An Italian of this type, handsome as an antique statue, with the refinement of a modern gentleman and that intelligence which is innate in a race of immemorial culture, is a fascinating being.  He may be absolutely ignorant in all book-learning.  He may be as ignorant as a Bersagliere from Montalcino with whom I once conversed at Rimini, who gravely said that he could walk in three months to North America, and thought of doing it when his term of service was accomplished.  But he will display, as this young soldier did, a grace and ease of address which are rare in London drawing-rooms; and by his shrewd remarks upon the cities he has visited, will show that he possesses a fine natural taste for things of beauty.  The speech of such men, drawn from the common stock of the Italian people, is seasoned with proverbial sayings, the wisdom of centuries condensed in a few nervous words.  When emotion fires their brain, they break into spontaneous eloquence, or suggest the motive of a poem by phrases pregnant with imagery.

For the first stage of the journey out of Rimini, Filippo’s two horses sufficed.  The road led almost straight across the level between quickset hedges in white bloom.  But when we reached the long steep hill which ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out, and we toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red anemones and sweet narcissus.  At this point pomegranate hedges replaced the May-thorns of the plain.  In course of time our bovi brought us to the Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a further ascent of seven hundred feet to the topmost hawk’s-nest or acropolis of the republic.  These we climbed on foot, watching the view expand around us and beneath.  Crags of limestone here break down abruptly to the rolling hills, which go to lose themselves in field and shore.  Misty reaches of the Adriatic close the world to eastward.  Cesena, Rimini, Verucchio, and countless hill-set villages, each isolated on its tract of verdure conquered from the stern grey soil, define the points where Montefeltri wrestled with Malatestas in long bygone years.  Around are marly mountain-flanks in wrinkles and gnarled convolutions like some giant’s brain, furrowed by rivers crawling through dry wasteful beds of shingle.  Interminable ranges of gaunt Apennines stretch, tier by tier, beyond; and over all this landscape, a grey-green mist of rising crops and new-fledged oak-trees lies like a veil upon the nakedness of Nature’s ruins.

Nothing in Europe conveys a more striking sense of geological antiquity than such a prospect.  The denudation and abrasion of innumerable ages, wrought by slow persistent action of weather and water on an upheaved mountain mass, are here made visible.  Every wave in that vast sea of hills, every furrow in their worn flanks, tells its tale of a continuous corrosion still in progress.  The dominant impression is one of melancholy.  We forget how Romans, countermarching Carthaginians, trod the land beneath us.  The marvel of San Marino, retaining independence through the drums and tramplings of the last seven centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder.  We turn instinctively in thought to Leopardi’s musings on man’s destiny at war with unknown nature-forces and malignant rulers of the universe.