Tiber, so rich in heirlooms of antiquity and art, none can boast such
various wealth as this. The moment one leaves the centre of the town,
which is built on a table of rock, the narrow streets plunge down on
every side like dangerous broken flights of stairs: they disappear
under deep cavernous arches, so that if you are below they seem to
lead straight up through the darkness to the soft blue heaven, while
from above they seem to go straight down into deep cellars, but
cellars full of slanting sunshine. And whether you look up or down,
there is always a picture in the dark frame against the bright
background--a woman in a scarlet kerchief with a water-vessel of
antique form, or a ragged brown boy leading a ragged brown donkey, or
a soldier in gay uniform striking a light for his pipe. As soon as
you leave the live part of the town, with the few little _caffès_ and
shops, and the esplanades whence the thrice-lovely landscape unfolds
beneath your gaze, you wander among quiet little paved _piazzas_ with
a bit of daisied grass in their midst, surrounded by great silent
buildings, whence through some opening you descry a street which is a
ravine, and the opposite cliff rising high above you piled close with
gray houses overhung with shrubs and creepers, and little gardens in
their crevices like weeds between the stones of a wall; or you come
out upon a secluded gallery with tall, deserted-looking mansions on
one hand--except that at some sunny window there is always to be seen
a girl's head beside a pot of carnations or nasturtiums--and on the
other a parapet over which you lean to see the town scrambling up the
hillside, while a great breadth of valley and hill and snow-covered
mountain stretches away below.

Then what historical associations, straggling away across three
thousand years to when Perugia was one of the thirty cities of
Etruria, and kept her independence through every vicissitude until