330 MORE POT-POURRI 



its stones. Itis 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 mid- 

 night 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 ' ; 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 Eome, 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 Mountains, with the top of Bello- 

 sguardo 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 else were they so beautiful, and nowhere else 

 did the air blow so fresh and yet so warm as in my home 

 of the winds, the ' Pension d'Arcetri.' 



The only sadness that I know of in these Southern 



