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By and by we reached Assisi, which is magnificently situated for
pictorial purposes, with a gray castle above it, and a gray wall around
it, itself on a mountain, and looking over the great plain which we had
been traversing, and through which lay our onward way. We drove through
the Piazza Grande to an ancient house a little beyond, where a hospitable
old lady receives travellers for a consideration, without exactly keeping
an inn.
In the piazza we saw the beautiful front of a temple of Minerva,
consisting of several marble pillars, fluted, and with rich capitals
supporting a pediment. It was as fine as anything I had seen at Rome,
and is now, of course, converted into a Catholic church.
I ought to have said that, instead of driving straight to the old lady's,
we alighted at the door of a church near the city gate, and went in to
inspect some melancholy frescos, and thence clambered up a narrow street
to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, old enough, but not very
impressive.


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