But it attains,
in a singular degree, the end of causing the imagination to fly upward
and alight on its airy battlements. Near it I beheld the square mass of
Or San Michele, and farther to the left the bulky Duomo and the Campanile
close beside it, like a slender bride or daughter; the dome of San
Lorenzo too. The Arno is nowhere visible. Beyond, and on all sides of
the city, the hills pile themselves lazily upward in ridges, here and
there developing into a peak; towards their bases white villas were
strewn numerously, but the upper region was lonely and bare.
As we passed under the arch of the Porta Romana this morning, on our way
into the city, we saw a queer object. It was what we at first took for a
living man, in a garb of light reddish or yellowish red color, of antique
or priestly fashion, and with a cowl falling behind. His face was of the
same hue, and seemed to have been powdered, as the faces of maskers
sometimes are. He sat in a cart, which he seemed to be driving into the
Deity with a load of earthen jars and pipkins, the color of which was
precisely like his own.
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