Siena, the story of a mediaeval commune . orted to it as a quarry, and the peasants, following theexample of their enlightened masters, plundered it atwill for such building material as their need a vault fell in, bullock carts rolled lumberinglyto the scene to appropriate the fine blocks of travertinewhich littered the ground, and a heap of indistinguish-able rubbish might be the only evidence of the existenceof the abbey at this day, if the Italian government,sluggishly responding to the indignant appeal of adevoted lover of his countrys history and art, had not,in the year
Siena, the story of a mediaeval commune . orted to it as a quarry, and the peasants, following theexample of their enlightened masters, plundered it atwill for such building material as their need a vault fell in, bullock carts rolled lumberinglyto the scene to appropriate the fine blocks of travertinewhich littered the ground, and a heap of indistinguish-able rubbish might be the only evidence of the existenceof the abbey at this day, if the Italian government,sluggishly responding to the indignant appeal of adevoted lover of his countrys history and art, had not,in the year 1894, stayed further demolition by declaringthe ruin a national monument and by making meagreprovision for its preservation. Hardly a building, testifying to the character andsplendor of the Italian past, is more worthy of a visitthan the ruined abbey of San Galgano. Unvisited bythe casual tourist by reason of its remoteness from thecommon highways of travel, utterly untouched by themany vulgar influences of modern life, it has gathered. o SAN GALGANO 385 about itself the atmosphere of silence which settles uponall noble works. On an afternoon in June, abandoningthe hot and dusty highway which I had followed forsome hours, I mounted a grassy bank, and across asun-lit meadow saw it lying, white and glittering likethe gates of pearl. Around the level field, from whosethick clover came the riotous song of summer mountingto its acme, stood the wooded hills, grave and the west, its defiant outline almost obliterated by thestrong light, rose the cliff of Chiusdino. Fronting thelofty citadel and close at hand, lay gently-sloping MonteSiepi with the purple roof of the old round chapel justvisible above the tree-tops. Here at last in the silenceof the white summer afternoon, broken only by thevoices in the grass and the faint, clear call of the cuckoo,the long story of the monastery became perfectly intel-ligible by being lifted out of the conditions of materialfact into th
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