The Church of Madonna lies just under the crest of the hill, and is even to-day a place of many pilgrimages:  for the whole place is strewn and hung with thank-offerings, silver hearts, shoes, crutches, and I know not what else, among the pathetic pictures of her kindly works.  The picture itself, loaded now with jewellery, is apparently a work of the thirteenth century; but it is said to have been miraculously brought hither from Negroponte.  It was found at Ardenza close by, by a shepherd, who carried it to Montenero, where, as I suppose, he lived; but just before he won the top of the hill it grew so heavy he had to set it down.  So the peasants built a shrine for it; and the affair getting known, the Church inquired into it, with the result that certainly by the fifteenth century the shrine was in charge of a Religious Order; to-day the monks of the Vallombrosan Benedictines serve the church.

One returns always, I think, with regret from Montenero to Livorno; yet, after all, not with more sadness than that which always accompanies us in returning from the country to any city, howsoever fair and lovely.  God made the country; man made the town; and though in Italy both God and man have laboured with joy and done better here than anywhere else in the world, who would not leave the loveliest picture to look once more on the sky, or neglect the sweetest music if he might always hear the sea, or give up praising a statue, if he might always look on his beloved?  So it is in Italy, where all the cities are fair; flowers they are among the flowers; yet any Tuscan rose is fairer far than ever Pisa was, and the lilies of Madonna in the gardens of Settignano are more lovely than the City of Flowers:  come, then, let us leave the city for the wayside, for the sun and the dust and the hills, the flowers beside the river, the villages among the flowers.  For if you love Italy you will follow the road.

FOOTNOTES: 

[81] Livorno, in the barbarian dialect of the Genovesi, Ligorno; and hence our word Leghorn.  It is excusable that we should have taken St. George from Genoa, but not that we should have stolen her dialect also.

[82] Perhaps, but Bocca d’Arno, that delicious place, is far and far to-day from Livorno.

VIII.  TO SAN MINIATO AL TEDESCO

The road from Pisa to Florence, out of the Porta Fiorentina, to-day the greatest gate of the city, passes at first across the Pisan plain, beside Arno though not following it in its wayward and winding course, to Cascina at the foot of those hills behind which Lucca is hidden away:  Monti Pisani

    “Perche i Pisani veder Lucca non ponno.”