ficial life. All is luxury, convenience, and, so to say, vulgar refinement, but for our own part we prefer the solitude of Soglio. There, at least, we have no brass band! CHAPTER IV. ASOLO AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. I. THE turrets of Vicenza, and the fine group of mountains behind, were glowing with sunset fires as we steamed across the plain. We had caught the perfect Italian landscape at its most magical moment; a rush through sculptured streets had shown us a pageant in brick and stone; palaces, piazzas and churches, medieval towers and the Renaissance phantasies of Palladio's theatre. So now the rapidly fading twilight was grateful alike to eyes and brain, and served to confirm our possession of the wonders just seen. Night had fallen before the train dropped us at Castelfranco. One could barely distinguish the gate of the inner town, surmounted by the lion of St. Mark, once Treviso's best defence against Paduan raids, but now chiefly famed as the shrine of Giorgione's great altar-piece. The painter's statue amongst the trees on the bastion was only a faint white patch in the darkness, and soon, the lamps of his birthplace left behind we were jingling along a straight road, between perpetual acacias and Indian corn, only interrupted by numerous cross-ways, one or two hamlets and villas, and here and there a group of dark figures taking their rest after the day's work by squatting sociably in a circle in the dust. On and on, but at last the horses' pace slackened. We were mounting a hill, lights twinkled high about us; rocks, instead of hedges, bordered the road; there was a sound of fast-running water. Higher and higher between over-arching trees. Suddenly these part, the carriage stops, loved voices shout welcome, we are at Casa Bolzon, at the gates of Asolo! This towered city on a foothill of the Alps, overhanging the vast Trevisan plain, has a special claim on English hearts as the abode of Robert Browning during the last summer of his life. He had known and loved it from his youth, for on his first Italian journey straight by sea from London to Venice— he had crossed the plain on foot, to visit the home of Caterina Cornaro, and impressed by the charm of the place, chose it for the scene of "Pippa Passes." Though giving little definite description, save in Ottilia's lines: "Ah the clear morning! I can see St. Marks ! That black streak is the Belfry. Stop: Vicenza There's Padua plain enough, that blue !" one feels that the poet was inspired by the life and landscape of Asolo, its dawns and sunsets, its "" crescent moon rising over the Trevisan plain. Does he not tell us in "Asolando "?— "How many a year my Asolo, Since-one step just from sea to land- The "one step just " is, however, a long stride even by day, with the castle-crowned height as a beacon to cheer one across the level and up the wooded ascent of Foresto della Casella. Asolo climbs two hills, and here to the south, crowning the higher of the twain, stands the rugged shell, brown and windowless, of its ancient Rocca a stronghold dating from Euganean days. Below, a space of turf and broken ground, vines, oleanders and roses stream down to the terraced villas overhanging the road, while far beneath, the vast plain stretches away to the sea, its greenery transfused with the lovely blue haze peculiar to the south. Innumerable villages and towns are dotted about on the azure space, the sun strikes here and there on tall white church or tower, a streak of mist simulates an inland sea, the silhouettes of Venetian and Paduan belfries cut the horizon, and the Euganean hills are shadowy cones in the middle distance beyond San Zenone, that blood-stained fortress wherein tyrant Eccelino paid the penalty of his crimes. Beyond Montebelluno, to the left, lies Vicenza; Bassano over there to the right, at the lowest step of the mountain chain that curves so grandly round behind Asolo. |