This little town is among the Appenines, at the foot of the magnificent mountain of Vallombrosa.  What a blessing it was for Milton, that he saw its loveliness before his eyes closed on this beautiful earth, and gained from it another hue in which to dip his pencil, when he painted the bliss of Eden!  I watched the hills all day as we approached them, and thought how often his eyes had rested on their outlines, and how he had carried their forms in his memory for many a sunless year.  The banished Dante, too, had trodden them, flying from his ungrateful country; and many another, whose genius has made him a beacon in the dark sea of the world’s history.  It is one of those places where the enjoyment is all romance, and the blood thrills as we gaze upon it.

We started early next morning, crossed the ravine, and took the well-paved way to the monastery along the mountain side.  The stones are worn smooth by the sleds in which ladies and provisions are conveyed up, drawn by the beautiful white Tuscan oxen.  The hills are covered with luxuriant chesnut and oak trees, of those picturesque forms which they only wear in Italy:  one wild dell in particular is much resorted to by painters for the ready-made foregrounds it supplies.  Further on, we passed the Paterno, a rich farm belonging to the Monks.  The vines which hung from tree to tree, were almost breaking beneath clusters as heavy and rich as those which the children of Israel bore on staves from the Promised Land.  Of their flavor, we can say, from experience, they were worthy to have grown in Paradise.  We then entered a deep dell of the mountain, where little shepherd girls were sitting on the rocks tending their sheep and spinning with their fingers from a distaff, in the same manner, doubtless, as the Roman shepherdesses two thousand years ago.  Gnarled, gray olive trees, centuries old, grew upon the bare soil, and a little rill fell in many a tiny cataract down the glen.  By a mill, in one of the coolest and wildest nooks I ever saw, two of us acted the part of water-spirits under one of these, to the great astonishment of four peasants, who watched us from a distance.

Beyond, our road led through forests of chesnut and oak, and a broad view of mountain and vale lay below us.  We asked a peasant boy we met, how much land the Monks of Vallombrosa possessed. “All that you see!” was the reply.  The dominion of the good fathers reached once even to the gates of Florence.  At length, about noon, we emerged from the woods into a broad avenue leading across a lawn, at whose extremity stood the massivs buildings of the monastery.  On a rock that towered above it, was the Paradisino, beyond which rose the mountain, covered with forests—­

    “Shade above shade, a woody theatre. 
    Of stateliest view”—­

as Milton describes it.  We were met at the entrance by a young monk in cowl and cassock, to whom we applied for permission to stay till the next day, which was immediately given.  Brother Placido (for that was his name) then asked us if we would not have dinner.  We replied that our appetites were none the worse for climbing the mountain; and in half an hour sat down to a dinner, the like of which we had not seen for a long time.  Verily, thought I, it must be a pleasant thing to be a monk, after all!—­that is, a monk of Vallombrosa.