between barren slopes of ashy grey earth—­the debris of most ancient Apennines—­crested at favourable points with lonely towers.  In truth the whole country bristles with ruined forts, making it clear that during the middle ages Canossa was but the centre of a great military system, the core and kernel of a fortified position which covered an area to be measured by scores of square miles, reaching far into the mountains, and buttressed on the plain.  As yet, however, after nearly two hours’ driving, Canossa has not come in sight.  At last a turn in the road discloses an opening in the valley of the Enza to the left:  up this lateral gorge we see first the Castle of Rossena on its knoll of solid red rock, flaming in the sunlight; and then, further withdrawn, detached from all surrounding objects, and reared aloft as though to sweep the sea of waved and broken hills around it, a sharp horn of hard white stone.  That is Canossa—­the alba Canossa, the candida petra of its rhyming chronicler.  There is no mistaking the commanding value of its situation.  At the same time the brilliant whiteness of Canossa’s rocky hill, contrasted with the red gleam of Rossena, and outlined against the prevailing dulness of these earthy Apennines, secures a picturesque individuality concordant with its unique history and unrivalled strength.

There is still a journey of two hours before the castle can be reached:  and this may be performed on foot or horseback.  The path winds upward over broken ground; following the arete of curiously jumbled and thwarted hill-slopes; passing beneath the battlements of Rossena, whence the unfortunate Everelina threw herself in order to escape the savage love of her lord and jailor; and then skirting those horrid earthen balze which are so common and so unattractive a feature of Apennine scenery.  The most hideous balze to be found in the length and breadth of Italy are probably those of Volterra, from which the citizens themselves recoil with a kind of terror, and which lure melancholy men by intolerable fascination on to suicide.  For ever crumbling, altering with frost and rain, discharging gloomy glaciers of slow-crawling mud, and scarring the hillside with tracts of barrenness, these earth-precipices are among the most ruinous and discomfortable failures of nature.  They have not even so much of wildness or grandeur as forms, the saving merit of nearly all wasteful things in the world, and can only be classed with the desolate ghiare of Italian river-beds.

Such as they are, these balze form an appropriate preface to the gloomy and repellent isolation of Canossa.  The rock towers from a narrow platform to the height of rather more than 160 feet from its base.  The top is fairly level, forming an irregular triangle, of which the greatest length is about 260 feet, and the width about 100 feet.  Scarcely a vestige of any building can be traced either upon the platform