There are a great many items which go to make up Tuscany and the
specially Tuscan mood. The country is at once hilly and mountainous,
but rich in alluvial river valleys, as flat and as wide, very often,
as plains; and the chains which divide and which bound it are as
various as can be: the crystalline crags of Carrara, the washed away
cones and escarpments of the high Apennines, repeating themselves in
counter forts and foothills, and the low, closely packed ridges of the
hills between Florence and Siena. Hence there is always a view,
definite and yet very complex, made up of every variety of line, but
always of clearest perspective: perfect horizontals at one's feet,
perfect perpendiculars opposite the eye, a constant alternation of
looking up and looking down, a never-failing possibility of looking
_beyond_, an outlet everywhere for the eye, and for the breath; and
endless intricacy of projecting spur and engulfed ravine, of valley
above valley, and ridge beyond ridge; and all of it, whether
definitely modelled by stormy lights or windy dryness, or washed to
mere outline by sunshine or mist, always massed into intelligible,
harmonious, and ever-changing groups. Ever changing as you move, hills
rising or sinking as you mount or descend, furling or unfurling as you
go to the right or to the left, valleys and ravines opening or closing
up, the whole country altering, so to speak, its attitude and gesture
as quickly almost, and with quite as perfect consecutiveness, as does
a great cathedral when you walk round it. And, for this reason, never
letting you rest; keeping _you_ also in movement, feet, eyes and
fancy. Add to all this a particular topographical feeling, very strong
and delightful, which I can only describe as that of seeing all the
kingdoms of the earth. In the high places close to Florence (and with
that especial lie of the land everything is a _high place_) a view is
not only of foregrounds and backgrounds, river troughs and mountain
lines of great variety, but of whole districts, or at least
indications of districts--distant peaks making you feel the places at
their feet--which you know to be extremely various: think of the
Carraras with their Mediterranean seaboard, the high Apennines with
Lombardy and the Adriatic behind them, the Siena and Volterra hills
leading to the Maremma, and the great range of the Falterona, with the
Tiber issuing from it, leading the mind through Umbria to Rome!
The imagination is as active among these Florentine hills as is the
eye, or as the feet and lungs have been, pleasantly tired, delighting
in the moment's rest, after climbing those steep places among the
pines or the myrtles, under the scorch of the wholesome summer sun, or
in the face of the pure, snowy wind. The wind, so rarely at rest, has
helped to make the Tuscan spirit, calling for a certain resoluteness
to resist it, but, in return, taking all sense of weight away, making
the body merge, so to speak, into eye and mind, and turning one, for a
little while, into part of the merely visible and audible. The
frequent possibility of such views as I have tried to define, of such
moments of fulness of life, has given, methinks, the quality of
definiteness and harmony, of active, participated in, greatness, to
the art of Tuscany.