Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/286

 These little white hamlets and towns of Italy glisten all over her long, low, mountain sides, their church towers red-roofed with tiles, or brown with wooden belfry, or pointed with the air-perched statue of a saint in their midst, and not seldom around them the circle of broken walls which tells the tale of their ancientness and of their bygone wars. Oftentimes they are old as Rome itself; classic as Tusculum; full of memories as the foundations of Troy; but ho one comes to them. They are little, lonely, humble places now, far out of the highways of men; and, save their spinning-women, and their hinds and herdsmen, and their priest, they shelter no living thing. When winter comes, they are severed by unbridged torrents even from other villages that lie along the same line of hills; and up to their heights in the snow, or in the heat, no traveller ever wanders.

There is something quaint, pathetic, touching, in the lives that begin and end in these solitary places; the hamlet is the nation of its people, and the church tower to them is the centre of the world. The great plains lie beneath them, and often from their walls the sea is visible, but the