Page:Notes ecclesiological and picturesque.djvu/115

94 The nave-roof open, of low pitch, painted in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, with a checkie pattern; white, grey, and blue; one small Romanesque light on each side. There is a cinquecento chrismatory. The porch, a low wall, with red and white marble shafts that support the roof—old men there waiting for mass, to commence in half an hour. Here I first made trial of my little stock of Slavonic; which, derived from the ancient language only, must have had a ludicrously archaic effect to my auditors. However, it served as a medium of communication, and a cheerful, contented pastoral people they seemed. Veglia is a perfect labyrinth of cross paths. Rock, rock, rock, stone, stone, stone, everywhere; deep rocky lanes, broad stony moors; forests and forests of one low bright-leaved bush; the turf, such as it is, painted with orchises, cowslips, and primroses. Walking so fatiguing I never remember; every step has to be picked—sharp rocks, round rocks, square rocks—sharp stones, square stones, round stones; fixed rocks, moving rocks, and fixed stones, mile after mile. The country is pretty enough: now heathy hills, now the bush-forest; sometimes a wheat field, to be measured by feet, or rather inches.

How often was I reminded of the parable in Isaiah, of the "vineyard on a very fruitful hill," where the lord "fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof!" The stones, here so gathered out, form the wall of the field—a wall not rarely as thick as the field is broad. And what play-grounds for lizards those walls are! How their green and gold contrasts with the white spar, or the grey lichen! And what pretty little beasts