The later pictures are not so interesting nor is the collection of them so complete as it is of the others. Room III is that in which the work is most beautiful. There were several students at work drawing from the life, and in one of the rooms all the designs submitted in competition for prizes were exhibited. The architectural designs were generally very commonplace but one or two for a holy-water stoup showed power of drawing and some fancy. Renaissance is the only style thought of.... _September 2._ The view from Cortona is very fine, over the broad Val de Chiana with the end of Lake Thrasimene full in view, and the irregular mountain outlines of Monte Cortona and other heights filling up the whole of the background. We left after only two hours’ pause and soon reached the head of the lake. We were busy making out all the sites of the battle (which may be done with great vividness), when we reached the Papal dogana. There were two difficulties--first, my passport was improperly viséd but this I got over; and second, our driver had no visé at all, and it was half an hour before he was allowed to take us on as far as the next village under strict promise to come back again at once. It rained heavily as we started and we lost some of the beauty of this the best part of our drive. Thrasimene is a grand sheet of water but wants some striking feature on its banks, some jutting out rocks or mighty hills plunging perpendicularly into its depths, to make it thoroughly attractive. Now it has a deserted look: its banks are not grand and yet no houses or villages show there and one gets a rather gloomy impression. The place at which we changed our horse, Pasignano, is a miserable Italian village,--and how miserable that is I can hardly say--with its fair proportion of beggars, _i.e._, every one whose eye you catch holds out a hand immediately for a _mezzo baioccho_. It is prettily situated, and, as one of the places at which _vetturini_ stop on the road to Rome, ought to be rather better favoured as to an inn. The only one did not look promising and we preferred fasting to trying it. A few miles more and we left the lake, and aided by two bullocks climbed a steep hill above its banks, reached the cathedral and village of Magione, and drove the rest of the way by moonlight to Perugia where we were heartily glad to find ourselves at 10.30 P.M. very ready for something to eat. _September 4._