. Italian backgrounds. and here paused toembrace the spectacle—beneath us, on the left, theblue volcanic lake of Vico in its oak-fringed crater;on the right, far below, the plain of Etruria, scat-tered with ancient cities and ringed in a mountain-range still touched with snow; and rising from themiddle of the plain, Soracte, proud, wrinkled, soli-tary, with the ruined monastery of Sant Oreste justseen on its crest. From this mount of vision we dropped abruptlydownward by a road cut in the red tufa-banks. Pres-ently there began to run along the crest of the tufaon our left a lofty wall gripping
. Italian backgrounds. and here paused toembrace the spectacle—beneath us, on the left, theblue volcanic lake of Vico in its oak-fringed crater;on the right, far below, the plain of Etruria, scat-tered with ancient cities and ringed in a mountain-range still touched with snow; and rising from themiddle of the plain, Soracte, proud, wrinkled, soli-tary, with the ruined monastery of Sant Oreste justseen on its crest. From this mount of vision we dropped abruptlydownward by a road cut in the red tufa-banks. Pres-ently there began to run along the crest of the tufaon our left a lofty wall gripping the flanks of therock, and overhung by dark splashes of ivy andclumps of leafless trees—one of those rugged Italianwalls which are the custodians of such hidden trea-sures of scent and verdure. This wall continuedto run parallel with us till our steep descent endedin a stone-paved square, with the roofs of a townsliding abruptly away below it on one side, andabove, on the other, the great ramps and terraces [140]. l n, ti .» . j. MARCH IN ITALY of a pentagonal palace clenched to the high-est ledge of the cliff. Such is the first sight ofCaprarola. Never, surely, did feudal construction so inso-lently dominate its possessions. The palace of thegreat Farnese Cardinal seems to lord it not only overthe golden-brown town which forms its footstool, butover the far-reaching Etrurian plain, the forests andmountains of the horizon: over Nepi, Sutri, CivitaCastellana, and the lonely pride of Soracte. And thegrandeur of the site is matched by the arrogance ofthe building: no villa, but a fortified and moated pal-ace, or rather a fortress planned in accordance withthe most advanced military science of the day, butbuilt on the lines of a palace. Yet on such a Marchday as this, with the foreground of brown oak-woodsall slashed and fringed with rosy almond-bloom; withthe haze of spring just melting from the horizon, andrevealing depth after depth of mountain-blue; with]March clouds
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectitalydescriptionandt
