While our calesino was stopped at the papal custom-house, I gazed on the memorable field below us.  A crescent plain, between the mountain and the lake, was the arena where two mighty empires met in combat.  The place seems marked by nature for the scene of some great event.  I experienced a thrilling emotion, such as no battle plain has excited, since, when a schoolboy, I rambled over the field of Brandywine.  I looked through the long arcades of patriarchal olives, and tried to cover the field with the shadows of the Roman and Carthaginian myriads.  I recalled the shock of meeting legions, the clash of swords and bucklers, and the waving standards amid the dust of battle, while stood on the mountain amphitheatre, trembling and invisible, the protecting deities of Rome.

    “Far other scene is Thrasymene now!”

We rode over the plain, passed through the dark old town of Passignano, built on a rocky point by the lake, and dashed along the shore.  A dark, stormy sky bent over us, and the roused waves broke in foam on the rocks.  The winds whistled among the bare oak boughs, and shook the olives till they twinkled all over.  The vetturino whipped our old horse into a gallop, and we were borne on in unison with the scene, which would have answered for one of Hoffman’s wildest stories.

Ascending a long hill, we took a last look in the dusk at Thrasymene, and continued our journey among the Appenines.  The vetturino was to have changed horses at Magione, thirteen miles from Perugia, but there were none to be had, and our poor beast was obliged to perform the whole journey without rest or food.  It grew very dark, and a storm, with thunder and lightning, swept among the hills.  The clouds were of pitchy darkness, and we could see nothing beyond the road, except the lights of peasant-cottages trembling through the gloom.  Now and then a flash of lightning revealed the black masses of the mountains, on which the solid sky seemed to rest.  The wind and cold rain swept wailing past us, as if an evil spirit were abroad on the darkness.  Three hours of such nocturnal travel brought us here, wet and chilly, as well as our driver, but I pitied the poor horse more than him.

When we looked out the window, on awaking, the clustered house-tops of the city, and the summits of the mountains near were covered with snow.  But on walking to the battlements we saw that the valleys below were green and untouched.  Perugia, for its “pride of place,” must endure the storms, while the humbler villages below escape them.  As the rain continues, we have taken seats in a country diligence for Foligno and shall depart in a few minutes.

Dec. 28.—­We left Perugia in a close but covered vehicle, and descending the mountain, crossed the muddy and rapid Tiber in the valley below.  All day we rode slowly among the hills; where the ascent was steep, two or four large oxen were hitched before the horses.  I saw little of the scenery, for our Italian companions would not bear the windows open.  Once, when we stopped, I got out and found we were in the region of snow, at the foot of a stormy peak, which towered sublimely above.  At dusk, we entered Foligno, and were driven to the “Croce Bianca”—­glad to be thirty miles further on our way to Rome.