the windows of the palace, they fought in their shirts with swords and daggers. Both showed much courage and daring, but at last Agostino of Pistoia, who was both handsome and tall of stature, fell on the ground dead, and at once victory was cried for Antonio Romano, who was, by his father's side, of Perugia; but from the many and grievous wounds the Pistoian had given him, Antonio was considered by many as good as dead, and was carried home by his friends; however, by the great care taken of him, he after a while recovered his strength."

Beside this Chapel of the Cambio is the Sala adorned with Perugino's famous frescoes; a little farther on is the richly sculptured doorway of the Palazzo, and within this is the Pinacoteca containing a very interesting collection; here are marvellous frescoes by

Bonfigli, and pictures by him and by Piero della Francesca, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and others, besides numerous Fra Angelicos, and many pictures by Perugino and his pupils. We were too much interested in the town to-day to go into the galleries, and after looking at the doorway and the quaint iron lamps of the Palazzo, we turned the corner to see its other façade.

This has a charming loggia, and there are a salient lion and griffin on the wall; and the rusty chains commemorating the victory of the Perugians over the Sienese in the 14th century; the griffin, being the emblem of Perugia, is to be found repeated in all the decorative work of the city. This palace was built early in the 14th century from the design of the Benedictine Fra Bevignate of Perugia.

Past the cloisters of the cathedral we went

down to the bottom of the street. On one side is a fragment of an old palace, and on the right a quaint series of ancient grey arches full of most striking effects of light and shade.

A steep street goes down from this portal,

ANGELS, SAN BERNARDINO.

From a Drawing by THOMAS MACQUOID.

and we saw here, and afterwards in many of the old streets, carved stands for flower-pots built out from the grey walls, making a pleasant contrast to the brilliant red and orange flowers blossoming in these hoary receptacles; sometimes ordinary flower-pots are held fast by metal rings fastened

into the wall. Outside the closed door of one of the houses was a pretty ragged fairhaired child, jumping or dancing on her bare toes and talking seemingly to the doorpost; she could not reach the knocker, and she was merrily amusing herself by talking to the flies on the wall while she waited.

We inquired for the house of Perugino, but it appeared that we were too far north, so we turned at a sharp angle, and soon reached a silent open space in front of a church, the Chiesa Nuova. Down an arched passage close by, and up a side street on the right, we came to the Perugino house, denoted by a tablet, in the Via Deliziosa. There was nothing special in its appearance, the hilly street was grass-grown, and as silent as the grave. We went back again, and soon descended steeply into a very old quarter, the projecting claw on this side that overlooks the deep valley at Porta Susanna, and forms one point of the Cupa. On our way we passed the last remaining fortress of the nobles, the tall brick Torre degli Scalzi, behind this are remains of the Etruscan wall. Presently we passed another church, gay with a scarlet and gold curtain ready for to-morrow's festa, then, by a quaint little street with brick flights of steps leading down into most picturesque side-turnings, we came in sight of a small house, its grey stone balcony screened by a vine-wreathed pergola; in a few minutes we reached the convent of St. Francis, beside which is the matchless façade of the Oratory of San Bernardino.

We found this façade even more beautiful in its detail than we had expected, and the charming colour of its marbles and terracotta adds warmth to the exquisite sculptures, which seemed to us finer, both in design and execution, than any Della Robbia work we have seen; and we are glad to find this opinion endorsed by Mr. Perkins in his Tuscan Sculptors. This façade is the work of Agostino Ducci, or Gucci, of Florence. A circular arch surmounts the two square-headed entrance doors, these are surrounded by beautiful and delicately carved ornament in low relief; above them is a frieze representing events in the life of San Bernardino and over this, in the centre of the tympanum of the arch is a vesica, bordered by tongues of flame, and containing a figure of the saint. On each side of the vesica are four angels placed diagonally; each angel plays a musical instrument, and each one differs from the rest, the disposition of the drapery of these angels is most artistic and original; beyond them on either side, filling up the rest of the

space, are heads of singing cherubs.

There

are many other beautiful figures in basrelief, those on the pilasters supporting the arch are specially lovely, (one set of these is given in the cut). This is all exquisite work; but scaffolding was outside it, and on inquiry we heard that it is about to be restored!

San Bernardino is close to gardens, and orchards, and drying grounds; beyond the convent of San Francesco the old wall goes up northward and then turns east towards the Arca Augusta, but we turned southward, and a short walk down a steep narrow street beneath an old archway led us out of the low browed passage of the Porta Susanna on to the wall itself. This rises up directly from La Cupa-as the indentation which the valley here makes is called. It is remarkable how the old wall follows the curves of the hills, always keeping close to the edge of the descent, and, as I have already said, where an angle is sharply turned, a bold round tower stands out against the blue sky.

Below the wall the fertile dell was literally covered with vines and olives, fig and mulberry trees, and below them were plots of cabbage and lettuce; in winter a torrent flows through the Cupa. This afternoon the long range of hills on the left was redbrown, variegated by patches of green and grey; behind its shoulder a more distant mountain showed opal, and on the right the varied houses of the ancient city rose one behind another-the old brick tower of the Scalzi above them all. Following the inward angle which the wall makes here, before it goes out far away westward to another point of the star-shaped hill, the view becomes more beautiful, mountains cross one another, and through the openings reveal another ridge behind, now a glowing opal tint as the sun sinks nearer; on the right the hills stretch in two long purple undulating lines, between which a rosy vapour moves slowly, deepening in colour as it rises towards the orangetinted clouds above; these are partly obscured by masses of purple-grey, but southward the grey has taken a more lurid tinge, and across it floats a pale phantom-like cloud. Now the far-off hill, as we look southward, is a purple-blue, and, between us and it, the town seems to climb up from all this beauty in terraced houses, bowered in vines and gardens.

