Bright days in sunny lands . of the big church. Here hisheart was buried, because his heart was set on thisground and not on any spot in the city above, whichlooks down on the plain. One may see here his mon-astic cord, and a portion of his bed. And so at this church, very near the railway sta-tion, let us take our departure from Assisi. The fieldsspread out on every hand filled with corn, vine andolive in abundance; there is a rustle among the leavesof the trees, as the soft midsummer zephyrs blowacross the plain; there are colors in the clouds, and be-tween them the wondrous blue of the Ital
Bright days in sunny lands . of the big church. Here hisheart was buried, because his heart was set on thisground and not on any spot in the city above, whichlooks down on the plain. One may see here his mon-astic cord, and a portion of his bed. And so at this church, very near the railway sta-tion, let us take our departure from Assisi. The fieldsspread out on every hand filled with corn, vine andolive in abundance; there is a rustle among the leavesof the trees, as the soft midsummer zephyrs blowacross the plain; there are colors in the clouds, and be-tween them the wondrous blue of the Italian sky. Aswe leave the earthly hermitage of St. Francis, hisown gentle voice seems to come floating down fromthe heavens above, in dove-like, pleading tones, as iffrom seraph lips, commending to us forever this hum-ble chapel of the Portiuncula: I will that for all timesit be the mirror and good example of all religion, andas it were a lamp ever burning and resplendent beforethe Throne of God and before the Blessed •125^«. i XIII.—PERUGIA AND SIENA. SIENA, AT PRESENT with a population oftwenty-four thousand, and Perugia, contain-ing about eighteen thousand people, wereonce many times as populous, and vied withone another in the works of Art—chiefly of Art uponcanvas—which each possessed. To this day thecitizens of each municipality imagine their own city toexcel all others in attractiveness of location and alsoin materials for studying the growth of local paintersof the pre-Renaissance in art. Each city realizes, how-ever, that the Philistines—popes, cardinals, emperors—carried off to larger capitals the best specimens ofDuccio, Martini, Peruzzi, Lo Spagna, Francia and oth-ers of the lesser note, as well as those of the masters,Sodoma, Perugino, Raphael and Pinturicchio. Prob-ably, at the first, Siena dominated in the quantity of itspaintings, but Perugia (after Perugino was there) inquality. Perugia, as the student well knows, was thecentre of the Umbria
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectvoyagesandtravels
