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RANDOM IMPRESSIONS FROM AN AUTHOR'S NOTE-BOOK.

By William Shaep.

I.— ITALY.

1. The Approach to Volterra.

AT last, after hours among the mountain districts to the north-west of the Maremma, I am in full view of the heights around Montecatini. I can just make out from where I stand, on the highest level save that of the ridge whereon Vol- terra lies, a white road winding along the slopes of La Bachetona. The view, if not so lovely as that from Belcaro, from Cortona, or even from Montepul- ciano, is even more extensive than the prospect from the southern walls of Perugia, and, in grandeur, excels anything I have yet seen in Italy. To the left, beyond rugged volcanic declivities and barren slopes — metallically aglow, like cuirasses of brass in torchlight — lie leagues upon leagues of Maremma, that wild, deserted, malarious country which is almost as unknown to travellers as the west coast of Africa. To the right, by broken ridges trending to level plains, a grey-green district stretches westward till its sparsely-populated shores are washed by the Mediterranean Sea, whose waters, now of a metallic-grey and now of a brilliant steel- blue, as the clouds with their trailing shadows come and go, I can see afar off as they lave many a blue lieadland ; while amid their tideless depths rise, in azure, dark purple, or pearl-grey, the Islands of Gorgona and Elba, rocky Capraja, and even the dim heights of Corsica. Due westward, in front of the enmassed Apennines, Volterra, the ancient Etrurian city, crowns a long, sloping, isolated hill, sixteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is now late in the afternoon, and gloom gathers within the hollows of the hills on their hither sides. White malarious mists crawl across the Maremma ; the sea grows colder and greyer ; and Volterra itself, seem- ing as if it occupied the whole long summit of its mountain (as its still-standing ancient walls witness it did of yore, in the time of ' old, unhappy, far-off" things '), becomes more stern, more forbidding. '

Half-an-hour later I reached the commencement of the steep ascent, and though I toiled upwards on foot, it was yet necessary to Jiarness a strong mule to the straining and tired horses, who had so long journeyed by villainous roads and bouldered pathways. As I climbed the steep, winding road, I encountered but few wayfarers, only three lightly- clothed and wild-looking peasant women, one of them, a girl of eighteen or twenty, carrying a great bundle of reedy grass upon her head, and walking with an exquisite poise and sway of body. Her eyes, large and of that lustrous velvety darkness visible in twilit waters, turned upon me — with an electric psychical effect beyond description. Such passion, such pathos, such an inheritance of yearning, such an inheritance of regret, dwelt in their depths. The oblivion of Etruria dreamed therefrom; and the vanished Etrurian grace fulfilled itself again in that perfect body, lithe as a leopard, in hue like antique ivory, and passing fair in its beauty. Her bodice was open, and a cluster of blood-red poppies lay against her breasts, firm, rounded, swelling and subsiding with the rhythm of a wave. Twice only have I elsewhere seen such bodily perfection — once, so far away as in the South Seas, among the Pacific islanders, where girls, nude and like living bronze, lay with hair astream upon