This is not so extended a prospect as some others that are to be had from the old walls of Perugia, but I am inclined to consider it one of the most interesting, from the double view it offers of the town, and of the quaint

formation of the steep-sided, triangular valley with its mysterious depth of vegetation below.

We keep along the wall as long as we can, then our road leads us away from it, between old stone garden walls with vines and figs peeping above them. Quaint sidestreets look tempting on our left, and going up one of these we find a portion of old Etruscan wall with an archway of the same period. Beyond this the street goes up steeply to where a brick arch spans it; on one side a flight of broken steps leads beside the wall to a tall house above it; a sort of balcony, corbelled out from the face of the wall between the house and the grey pointed arch, is filled with charming foliage and flowers; an iron crane projects from the balcony over a square, brick water tank beside the broken steps. The arch has two projecting imposts, massive slabs of travertine, and beside one of these, gleaming out of the shadow, is a little shrine with a nosegay of freshly-gathered flowers.

In and out of narrow streets, up and down quaint steps, we reached at last the Porta Eburnea a charmingly quaint old gate, from which a steep road goes down into the country.

Here is an extended view of the wall, which curves grandly forward to a boldly projecting point, and completely shuts out all view of La Cupa; the point itself is crowned by a most picturesque round tower, standing out vividly from its background of purple hills. The road from the Porta Eburnea looked attractive, to-day it was thronged with peasants on their way from market. Some of the women stopped just outside the gate, and taking off their boots slung them over their shoulders, or put them in their baskets, then they came down the steep dusty road with bare, brown feet. Most of these barefooted women wore handsome coral necklaces; and yet in the shops they asked from eighty to three hundred francs for a string of these beads. Just outside the gate a man and several boys were playing at a game with walnuts.

The pleasantest and shortest way to the railway is by the Porta Eburnea, and one fine morning I started with a friend for a journey into the country from this point by a steep path which leaves the road just outside the gate-the path curves along the side of the hill below the old wall-the bank was gay with autumn butterflies and wild flowers, and wreathed with a luxuriant growth of wild gourd, full of pale blossoms and small furry fruit; all was so wild, it seemed impossible that we had only just left a busy

city behind us. At the turn of the path we came into an exquisite lane between bramblecovered banks; on one side the dry bed of a little rill, the branches of quaint trees met overhead, and although from the custom of constantly stripping the leaves the foliage was scanty, we went down the steep path in cool and chequered shadow-lizards

ON THE WAY TO THE STATION.

From a Drawing by THOMAS MACQUOID.

darting across before us, and gleaming as they passed into the light.

This constant stripping of the leaves from the trees gives a strange appearance to many of them; in this lane the gnarled and twisted branches thus revealed looked grotesque in the bright sunshine. A man high up in one of them was singing as gaily as a bird, while he filled with leaves a sack fastened to one of the branches.

Now and then the transparent rich purple of the shadow was traversed by a bar of golden light, and sometimes this came in irregular flecks from spaces between the twisted trunks and crossing branches.

A woman coming up from the station with

a heavy basket on her head said, "Buon giorno," and smiled pleasantly as she passed, and a countryman, a fine, handsome fellow with glowing black eyes, wished us a good journey. He was going at such a pace that he must have been bound for the station-for the easy, leisureful movements of its people seem to me one of the charms of Italy, so entirely in harmony with the burning, palpitating blue of its skies and the careless luxuriance of its vegetation.

Near the end of the descent is a washing place, and here a woman on her knees was hard at work scrubbing and soaping linen. Looking back up the lane we saw the grey town peeping at us through the trees-the tower of a house on the Piazza a prominent feature in the view. At the foot of the lane we crossed the dusty high road and again followed the short way--here very steep and rugged at the end we came out at a cross road where the Fontana Borghese at one angle makes a striking feature; partly shadowed by tall cypresses, it glowed red in the sunshine. The date is 1615; its basin is green with age and the constant drip, drip of the water. It was surrounded with wine carts each drawn by a pair of huge white oxen; it seems fortunate these beautiful creatures are so gentle, for their wide-spreading, sharplypointed horns make them formidable; indeed, when the wine season began during our stay in Perugia, we had sometimes to take refuge in a shop while they passed, for the horns of a pair of these splendid beasts stretched from one side of a narrow street to the other. Inside a little wine shop opposite the fountain we heard shouts of "Dieci". -"otto ""sette." &c., from the players at morra.

One of the charms of Perugia is the freshness of the people. My companion on this excursion had stayed several times in the town, and when she appeared at the station all the officials were at her service, full of little friendly attentions-especially one giant-like porter called "Lungo."

The railway takes its course through the valley of the Tiber with mountain views on each side. Perugia stands grandly on the top of her hills, while stretching out like an advanced guard on one side is the church and spire of San Pietro, and on a spur to the west Santa Giuliana; but the city is not so picturesque from this side because of the modern buildings on the great Piazza Victor Emanuele. On the left we saw the outside of the famous Etruscan tomb of the Volunni, and soon after we passed the pretty village of Ponte San Giovanni, getting a glimpse of the Tiber. From the railway one gets a