XIV. Perugia-Churches-Tomb-Santa Maria degli Angeli-St. Francis -Assisi-Foligno. PERUGIA street is level, and all the houses look as if not a brick had been touched since the Cæsars. It is the The very most consistently ancient city I ever saw. latest fashions date back three hundred years; and one feels quite relieved while contemplating something light in the Gothic palaces, after seeing the stupendous antiquity of the Etruscan walls, which certainly must have been raised by the Titans themselves long before their disgrace, somewhere in the time of Deucalion or Nox. I proceeded from the hotel into the grand piazza, where stands the Duomo, a bold pile of Gothic splendour, raised majestically on a flight of marble steps. In the centre of the piazza is a beautiful marble fountain of exquisite workmanship, whence a perfect river gushes forth, splashing into a spacious basin beneath. Opposite is the Palazzo Comunale— a huge double-fronted Gothic pile, partly standing in the piazza, and partly in the great street that opens from it. Here is an abundance of all the elaborate tracery and luxuriant fancy of that picturesque age. Heavily-groined arched windows, solid, yet graceful, occupy the grand story; while below, a vast portal, profusely ornamented with every detail of medieval grotesqueness, opens into gloomy halls and staircases. the far end of the piazza there is a dark archway, and a descending flight of steps going heaven knows where -down to unknown depths in the lower town. What a brave old square it is! Not a stone but is in keeping. At I ascended the steps and entered the Duomo, where the coup d'œil is very imposing, the pervading colour being that warm yellow tint so charming to the eye. The nave, and, in fact, the whole interior, is very graceful. It is one of those buildings one can neither call large nor small, from the admirable proportions of the whole, no inequality betraying the precise scale. Frescoes there are all over the roof, and a few choice pictures; one in particular, a Deposition by Baroccio, in a chapel near the door, painted, it is said, while he was suffering from poison given him, out of envy, at Rome. This picture has the usual visiting-card, common to all good paintings, of having made the journey to Paris. Here, too, in a chapel, is preserved the veritable wedding-ring of the Virgin, which came, I suppose, flying through the air like her house at Loretto; also various other relics, all more or less fond of locomotion. In the sacristy, or winter choir, is a lovely picture, a Sposalizio by Luca Signorelli: in front of the figures is a tumbler of water with some carnations, painted with a delicacy of which only the old masters were capable. The more I walked about, the more I was charmed with Perugia. Up and down we went, under old archways, and through narrow streets, each more quaint than the other. Whenever there was any opening, such views appeared-mountains tossed as if by an earthquake, deep valleys, great walls built on rocky heights, massive fortifications-all romantic beyond expression. We reached at last a plateau, called the Frontone, planted with trees, on the very edge of a stupendous cliff. The sun was just dissipating the morning mist over one of the grandest views on which the eye ever rested. Mountains, hills, rocks, of every shape and size, were piled one over the other, terracelike; while to the right lay the blue Lake of Thrasymene, a calm and glassy mirror in the midst of chaotic confusion. High mountains shut in the view everywhere. In front, the rays of the sun were condensed into a golden mist, obscuring all nearer objects. To the left lay a vast plain, fat and fertile, a land flowing with milk and honey. Before us uprose the city of Assisi, sparkling in the sunshine, seated on a rocky height, and also backed by lofty Apennines. Close by stands the curious church of San Pietro, desolate and lonely. Its form is the perfect basilica : the space over the columned nave is covered with frescoes. In the sacristy are some fine pictures— delicate Sassoferratos, elegant Pinturiccios (an artist, by the way, one learns to esteem properly at Perugia), and some Peruginos that might well pass for the works of Raphael, so clear is the colouring and so admirable the drawing. One little picture of Christ and St. John as children, painted by Raphael in his youth, is very interesting. Pale and dirty as it is, the forms are exquisite. After we left this church we walked up a hill so steep, I decidedly expected never to get my breath again. Then a magnificent view opened out before us-as there does, indeed, from every point along the city walls. At last we came to the Porta Augusta, one of the grandest monuments in the world. It is of immense size, and formed of uncemented stones actually gigantic; the walls of Fiesole are nothing to it. I cannot describe the solemn majesty of this portal of unknown antiquity, frowning down on the pigmy erections of later ages. There it stands in glorious solidity until the day of judgment. Nothing short of a universal convulsion can shake it. Over the arch are the letters "Augusta Perugia," looking at a distance like some cabalistic charm. On the left are an open gallery and two massive towers. It actually looks quite awful, like something seen in a hideous dream. Hard by is the College of the Belle Arti, full of the most curious Etruscan relics, in wonderfully fine preservation. Whole rooms are filled with stone tombs, small, of course, in size, for the Etruscans burned their dead, preserving only their ashes. All bear recumbent figures reposing on the lid. Vases, too, there are by hundreds; and a pillar in the centre of one room is marvellously preserved. In an upper gallery are a few pictures, but of no peculiar interest. Below, a lonely botanical garden, planted with laurels, lies-a spot in which to meditate on the strange destiny of a people capable of such wonderful achievements in the various branches of art, leaving not a vestige of their history to posterity. But I was obliged to rush away without ceremony; and, taking a brusque leave of the Etruscan monuments, found myself suddenly in the cinque-cento Sala |