treason; how many centuries of men like this once wasted Italy and plunged her into servitude!  Yet what material is here, under sterner discipline, and with a nobler national ideal, for the formation of heroic armies.  Of such stuff, doubtless, were the Roman legionaries.  When will the Italians learn to use these men as Fabius or as Caesar, not as the Vitelli and the Trinci used them?  In such meditations, deeply stirred by the meeting of my own reflections with one who seemed to represent for me in life and blood the spirit of the place which had provoked them, I said farewell to Cavallucci, and returned to my bedroom on the city wall.  The last rockets had whizzed and the last cannons had thundered ere I fell asleep.

SPELLO

Spello contains some not inconsiderable antiquities—­the remains of a Roman theatre, a Roman gate with the heads of two men and a woman leaning over it, and some fragments of Roman sculpture scattered through its buildings.  The churches, especially those of S.M.  Maggiore and S. Francesco, are worth a visit for the sake of Pinturicchio.  Nowhere, except in the Piccolomini Library at Siena, can that master’s work in fresco be better studied than here.  The satisfaction with which he executed the wall paintings in S. Maria Maggiore is testified by his own portrait introduced upon a panel in the decoration of the Virgin’s chamber.  The scrupulously rendered details of books, chairs, window seats, &c., which he here has copied, remind one of Carpaccio’s study of S. Benedict at Venice.  It is all sweet, tender, delicate, and carefully finished; but without depth, not even the depth of Perugino’s feeling.  In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile Baglioni.  It lies on a stool before Madonna and her court of saints.  Nicety of execution, technical mastery of fresco as a medium for Dutch detail-painting, prettiness of composition, and cheerfulness of colouring, are noticeable throughout his work here rather than either thought or sentiment.  S. Maria Maggiore can boast a fresco of Madonna between a young episcopal saint and Catherine of Alexandria from the hand of Perugino.  The rich yellow harmony of its tones, and the graceful dignity of its emotion, conveyed no less by a certain Raphaelesque pose and outline than by suavity of facial expression, enable us to measure the distance between this painter and his quasi-pupil Pinturicchio.

We did not, however, drive to Spello to inspect either Roman antiquities or frescoes, but to see an inscription on the city walls about Orlando.  It is a rude Latin elegiac couplet, saying that, ’from the sign below, men may conjecture the mighty members of Roland, nephew of Charles; his deeds are written in history.’  Three agreeable old gentlemen of Spello, who attended us with much politeness, and were greatly interested in my researches, pointed out a mark waist-high upon the wall, where Orlando’s knee is reported to have reached.  But I could not learn anything about a phallic monolith, which is said by Guerin or Panizzi to have been identified with the Roland myth at Spello.  Such a column either never existed here, or had been removed before the memory of the present generation.