seek his elders, and the mother, though evidently doubt- 

 ful, got rid of me by pointing the way to a footpath that led through the 

 barnyard and gave access to the hills. 



The way for a mile or two was up a roaring brook, the bed of which was 

 immensely encumbered with the wreck of the rocks; its fall was steep, and 

 every few hundred feet there was a great masonry wall across it, some of 

 these walls superb engineering constructions. The view was singularly 

 perfect. Through the rocky jaws of the cliff I saw a foreground of olive 

 orchards, vines, and fine houses ; half a mile off was a ruined little castle, its 

 single tall tower with half its battlements fallen away and its keep masked 

 with barns and out-houses. . . . 



It is rare in Tuscany that we find a picturesque ruin to fill any foreground, 

 and the complete and abounding ruins of old castles that are so common 

 in all northern Europe seem quite unknown here. I am inclined to think 

 that the reason is that the nobleman, apart from the town, never existed 

 in Italy to the extent that he did in northern Europe. Here the lord was 

 the lord of towns rather than of castles. Individually, they were not such a 

 militant class as those of northern countries. The little cities gave the pro- 

 tection that they might have afforded, and so the ruins of their strength 

 and state do not so plentifully remain upon the hilltops. Something also is 

 due to the want of that change in the customs of life that has caused the 

 dominant class of the North to desire more comfortable abodes and led them 

 to betake themselves to modern dwellings. The castles that remain here fit 

 the fashion of the life; their darkness and sombreness do not in this land of 

 sun and heat unfit them for the tenancy of men. 



After dinner I turned myself again to the hillside. It was very steep, but 

 a well-made though abandoned path crept for some way up the ravine. 

 Where a little earth had been held in a cranny there was a stunted tree, 

 planted in modern times, but for want of company it had refused to do much 

 to help itself. It was a relief to get above these forlorn and impotent efforts 

 of man to repair the waste of other centuries. Although the absence of vege- 

 tation gives a desolate look to a landscape, it has for the geologist much in 

 the way of compensation. I could now see in the bare steeps the architecture 

 of the mountain which I came to study. Looked at from the valley, the 

 structure appeared very simple; the clearly bedded rocks seemed piled one 



