. Up hill and down dale in ancient Etruria. oot-fall of the foreigner so familiar elsewherein Italy is a rather rare sound in the streets ofVolterra. That seems surprising when one thinksof the vast hordes of travellers that are annually-dispersed all over Italy. Yet the City is easilyaccessible from Cecina, a station on the main lineof Pisa-Rome, and the guide-books are not all the hill-cities of Italy the position ofVolterra is the most splendid, and certainly yieldsto no other City in antiquity. She can still pointto existing Etruscan walls as a monument of herfame in days
. Up hill and down dale in ancient Etruria. oot-fall of the foreigner so familiar elsewherein Italy is a rather rare sound in the streets ofVolterra. That seems surprising when one thinksof the vast hordes of travellers that are annually-dispersed all over Italy. Yet the City is easilyaccessible from Cecina, a station on the main lineof Pisa-Rome, and the guide-books are not all the hill-cities of Italy the position ofVolterra is the most splendid, and certainly yieldsto no other City in antiquity. She can still pointto existing Etruscan walls as a monument of herfame in days when Rome still was a village ofwattle-huts. And even for those who do not interestthemselves in things Etruscan, her street-architecture,her remains of mediaeval art, her pictures by nativeor foreign artists are not less striking or less interest-ing than those of Perugia or of Pisa. It may be that the long and arduous ascent fromthe Railway Station to the City may deter travellersin these hurrying days, from exploring this attractive, 82. VOLTERRA 83 though far-withdrawn old City. Or it may be theabsence of an Hotel possessed of all the moderncomforts which we are supposed to regard as indis-pensable. Yet, so far as concerns the writer at least,he found the long drive very enjoyable and suggestive,and the modest resources of the unpretentious Inn, orInns, (for there are two quite possible) sufficientlycommodious. Doubtless, now that automobiles arepenetrating into all the most secret places of theglobe, Volterra will become as familiar as Florence,although I am quite sure that the aggravating hootof the motor-car will conduce neither to the pleasureof the reflective pedestrian, nor to the well-being ofthe ubiquitous baby. But we may drop such irre-levant contingencies, and assuming that the travellerin ancient Etruria may have made Volterra the firststage in his progress, he will not object to the title-page of this volume. For Uphill upon thesteepest of roads it is, whether
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