There was not a scholar in the party,
so we all returned unenlightened, but profoundly interested and
impressed, and with that delightful sense of stimulated curiosity
which is worth more than all Eurekas. With the exception of a few
weapons and trinkets, which we saw at the museum, this is all that
remains of the mighty Etruscans, save the shapes of the common red
pottery which is spread out wholesale in the open space opposite the
cathedral on market-days--the most graceful and useful which could
be devised, and which have not changed their model since earlier days
than the occupants of those tombs could remember.
[Illustration: THE TIBER NEAR PERUGIA.]
The conquering Roman has left his sign-manual everywhere, but one
is so used to him in Italy that the scantier records of later ages
interest us more here. Like every other old Italian town, Perugia
had its great family, the Baglioni, who lorded it over the place,
sometimes harshly and cruelly enough, sometimes generously and
splendidly--protectors of popular rights and patrons of art and
letters. Their mediaeval history is full of picturesque incident and
dramatic catastrophe: it would make a most romantic volume, but
a thick one. At length the Perugians, master and men, grew too
turbulent, and Pope Paul III. put them down, and sat upon them, so to
speak, by building the citadel.
But time would fail us to tell of the Baglioni, or Pope Paul the
Borghese, or Fortebraccio, the chivalric _condottiere_ who led the
Perugians to war against their neighbors of Todi, or even the still
burning memories of the sack of Perugia by command of the present
pope.
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