Cameriere, placing on the table the minestra, or soup, in a huge tureen, containing plenty of hot water, with some half-boiled macaroni in it. If you don't like this kind of soup, you may have bread boiled in water; it is all the same. There is always a plate of grated parmesan cheese, to mix with the the minestra, of whatever sort it may be, without which even Italian palates could never tolerate such a potion. This is generally followed by a frittura, which consists of liver, brains, or something of that sort, fried in oil. Then comes the 'rosto, which to-day appears in the shape of half of a starved turkey, attended by some other undescribable dish, smelling strong of garlic.

Would you like to dine with us? But I cannot wait for your answer, being hungry.

night,

So good

LETTER III.

EXACTLY at five o'clock we left the village of Poggibonzi, and commenced our pilgrimage by the cold pale moon-light of morning, which shone brightly on the white frosty earth, but no longer shed the same glowing beam that had lighted our evening journey. The air was intensely cold, and though the sun rose at last with splendour in the clear blue sky, it was only beneath his noon-tide rays that the frozen ground, or our still more frozen persons, yielded to his genial influence.

Siena stands on the top of an ugly hill, unsheltered by a single tree from the blasts of winter, and equally unshaded from the heats of summer, at the very verge of the fertile region of Tuscany, and bordering upon a sterile and desolate tract which extends many miles to the southward. I cannot give you any adequate idea of the utter nakedness of this singular waste, which is so completely destitute of all kinds of vegetation, that not a weed, nor a single blade of grass, nor heath, nor lichen, meets the eye over its whole extent, while its bare and broken surface is heaved up into small abrupt mounds or hillocks, of pale arid hue, which have

every appearance of having been formed in some crisis of volcanic eruption. Indeed, the whole country is composed of nothing but the matter, or the refuse, of this terrific agent. Strange! that when for more than three thousand years, at least, we know that these flames have been quenchedwhen even tradition preserves no trace of their existence their effects should still be so visible to the eye, even of the most inadvertent traveller!

The tufo, which I now saw for the first time, and of which almost all the low hills about Siena are composed, is so soft as to break and crumble in the hand like friable sand-stone. It is of a grey colour, and frequently of an aggregate formation, and is supposed to be composed of the ashes, mixed with the boiling water and mud, which are thrown out in immense quantity in all volcanic eruptions. But all this scene of desolation is on the south side of Siena. I forget that we are still on the north, and that I must get you through it—no easy matter; for the hills are so many and so steep, and the streets are so slippery and so narrow, that they seem never to have been intended for the ordinary purposes of passage, and, in fact, there is a considerable part of the town into which no carriage can penetrate.

The pavement is generally of brick, placed angularly; it seems to be exactly the opus spicatum of the ancients, so called from its resemblance to the way the grains are set in an ear of wheat.*

* Winkelman sur l'Architecture, Chap. i.—62.

The city has an antiquated appearance; its streets, or rather lanes, are lined with high gloomy old-fashioned houses, looking like jails, and called, or rather miscalled, palaces, which have fallen into decay like their possessors, who are too proud to resign, and too poor to inhabit them.

Many of them are furnished with high towers for defence. It is curious to see fortified dwellinghouses in the midst of cities. That "every man's house is his castle," seems to be true in a very different sense in Italy from what it is in England. Here, indeed, they were calculated to stand a siege, and are monuments of that age of feudal strife in which the proud Barons waged continual war with each other, and the sword never rested in its scabbard. They are common at Pisa, Bologna, Florence, and every city which was once a republic. The sight of the Wolf and the Twins, erected in various conspicuous situations, carried us back from these barbarous republics to the glorious republic of Rome, from which Siena claims descent. But I will spare you a dissertation on its history, as I have not made any new discoveries therein, and see no reason why I should repeat the old ones, which are detailed in a thousand books, in which you may find a full and authentic account of its Etruscan origin, of the Roman colony which, in the days of Augustus, peopled Sena Julia-of its rise as a modern republic, of its revolutions, its inveterate animosities, its bloody wars, its prosperity, its decline, and its fall. Times are changed since 100,000 armed citizens marched out of its gates ;

for through the whole of its deserted extent scarcely 12,000 inhabitants can now be numbered.

It still retains its boasted superiority in language over every other city of Italy. But we were so unlucky as scarcely to hear it; the cameriere at the inn, having, in an evil hour, acquired a small smattering of French, could not be induced to utter any thing else, and the old toothless lacquey who conducted us through the town, from some natural defect in articulation, could speak no language intelligibly. The customary whine of the beggars, the most frequent sound in all Italian towns, seemed to our transalpine ears not more than usually melodious; and the little we conversed with others, was sufficient to convince us, that if Siena boasts in the highest perfection the true Tuscan dialect, it is also infected with the true Tuscan pronunciation, in which the delightful harmony of the language is wholly lost; and though somewhat softened from the twang of Florence, still every initial C and G, even here, are pronounced like an H, and the strong aspirations and harsh guttural sounds are extremely offensive to the ear.

The Duomo, or Cathedral, is one of the largest, heaviest, and most magnificent churches of Italy. The tower of the campanile, or belfry, is here attached to the building; but the whole, like Florence, is built of alternate layers of black and white marble; like Florence too, it is a work of the thirteenth century, and of that architecture which they have the impudence here to call Gothic, though it might with far more propriety be denominated bar