This view has been celebrated by more than one poet and has given the world-known name—Bellosguardo—to this side of Florence. But only at twilight does the whole beauty of the scene appear. Strange white gleams touch the hills, and in the uncertain light of the closing day there is a confused sense of colour as though the wind were driving great masses of autumn leaves before it through the valley. Then the clearer evening glow succeeds the twilight, and Florence and her russet-coloured roofs stand out clear again in a setting of shadowed hills. * * * * * Adjoining Villa Bellosguardo is the Villa dell’ Ombrellino, now belonging to M. Zouboff. Here lived for sixteen years one of the greatest of Italians—Galileo Galilei; and here he composed the dialogue discussing the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems. All learned Florentines and every foreigner of distinction breasted the steep hill of Bellosguardo to listen to the wonderful conversation of Galileo. Eloquent, sarcastic, brimming over with fun and humour yet full of learning, he was a delightful companion. Virgil, Horace and Seneca he knew by heart and often quoted, as he did the poetry of Petrarch, of Berni, and especially of Ariosto, for whom he had a great admiration. He never permitted Tasso to be compared to Ariosto, saying there was the same difference between them as though a man tried to eat a cucumber after a good melon. Galileo was only happy in the country, declaring cities to be the prisons of human intellect, “whereas the country is the book of nature, always open to him who cares to read and study it with intelligence, for the writing and the alphabet in which it is written are so many propositions, problems and geometrical corollaries, by whose help some of the infinite mysteries of nature may be penetrated.” In 1633, after the second bitter persecution suffered at Rome by Galileo, he was allowed to return to Florence and live on “Thy sunny slope, Arcetri, sung of old For its green wine; dearer to me, to most, As dwelt on by that great Astronomer, Seven years a prisoner at the city gate, Let in but in his grave-clothes. Sacred be His villa (justly was it called the Gem). Sacred the lawn, where many a cypress threw Its length of shadow, while he watched the stars. Sacred the vineyard, where, while yet his sight Glimmered, at blush of morn he dressed his vines, Chanting aloud in gaiety of heart Some verse of Ariosto.—There unseen, In manly beauty Milton stood before him, Gazing with reverent awe—Milton, his guest, Just then come forth, all life and enterprise; _He_ in his old age and extremity, Blind, at noonday exploring with his staff; His eyes upturned as to the golden sun, His eyeballs idly rolling.”[44] [Illustration: (Drawing of Villa seen through trees.)]