(...)"PERUGIAAS you come to Perugia from Florence and Terontola, past the mystical lake of Trasimeno, where, on an island surrounded by whispering rushes that seem ever to be commanding silence, St. Francis spent the Lent of which the author of the Fwretti tells us, you might think the city that reveals herself so fantastically, first on the right hand and then on the left between the low Umbrian Hills, only a great fortress, the castle of some belated tyrant. On a nearer view there is something of a great dignity in her isolation on her hill-top, which is, after all, not the last low spur of the indestructible Apennine but the deposits, age after age, of the Tiber flowing towards Rome and the sea. And even as long and long ago the Tiber left her, so that now even after the fiercest storms or the deepest snows she hears nothing of his terrible song, so at last the world too has fallen away from her, leaving her alone on her beautiful hill, surrounded only by elemental things—the sun, the moon, the stars, and the unchanging mountains. More than a mile away the railway slinks towards Rome and the sea, fearful of her aspect, since it may(...)".
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