The next morning, after toiling up a considerable ascent, we suddenly rounded the shoulder of a mountain, and found ourselves at the edge of a long glen, walled up at one extremity by a precipice with an old town upon its brow, and a waterfall pouring off at its side, and opening away at the other into a broad, gently-sloped valley, cultivated like a garden as far as the eye could distinguish. I think I have seen an engraving of it in the Landscape Annual. Taken together, it is positively the most beautiful view I ever saw, from the road edge, as you wind up into the town of _Acquapendente_. The precipice might be a hundred feet, and from its immediate edge were built up the walls of the houses, so that a child at the window might throw its plaything into the bottom of the ravine. It is scarce a pistol-shot across the glen, and the two hills on either side lean off from the level of the town in one long soft declivity to the valley--the little river which pours off the rock at the very base of the church, fretting and fuming its way between to the meadows--its stony bed quite hidden by the thick vegetation of its banks. The bells were ringing to mass, and the echoes came back to us at long distances with every modulation. The streets, as we entered the town, were full of people hurrying to the churches; the women with their red shawls thrown about their heads, and the men with their immense dingy cloaks flung romantically over their shoulders, with a grace, one and all, that in a Parisian dandy, would be attributed to a consummate study of effect. For outline merely, I think there is nothing in costume which can surpass the closely-stockinged leg, heavy cloak, and slouched hat of an Italian peasant. It is added to by his indolent, and, consequently, graceful motion and attitudes. Johnson, in his book on the climate of Italy, says their sloth is induced by _malaria_. You will see a man watching goats or sheep, with his back against a rock, quite motionless for hours together. His dog feels, apparently, the same influence, and lies couched in his long white hair, with his eyes upon the flock, as lifeless, and almost as picturesque, as his master. The town of San Lorenzo is a handful of houses on the top of a hill which hangs over Lake Bolsena. You get the first view of the lake as you go out of the gate toward Rome, and descend immediately to its banks. There was a heavy mist upon the water, and we could not see across, but it looked like as quiet and pleasant a shore as might be found in the world--the woods wild, and of uncommonly rich foliage for Italy, and the slopes of the hills beautiful. Saving the road, and here and there a house with no sign of an inhabitant, there can scarcely be a lonelier wilderness in America. We stopped two hours at an inn on its banks, and whether it was the air, or the influence of the perfect stillness about us, my companions went to sleep, and I could scarce resist my own drowsiness.