Yes, as one wanders about these hills where life itself is so hard a master, it is just that which one understands in almost every village.  You go to S. Maria delle Grazie—­Vallombrosella, they call it, since it was a daughter of the monastery of Vallombrosa—­and there in that beautiful fifteenth-century church you still find the simple things of life, of love; work of the della Robbia; pictures, too, cheerful flowerlike things, with Madonna like a rose in the midst.  Well, not far away across Arno, where it is little, the ruins of Castel Castagnajo and of Campo Lombardo are huddled, though Vallucciole, that tiny village, is laughing with children.  It is the same at Romena, where the church still lives, though the castle is ruined.  You pass to Pratovecchio; it is the same story, ruins of the Guidi towers, walls, fortifications; but in the convent church of the Dominican sisters they still sing Magnificat: 

    Deposuit potentes de sede:  et exaltavit humiles.

So on the road to Poppi you come to Campaldino, where Dante fought, where Corso Donati saved the day, where Buonconte fell, and died with the fog in his throat in the still morning air after the battle.  Well, that famous field is now a vineyard; you may see the girls gathering the grapes there any morning in early October.  Where the horses of the Aretines thundered away, the great patient oxen draw the plough; or a man walks, singing beside his wife, her first-born in her arms.  It is the victory of the meek; here, at least, they have inherited the earth.  And Certomondo, as of old, sings of our sister the earth.  Poppi again—­ah, but that fierce old place, how splendid it is, it and its daughter!  Like all the rest of these Guidi strongholds, the Rocca of Poppi stands on a hill; it can be seen for miles up and down the valley:  and indeed the whole town is like a fortress on a hill, subject only to the ever-changing sky, the great tide of light ebbing and flowing in the valley between the mountains.  Poppi is the greatest of the Guidi fortresses; built by Arnolfo, it has much of the nobility of its daughter the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence.  Of all these castles it is the only one that is not a ruin.  It is true it has been restored, But you may still find frescoes on its walls in the chapel and in the great hall, work, it is said, of Jacopo da Casentino:  and then it has one of the loveliest courtyards in Italy.

It is from Poppi one may go very easily in a summer day to Camaldoli, some eight miles or so to the north-west, where the valley comes up in a long arm into the mountains.  On that lovely road you pass many an old ruin of the Guidi before you come at last to that monastery of the Camaldolese Order “so beloved of Dante,” which was confiscated with the rest in 1866.  The monks now hire their own house from the Government, which has let out their hospice for an hotel.  About an hour above the monastery, among the pine trees, is the Sacro Eremo, the Holy Hermitage, where in some twenty separate cells the Hermits of Camaldoli live; for, as their arms go to show, the Order is divided into two parts, consisting of monks who live in community, and hermits who live alone.