springs the broken crest of La Vernia, a mass of hard millstone rock
(_macigno_) jutting from desolate beds of lime and shale at the height
of some 3500 feet above the sea. It was here, among the sombre groves
of beech and pine which wave along the ridge, that S. Francis came to
found his infant Order, composed the Hymn to the Sun, and received the
supreme honour of the stigmata. To this point Dante retired when the
death of Henry VII. extinguished his last hopes for Italy. At one
extremity of the wedge-like block which forms La Vernia, exactly on
the watershed between Arno and Tiber, stands the ruined castle of
Chiusi in Casentino. This was one of the two chief places of Lodovico
Buonarroti's podesteria. It may be said to crown the valley of the
Arno; for the waters gathered here flow downwards toward Arezzo, and
eventually wash the city walls of Florence. A few steps farther,
travelling south, we pass into the valley of the Tiber, and, after
traversing a barren upland region for a couple of hours, reach the
verge of the descent upon Caprese. Here the landscape assumes a softer
character. Far away stretch blue Apennines, ridge melting into ridge
above Perugia in the distance. Gigantic oaks begin to clothe the stony
hillsides, and little by little a fertile mountain district of
chestnut-woods and vineyards expands before our eyes, equal in charm
to those aërial hills and vales above Pontremoli. Caprese has no
central commune or head-village. It is an aggregate of scattered
hamlets and farmhouses, deeply embosomed in a sea of greenery. Where
the valley contracts and the infant Tiber breaks into a gorge, rises a
wooded rock crowned with the ruins of an ancient castle. It was here,
then, that Michelangelo first saw the light. When we discover that he
was a man of more than usually nervous temperament, very different in
quality from any of his relatives, we must not forget what a fatiguing
journey had been performed by his mother, who was then awaiting her
delivery. Even supposing that Lodovico Buonarroti travelled from