Soon after leaving the lake, we enter Tuscany, and the advantage here both in cultivation and picturesque beauty, is in favour of the papal states. Cortona is on the top of a high hill, and commands a view of an extensive valley, but its situation is not to be compared to that of Perugia. I expected to have found more interest at Cortona than was really the case; the principal antiquities are the walls of the city, of Cyclopean masonry, not of the earliest style, but of that where the stones lie for the most part in courses nearly horizontal; and a small sepulchral chamber, a little below the town, called the grotto of Pythagoras. It is built of large blocks of sandstone; the doorway remains, and the rebate for the door, and two holes in the sill and lintel for the pivot on which it turned. It is arched over, the arch being composed of four, or perhaps five stones, each of which is the whole length of the edifice, and rests upon a rudely semicircular stone at each end. These arch-stones are really wedge-shaped in the section, though in this case such a form would not be necessary for their support; but the builders, whoever they were, were without doubt acquainted with the principle of the arch, though perhaps afraid to confide much to it. The room is internally about seven feet square, and has had small square recesses at the sides, perhaps for cinerary urns. I had been taught to expect a good museum of antiquities, but it had been dispersed in order to save it from the Neapolitans, and seemed not likely to be ever restored. The fever had driven the gentlemen of the place to their country residences, and I could not gain admission to the private collections.