In the pavement, yesterday, I noticed the gravestone of a person who
fell six centuries ago in the battle of Monte Aperto, and was buried here
by public decree as a meed of valor.
This afternoon I took a walk out of one of the city gates, and found the
country about Siena as beautiful in this direction as in all others. I
came to a little stream flowing over into a pebbly bed, and collecting
itself into pools, with a scanty rivulet between. Its glen was deep, and
was crossed by a bridge of several lofty and narrow arches like those of
a Roman aqueduct. It is a modern structure, however. Farther on, as I
wound round along the base of a hill which fell down upon the road by
precipitous cliffs of brown earth, I saw a gray, ruined wall on the
summit, surrounded with cypress-trees. This tree is very frequent about
Siena, and the scenery is made soft and beautiful by a variety of other
trees and shrubbery, without which these hills and gorges would have
scarcely a charm. The road was thronged with country people, mostly
women and children, who had been spending the feast-day in Siena; and
parties of boys were chasing one another through the fields, pretty much
as boys do in New England of a Sunday, but the Sienese lads had not the
sense of Sabbath-breaking like our boys.
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