JUNE 337 



ping water on its court, and wild wood flowers thrusting 

 their bright heads through its stones. It is as peaceful, 

 as simple, as homely, as closely girt with blossoming 

 boughs and with tulip -crimsoned grapes now as then, 

 when, from its roof in the still midnight of far-off time, 

 its master read the secret of the stars.' 



But to Galileo at seventy and blind, I wonder what 

 was the use of the old fighting tower? The sight of 

 it was a ceaseless joy to me, flanked by splendid 

 Cypresses, standing ochre colour against the blue, or 

 dark against some 'billowy bosomed cloud 7 ; and at 

 evening it was 'one red tower that drinks its fill out of 

 the sunset sky.' 



This was as I looked to the east. Moving round to 

 the south, the view widened and spread right up the 

 valley of the Arno, where the little puff of gray smoke 

 curled along the base of the hill, and showed where the 

 train sped on its way to Rome, through the mountains, 

 as they folded one over the other in tints of pearly gray. 

 Still more south came the hill where Vallombrosa 

 stands, and then a long stretch of villa -dotted low hills. 

 At the end of the ridge was a little grove of pointed 

 Cypresses, and the well-known favourite peasant church 

 of all the country round stood out on its own little hill 

 in the middle distance. Towards the west came a 

 hillock crowned with a flat, white villa, cut by the 

 Cypresses that surround nearly all the houses, sinking 

 and swelling with Olive and Vine towards the distant 

 view of the Certosa of the Val d'Arno. And so round 

 to the whole beautiful broad valley running towards 

 Pisa, ending in the blue shadows of the Carrara Moun- 

 tains, with the top of Bellosguardo in the middle 

 distance sharp and black against the gray mist of the 

 plain. Evening after evening I used to try and get 

 home to see the sunsets from my windows, as nowhere 



