After Scheggia, one enters a land of meadow and oak-trees.  This is the sacred central tract of Jupiter Apenninus, whose fane—­

        Delubra Jovis saxoque minantes
  Apenninigenis cultae pastoribus arae

—­once rose behind us on the bald Iguvian summits.  A second little pass leads from this region to the Adriatic side of the Italian watershed, and the road now follows the Barano downward toward the sea.  The valley is fairly green with woods, where mistletoe may here and there be seen on boughs of oak, and rich with cornfields.  Cagli is the chief town of the district, and here they show one of the best pictures left to us by Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi.  It is a Madonna, attended by S. Peter, S. Francis, S. Dominic, S. John, and two angels.  One of the angels is traditionally supposed to have been painted from the boy Raphael, and the face has something which reminds us of his portraits.  The whole composition, excellent in modelling, harmonious in grouping, soberly but strongly coloured, with a peculiar blending of dignity and sweetness, grace and vigour, makes one wonder why Santi thought it necessary to send his son from his own workshop to study under Perugino.  He was himself a master of his art, and this, perhaps the most agreeable of his paintings, has a masculine sincerity which is absent from at least the later works of Perugino.

Some miles beyond Cagli, the real pass of the Furlo begins.  It owes its name to a narrow tunnel bored by Vespasian in the solid rock, where limestone crags descend on the Barano.  The Romans called this gallery Petra Pertusa, or Intercisa, or more familiarly Forulus, whence comes the modern name.  Indeed, the stations on the old Flaminian Way are still well marked by Latin designations; for Cagli is the ancient Calles, and Fossombrone is Forum Sempronii, and Fano the Fanum Fortunae.  Vespasian commemorated this early achievement in engineering by an inscription carved on the living stone, which still remains; and Claudian, when he sang the journey of his Emperor Honorius from Rimini to Rome, speaks thus of what was even then an object of astonishment to travellers:—­

  Laetior hinc fano recipit fortuna vetusto,
  Despiciturque vagus praerupta valle Metaurus,
  Qua mons arte patens vivo se perforat arcu
  Admittitque viam sectae per viscera rupis.

The Forulus itself may now be matched, on any Alpine pass, by several tunnels of far mightier dimensions; for it is narrow, and does not extend more than 126 feet in length.  But it occupies a fine position at the end of a really imposing ravine.  The whole Furlo Pass might, without too much exaggeration, be described as a kind of Cheddar on the scale of the Via Mala.  The limestone rocks, which rise on either hand above the gorge to an enormous height, are noble in form and solemn, like a succession of gigantic portals, with stupendous flanking obelisks and pyramids.  Some of these crag-masses rival the fantastic cliffs