In these few
quiet words he spreads Thrasymene before us: "It has a soft, still
beauty especially its own. Upon the vast expanse of shallow pale-green
waters, surrounded by low-lying hills, storms have scarcely any effect,
and the birds which float over it and the fishing-boats which skim
across its surface are reflected as in a mirror. At Passignano and
Torricella picturesque villages, chiefly occupied by fishermen, jut out
into the water, but otherwise the reedy shore is perfectly desolate on
this side, though beyond the lake convents and villages crown the hills
which rise between us and the pale violet mountains beyond
Montepulciano." Nothing can be more lifelike than the following picture
of the tract around Siena: "Scarcely do we pass beyond the rose-hung
walls which encircle the fortifications than we are in an upland desert,
piteously bleak in winter, but most lovely when spring comes to clothe
it. The volcanic nature of the soil in these parts gives a softer tint
than usual to the coloring. The miles upon miles of open gray-green
country, treeless, hedgeless, houseless, swoop toward one another with
the strangest sinuosities and rifts and knobs of volcanic earth, till at
last they sink in faint mists, only to rise again in pink and blue
distances, so far off, so pale and aerial, that they can scarcely be
distinguished from the atmosphere itself. Only here and there a lonely
convent with a few black cypress spires clustered round it, or a
solitary cross which the peasants choose as their midday resting-place,
cuts the pellucid sky.
Pages:
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323