| Show B AY 5 0 Z TU 5 A NY CARL can C at 40 co 0 1 A v a olten often make the mistake of taking conditions which prevail in the vicinity 0 of 0 naples as the standard of 0 italian thrift and honesty and thus are apt to gna include all italy and italians A in one sweeping condemnation dem nation after the matter of the irish mald maid who protested she could riot not see why her mistress wanted to study italian since few it and aherns mostly dirty in our ignorance of tuscany we had prepared ourselves tor for the worst in the matter of accommodations expecting to have to put up with un epe speak akabi ab e dis comforts in out of the way places on our route not yet realizing that no matter into what remote corner of tuscany one may penetrate he be can always be sure of courteous treatment and good clean bed and wholesome holesome well cooked food in tha course of several weeks we took our leisurely way over the hills and across the valleys stopping at a number of tuscan towns which after their tempestuous youth have settled down to such a green old age that in their ruined watch towers trees have sprung up tor for sentinels and wild flowers run riot over walls that rival armies used to scale although most of these places were ere fairly inlaid and overlaid with treasures of art the bubble of our pleasure was constantly being pricked by the tantalizing thought that no no matter what particular spot we happened to be in just a little further down the valley or across the hills there was a seemingly endless chain of equally interesting places which beckoned us ua making us realize that though our time was limited italis treasures were not nol of the towns we visited two stand out now in memory as they do in reality higher older and rarer than any of the others san Gi mignano with her musical name and her memories that reach back to dante and volterra whose somber bricks and stones softened by times subtle touch glow i with colors that only the centuries give cities set on a hill yet hid from the world shrouded la in mystery and oblivion our entrance into san Gi mignano late one afternoon just as the sun run was setting and the cathedral chimes were tolling the death of another day seemed in keeping with the spirit ot of the place v whose hose day in the working world Is done and yet about whose winding streets and crumbling palaces there still linger a beauty and a pathos like the afterglow of her departed greatness the whole place seems more like a medieval mirage than a present day reality nowhere else in italy does one get so be strongly the feeling of being transplanted bodily into the life of the middle ages like a all 11 small towns san sail cimigna no Is richer i ra sacred edifices than in anything else unless it be legends and relics the Colle glata one of its twelve places of worship contains some characteristic examples of benazzo goczoll and frescoes by in which that highly academic artist tor for once forgets his technique and loses himself in the tender delineation of scenes from tile the life of the child saint of san Gi mignano santa fina whose patience and serenity la in suffering shed a strange halo of sanctity over the bloody annals of a crafty and warlike age legend has tt it that at her death all the bells in san ban Gi mignano of their own accord rang out together to celebrate her release and that unearthly flowers blossomed about the poor little room where here tor for five years she had lain on her narrow board the Colle glata has yet another claim on our interest two hundred a M fa 7 4 1 ad E P years after the death of santa fins during the lenten season of 0 1484 its walls walla rang with the fiery eloquence of the young savonarola as he denounced with mith prophetic power and passion the luxuries and vices of his beautiful and proudly pagan age the dominican monastery in which he was entertained has since been converted into a penitentiary while the luxury of the san which he be declared to be a stench in the nostrils ot of almighty god has given way to almost poverty the walls ot of our bedrooms at san offered the only modern touch about the place as they were elaborately frescoed in triumphant imitation of 0 american wallpaper wall paper which the enterprising little proprietor evidently coveted but could not afford here our party was reinforced by mr X who had spent the last few years studying comparative art in the different european galleries from madrid to st petersburg he was a type by himself a broad shouldered six footer who lived the strenuous life in the superlative degree every minute of the day ile he traveled everywhere even over ever mountain passes on his wheel which he apparently rode or carried with equal ease and to which was usually strapped a small library consisting of a dozen or more books varying in size from the huge volume of crowe and history ot of painting in italy to a little pocket edition of omar in volterra the next place on our program where in those days thear rival of a party ot of tourists was hailed as a public event the entire population seemed to be lined up on the parapet to witness the approach of our strange cavalcade here we spent four busy days haunting tombs and ruins and mentally transplanting ourselves into the curious and ancient etruscan civilization in the cathedral and we saw some superb examples of 0 the early sculptors art and la in other churches and palaces we found a wealth of pictures and frescoes that called vividly to mind those halcyon days when volterra pressed into her service such men as bonozzo goczoll Goz zoll luca signorelli Ghirlanda lo and her own artist son eon daniels da volterra whose vigorous talent as someone has haa said lost its liberty to the conquering genius of 0 michael angelo musing over my memories of 0 volterra I 1 find that more vivid to me than any of her archaeological wonders or archaic and renaissance art treasures are a few stray pictures that painted themselves on my mind one afternoon toward sunset as we took our farewell stroll up and down the streets of 0 the old city A gothic doorway which we came upon at an abrupt turn in the road the ivy grown arch of a ruined cloister at the top ot of a winding flight of 0 ste steps and the old etruscan entrance to the city served each to frame a separate and enchanting bit ot of landscape olive crowned hills sloping down to the sea with here and there some ruined castle la in the distance the snowy carraras out ot of which michael angelo hewed the marble tor for his moses and tar far off on the horizon where ocean and sky seemed to lose themselves in mystical union the island of 0 elba like a lost ship on a sea of gold As our little company passed gayly through the gate I 1 thought of other processions professions process ions that had bad passed that way war in all those changing centuries of florentine hosts forcing their way through to pillage the city in the time ot of lorenzo the magnificent of 0 roman armies marching on volterra when she was one ot of the original capitals of 0 etruria and held her own against the world and farther back in the dim recesses of 0 history of those solemn processions professions process ions of etruscans Etrus cans carrying bodies to the tombs outside the city walls burying their dead with those mute symbols of 0 bellet belief in life beyond the grave which today after forty centuries still witness to that inborn faith in immortality which links this vanished race in a common bond of hope with the people of every age and clime turning tor for an instant to look back I 1 saw the ancient gateway was framing another picture perhaps the fairest we had seen for the last rays of the setting sun rested reeled on the heads of two young lovers coming slowly down the winding streets of the old city dreaming their dreams of the future while we talked on the burled buried past |
