The piazza in front of the Prefettura is my favourite resort on these
nights of full moon. The evening twilight is made up partly of sunset
fading over Thrasymene and Tuscany; partly of moonrise from the
mountains of Gubbio and the passes toward Ancona. The hills are capped
with snow, although the season is so forward. Below our parapets the
bulk of S. Domenico, with its gaunt, perforated tower, and the finer
group of S. Pietro, flaunting the arrowy "Pennacchio di Perugia," jut
out upon the spine of hill which dominates the valley of the Tiber. As
the night gloom deepens, and the moon ascends the sky, these buildings
seem to form the sombre foreground to some French etching. Beyond them
spreads the misty moon-irradiated plain of Umbria. Over all rise shadowy
Apennines, with dim suggestions of Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Montefalco,
and Spoleto on their basements. Little thin whiffs of breezes, very
slight and searching, flit across, and shiver as they pass from Apennine
to plain. The slowly moving population--women in veils, men
winter-mantled--pass to and fro between the buildings and the grey
immensity of sky. Bells ring. The bugles of the soldiers blow retreat in
convents turned to barracks. Young men roam the streets beneath, singing
May songs. Far, far away upon the plain, red through the vitreous
moonlight ringed with thundery gauze, fires of unnamed castelli
smoulder. As we lean from ledges eighty feet in height, gas vies with
moon in chequering illuminations on the ancient walls; Etruscan
mouldings, Roman letters, high-piled hovels, suburban world-old
dwellings plastered like martins' nests against the masonry.
Sunlight adds more of detail to this scene. To the right of Subasio,
where the passes go from Foligno towards Urbino and Ancona, heavy masses
of thunder-cloud hang every day; but the plain and hill-buttresses are
clear transparent blueness. First comes Assisi, with S. M. degli Angeli
below; then Spello; then Foligno; then Trevi; and, far away, Spoleto;
with, reared against those misty battlements, the village height of
Montefalco--the "ringhiera dell'Umbria," as they call it in this
country. By daylight, the snow on yonder peaks is clearly visible, where
the Monti della Sibilla tower up above the sources of the Nera and
Velino from frigid wastes of Norcia. The lower ranges seem as though
painted, in films of airiest and palest azure, upon china; and then
comes the broad, green champaign, flecked with villages and farms. Just
at the basement of Perugia winds Tiber, through sallows and grey
poplar-trees, spanned by ancient arches of red brick, and guarded here
and there by castellated towers. The mills beneath their dams and weirs
are just as Raphael drew them; and the feeling of air and space reminds
one, on each coign of vantage, of some Umbrian picture. Every hedgerow
is hoary with May-bloom and honeysuckle. The oaks hang out their
golden-dusted tassels. Wayside shrines are decked with laburnum boughs
and iris blossoms plucked from the copse-woods, and where spires of
purple and pink orchis variegate the thin, fine grass. The land waves
far and wide with young corn, emerald green beneath the olive-trees,
which take upon their underfoliage tints reflected from this verdure or
red tones from the naked earth. A fine race of _contadini_, with large,
heroically-graceful forms, and beautiful dark eyes and noble faces, move
about this garden, intent on ancient, easy tillage of the kind Saturnian
soil.