Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/67

Rh churches the sublimity of their symbolism so much as in this.

At noon we set off, pushed together in the coupé of the diligence, in a manner more suitable for herrings than for human beings, and which, during the night, became a perfect torment. But the night was beautiful, and as my inconvenient position, and the postillion's knocking on the carriage window at every station to demand his drink-money, took away all possibility of sleep, I busied myself with observing every nocturnal alteration of darkness and light, a spectacle which I had never hitherto seen in perfection. The first rosy tints on the brightening night-heaven were of enchanting beauty. At this moment we were driving along the heights, not far from the romantically-situated lake of Bolsena, celebrated for its ancient mysteries, and for the undiminished beauty of its banks. The country, and the features of the early dawn, were charming. The morning star slid down towards the east, paling by degrees in the young day's increasing light, and the earth lay silent like a slumbering, unpeopled world, as if it were still the morning hour of paradise, before the time of Adam and Eve, and their restless children!

During the whole of the following day, grand expansive views over the country, which extended in long stretching waves of naked mountain and wooded hills, calm, harmonious, softly-waving outlines. Very few villages and fewer towns, none near the road. The region frequently resembled a desert, and became ever more like it the nearer we approached Rome. Not a movement on the roads, not even of robbers, of