a prospect. The denudation and abrasion of
innumerable ages, wrought by slow persistent action of weather and
water on an upheaved mountain mass, are here made visible. Every wave
in that vast sea of hills, every furrow in their worn flanks, tells
its tale of a continuous corrosion still in progress. The dominant
impression is one of melancholy. We forget how Romans, countermarching
Carthaginians, trod the land beneath us. The marvel of San Marino,
retaining independence through the drums and tramplings of the last
seven centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder. We turn
instinctively in thought to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war
with unknown nature-forces and malignant rulers of the universe.


Omai disprezza
Te, la natura, il brutto
Poter che, ascoso, a comun danno impera,
E l' infinita vanita del tutto.

And then, straining our eyes southward, we sweep the dim blue distance
for Recanati, and remember that the poet of modern despair and
discouragement was reared in even such a scene as this.

The town of San Marino is grey, narrow-streeted, simple; with a great,
new, decent, Greek-porticoed cathedral, dedicated to the eponymous
saint. A certain austerity defines it from more picturesque
hill-cities with a less uniform history. There is a marble statue of
S. Marino in the choir of his church; and in his cell is shown the
stone bed and pillow on which he took austere repose. One narrow
window near the saint's abode commands a proud but melancholy
landscape of distant hills and seaboard. To this, the great absorbing
charm of San Marino, our eyes instinctively, recurrently, take
flight. It is a landscape which by variety and beauty thralls
attention, but which by its interminable sameness might grow almost
overpowering. There is no relief. The gladness shed upon far humbler
Northern lands in May is ever absent here. The German word
_Gemuethlichkeit_, the English phrase 'a home of ancient peace,' are
here alike by art and nature untranslat