Sunday with these people is
like any other feast-day, and consecrated cheerful enjoyment. So much
religious observance, as regards outward forms, is diffused through the
whole week that they have no need to intensify the Sabbath except by
making it gladden the other days.
Returning through the same gate by which I had come out, I ascended into
the city by a long and steep street, which was paved with bricks set
edgewise. This pavement is common in many of the streets, which, being
too steep for horses and carriages, are meant only to sustain the lighter
tread of mules and asses. The more level streets are paved with broad,
smooth flag-stones, like those of Florence,--a fashion which I heartily
regret to change for the little penitential blocks of Rome. The walls of
Siena in their present state, and so far as I have seen them, are chiefly
brick; but there are intermingled fragments of ancient stone-work, and I
wonder why the latter does not prevail more largely. The Romans,
however,--and Siena had Roman characteristics,--always liked to build of
brick, a taste that has made their ruins (now that the marble slabs are
torn off) much less grand than they ought to have been.
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