A library is annexed to the
church. The librarian pointed out to me 80 folio volumes of church music
with illuminated plates; likewise an ancient piece of sculpture much
mutilated, viz., a group of the three Graces. In one of the chapels of this
Cathedral are eight columns of verd-antique. I observed a monument of the
Piccolomini family who belong to this city; one of which family figured a
good deal in the Thirty Years' War in Germany. I saw several women in the
Cathedral and at the windows of the houses. The greater part of them were
handsome. The Italian language is spoken here in its greatest purity; it is
the pure Tuscan dialect without the Tuscan aspiration. The Siennese
language is in fact the identical lingua Toscana in bocca Romana.
We arrived the same evening at Buon Convento, an old dismal dirty-looking
town formerly fortified; but the country in the environs is pleasing
enough. The inn here is very bad. On the road between Sienna and this place
I observed a number of mulberry trees.
The next morning, the 5th Sept., we arrived at Radicofani or rather at an
inn or post house facing Radicofani. This is a very ancient city, and from
its being on an eminence it has an imposing appearance. Above it towers an
immense conical shaped mountain, evidently a volcano in former times. In
fact, the whole country hereabouts is volcanic, which is plainly seen from
the immense masses of calcined stones, the exhalations of sulphur and the
dreary wild appearance of the country, where scarce a tree is to be seen. I
never in my life saw so many calcined rocks and stones of great magnitude
heaped together as at Radicofani. It gave the idea as if it were the
identical field of battle between Jupiter and the Titans, and as if the
masses of rock that everywhere meet the eye had been hurled at the Empyreum
by the Titans and had fallen back on the spot from whence they were torn
up. It is indeed very probable that this volcano which vomited forth rocks
and stones in a very remote age, gave rise to the Fable of the war between
Jupiter and the Giants; just as the volcanos in Sicily and Stromboli gave
rise to the story of the Cyclops with one eye (the crater) in their
forehead. But the mountain of Radicofani must have been a volcano anterior
even to Aetna; it presents the image of an ancient world destroyed by fire.
At Ponte Centino the next morning we took our leave of
La patria bella
Di vaghe Donne e di dolce favella;
in plain prose, we left the Tuscan territory, and re-entered the dominions
of His Holiness. After being detained half an hour at the Douane, we
proceeded to Acquapendente to breakfast. The country between Radicofani and
Acquapendente is dreary, thinly populated, little cultivated, and volcanic
steams of sulphur assail the nostrils.
