A Chain of Cities - Page 2

chief recommendations. This great man was at
Assisi in force, and a brand-new inn for his accommodation has
just been opened cheek by jowl with the church of St. Francis. I
don't know that even the dire discomfort of this harbourage makes
it seem less impertinent; but I confess I sought its protection,
and the great view seemed hardly less beautiful from my window
than from the gallery of the convent. This view embraces the
whole wide reach of Umbria, which becomes as twilight deepens a
purple counterfeit of the misty sea. The visitor's first errand
is with the church; and it's fair furthermore to admit that when
he has crossed that threshold the position and quality of his
hotel cease for the time to be matters of moment. This two-fold
temple of St. Francis is one of the very sacred places of Italy,
and it would be hard to breathe anywhere an air more heavy with
holiness. Such seems especially the case if you happen thus to
have come from Rome, where everything ecclesiastical is, in
aspect, so very much of this world--so florid, so elegant, so
full of accommodations and excrescences. The mere site here makes
for authority, and they were brave builders who laid the
foundation-stones. The thing rises straight from a steep
mountain-side and plunges forward on its great substructure of
arches even as a crowned headland may frown over the main. Before
it stretches a long, grassy piazza, at the end of which you look
up a small grey street, to see it first climb a little way the
rest of the hill and then pause and leave a broad green slope,
crested, high in the air, with a ruined castle. When I say before
it I mean before the upper church; for by way of doing something
supremely handsome and impressive the sturdy architects of the
thirteenth century piled temple upon temple and bequeathed a
double version of their idea. One may imagine them to have
intended perhaps an architectural image of the relation between
heart and head. Entering the lower church at the bottom of the
great flight of steps which leads from the upper door, you seem
to push at least into the very heart of Catholicism.

For the first minutes after leaving the clearer gloom you catch
nothing but a vista of low black columns closed by the great
fantastic cage surrounding the altar, which is thus placed, by
your impression, in a sort of gorgeous cavern. Gradually you
distinguish details, become accustomed to the penetrating chill,
and even manage to make out a few frescoes ; but the general
effect remains splendidly sombre and subterranean. The vaulted
roof is very low and the pillars dwarfish, though immense in
girth, as befits pillars supporting substantially a cathedral.
The tone of the place is a triumph of mystery, the