and children in bright-hued kerchiefs and flowing white veils, men-mostly tall, comely fellows-in brown or olive fustian and brilliant red and blue ties. To the left of the church a rocky path winds between cypresses and shrines to a Calvary chapel perched aloft. It is an exciting side scene, wild and Alpine, in strange contrast with the classic centre-piece of glittering white temple and pompous approach. There, a suggestion of primitive, oid-world faith; here, all the pride and splendour of Papal Rome.

CHAPTER V.

SAN MARINO.

IT was from the pier at Rimini that we had our first view of San Marino one bright September afternoon. Rushing by rail across the plain the evening before, we had sought it in vain amid the twilight throng of the Umbrian peaks. Now its crisp outline, its triplet of towers, awoke an old longing to visit the oldest republic in the world.

Next to the wonderful church where Renaissance fancy runs riot on the way to Barocco frenzy, where love songs are wrought in marbles of daintiest device, and lust and vainglory blazoned on wall and arch—the church, nominally dedicated to meek St. Francis, but practically to its fierce renovator, Sigismondo Malatesta, whose mistress is here glorified as a saint, while

his murdered wives are thrust away in a corner-next to this, the most striking thing at Rimini is the view from the pier. You look beyond the flamingo and orange sails massed in the port and hiding the grand curve of the Roman bridge, across a stretch of vines and orchards, to purpling hills backed by a wild confusion of jagged and broken summits. You think of the tangled history which Mr. Symonds has so happily entitled "The Age of the Despots," and feel that the scene before you would be an admirable frontispiece to its pages. For these fantastic precipices are a fitting background to the turbulent men of war born in their clefts, and who filled Italian chronicles with their strife. Just as among the Tuscan Apennines the dominant form of twin peaks seems emblematic of the more sober and balanced Tuscan mind, so these abrupt cloven cliffs of Umbria-cloven as by some giant's war-axe—and the ever-recurring forms of rugged promontories and thrusting beaks, may well symbolise the bold, lawless, striving, pushing race, warlike and cruel, strong, subtle, and sensual, of

which the tyrant of Rimini was so notable a type. And on the edge of this grim region San Marino has so commanding a position that you marvel how it contrived to retain its freedom through ages of border broils. For even with the powerful friendship of the lords of Urbino it is strange that the tiny republic should have escaped Malatesta's grasp, when the still steeper stronghold of San Leo so often changed hands, and was tossed like a ball from one chieftain to another. No wonder that the pious citizens of San Marino should have ascribed their safety to the miraculous protection of their patron saint!

Few spots in overrun Italy are less hackneyed than this toy republic. With neither paintings nor sculptures to entice the art pilgrim, and twelve miles and more from the nearest railway station, its rock is seldom scaled by ordinary tourists. Yet, if only as a political curiosity, this "échantillon de république,” as Napoleon called it, is well worth seeing, while its position as a sort of inland Capri is as imposing as that of Orvieto.

So we started from Rimini one bright September morning, almost in the mood of explorers, in a pleasant stir of excited expectancy. The plain crossed, the road winds up hill and down dale to the little torrent that is the frontier line between kingdom and republic. Soon we came to Serravalle, a straggling village with a picturesque tower, and here a pair of white oxen were brought out to pull us up the rough road. Little ravines sparsely set with oaks and birches, and rolling grey hills, newly wrinkled by the plough, replaced the rich greenery of the plain. The spiked blue thistle appeared by the roadside gleaming like sword blades in the sun. The limestone crags of San Marino towered ahead, a natural fortress, and there were peeps of the mountain waste behind. To our right was a series of castle-crowned hills—pretty Verrucchio, the nest of the Malatesta brood; the fierce cliffs of Scorticata and a chain of lower eminences set with prim rows of mulberries. Convents and hamlets and sentinel cypresses break the monotony of the level to the left, and beyond it a faintly tinted sky-line of