group themselves on an estrade in front of the public palace, and dispose themselves leisurely for enjoyment.

If darkness can be felt, surely silence may, and we all felt the pause when every man and every woman drew their breath. Again the cannon thunders, and gaily trotting out from under the dark palace gateway, fifteen little horses with fifteen party-coloured riders appear, and place themselves before a rope stretched across the course-a very necessary precaution, I assure you, for last year the horses pressed against and broke the cord with their chests (and a strong cord too), and floored five men and three horses dead in a heap on the stones.

Now they are marshalled at the rope by a middleaged gentleman in full evening dress—a queer contrast to the mediæval jockeys. He shows extraordinary courage in placing the horses and dragooning the riders. He gives the signal like children-uno, due, trè, e via !—drops his official staff, and jumps aside with what speed he can for the dear life. They are off like the wind, round the first corner, on to the murderous lamp-post, down the descent-whish! See, that horse has hugged the corner, rushed down hill, and is safe. But here, look! this second rider is hurled off against the mattresses lining the house-walls at the fatal corner, or his brains would have been infallibly dashed out on

the pavement. He falls, but, thanks to this protection, is up again, bewildered, but still holding the reins, and so jumps into the saddle again, and rides away. Two others just escape; and two provoking horses won't run. Many are thrown; one horse bolts up a street. Three times they rush round the Piazza, at a risk and with a speed horrible to behold; and each time the ranks are thinner. They ride well, but against all rule, for they belabour each other's heads as much as their horses' sides-very uneducated and mediæval jockeys! Down hill-up again—helter-skelter— horses without riders racing also for the fun! The drum sounds, and it is all over, and the Oca (the goose) has won; and every one knew the Oca would win, because it was the best horse; and a howl, a shriek of exultation, comes up from the crowd, which separates and opens, like the bursting of a dammed-up river.

Then the Oca horse is seized by, at the very least, thirty men and boys, and the fantino by as many more, who lift him from his unsaddled horse; and he and the horse are kissed, and hugged, and patted, and rejoiced over, and led, then and there, to the chapel at the bottom of the Mangia tower, where the Madonna stands on the altar, in a forest of flowers, uncovered in honour of the day. And so, surging up and down

among the crowd, man and horse disappear down an alley, to reappear at the church of their own contrada, where the priest receives and blesses them both, man and beast, and will hang up the palio (or banner) in the sacristy, with the date in gold letters, as a cosa di devozione.

For many nights, for many weeks, will all the "Goose" tribe eat, drink, and be merry, defying those who betted against them in very awful oaths, down in low narrow slums in the worst part of Siena, among the tanners, under San Dominic's Church, near the Fontebranda sung by Dante. Close by here stands the house of Santa Caterina, whose father was a tanner, and lived beside the fountain to moisten his hides. And Santa Caterina, all angelic as she was, would have rejoiced too at this victory of her contrada, for the glory of the Palio is dear to the heart of every Sienese.

X.

From Siena to Orvieto-Cathedral-Chiusi-Etruscan Tombs.

E leave Siena for two days by the incongruous

WE

rail, and plunge into the clay hills lying southward-magnified ant-hills massed one upon the other, without shrub or herb to break the monotony of the grey earth, which is here wrinkled and tormented by countless water-courses. Nature in the South seldom exhibits herself in such repulsive forms.

This hilly desert belting Siena forms the borderland between idyllic Tuscany and Central Italy-Tuscany, with its laughing campagnas, rich with fat mulberries and trellised vines heavy with purple clusters, where bright home-like villas and evergreen groves, well-to-do poderi (farms), churches, and convents crown each dimpling hill, and dot the sides of distant Apennines in all the confidence of perfect security ; Central Italy, with its high, abrupt mountains, stern and repellent, scored with basaltic chasms, and traversed by vast forests of living oak-sad lonely woods, home of the wild boar or savage swine. Here treeless, dried

up river-beds divide the valleys, and disappear into reedy lakes, without a vestige of human habitation, so marking the presence of malaria. Every town and city stands high up on rock or mountain-natural fortresses, where no straggling dwellings dare to linger outside the lofty walls. A land of grand, yet awful beauty, suggestive of all that is abrupt, sudden, wonderful; with here an Etruscan city; there a cathedral glittering like a gem; yonder a lake mirroring itself in the fierce sunshine, deep buried in silent woods.

All this time our train has been moving. Here is Asinalunga, where Garibaldi was arrested after Mentana. At Siena no one dared to touch him-he was worshipped; but in this lonely town, tracked by Government spies, he was taken by order of the king to whom he had given Naples. Nothing succeeds like success. Garibaldi failed, and the greatest of modern heroes is banished.

There is necessarily a certain monotony common to railroads; but after passing Torrita the scenery through the valley of the Chiana becomes too grandly savage to be suppressed.

The towns named as the respective stations are miles distant, each crowning its own familiar height. Mountain masses on mountain. To the left there is