A HILL-TOP STRONGHOLD. 255 



views were probably rudimentary. But gaze down for a 

 moment from the cathedral platform upon the valley of 

 the Arno, spread like a glowing picture at your feet, and 

 see how immediately it resolves the doubt. Not, indeed, 

 the valley of the Arno as it stands at present, thick set 

 with tower and spire and palace. In order to arrive at 

 the raison d'etre of Fiesole you must blot out mentally 

 Arnolfo's vast pile, and Brunelleschi's dome, and Giotto's 

 campanile, and Savonarola's monastery, and the tall and 

 slender tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, rising like a shaft 

 sheer into the air far, far below you must blot out, 

 in short, all that makes the world now congregate at 

 Florence, and all Florence itself into the bargain. No- 

 where on earth do I know a more peopled plain than 

 that plain of Arno in our own time, seen on a sunny 

 autumn day, when the light glints clearly on each white 

 villa and church and hamlet, from this specular mount 

 of antique Fiesole. But to understand why Fiesole itself 

 stands there at all you must neglect all this, neglect all 

 the wealth of art that makes each inch of that valley 

 classic ground, and look only, if you can for a brief 

 moment, at the bare facts of primitive nature- 



And what then do you see ? Spread far below you, 

 and basking in the sunshine, a comparatively flat and 

 wide, open valley ; olive and stone pine and mulberry on 

 its slopes ; pasture land and flowery vale in its midst. 

 North and south, in two long ridges, the Apennines 

 stretch their hard, blue outlines from Carrara to Siena 

 against the afternoon sky outlines of a sort that one 



