I am grateful to
the old Sienese for having used stone so largely in their domestic
architecture, and thereby rendered their city so grimly picturesque, with
its black palaces frowning upon one another from arched windows, across
narrow streets, to the height of six stories, like opposite ranks of tall
men looking sternly into one another's eyes.
October 11th.--Again I went to the cathedral this morning, and spent an
hour listening to the music and looking through the orderly intricacies
of the arches, where many vistas open away among the columns of the
choir. There are five clustered columns on each side of the nave; then
under the dome there are two more arches, not in a straight line, but
forming the segment of a circle; and beyond the circle of the dome there
are four more arches, extending to the extremity of the chancel. I
should have said, instead of "clustered columns" as above, that there are
five arches along the nave supported by columns. This cathedral has
certainly bewitched me, to write about it so much, effecting nothing with
my pains.
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