Italy, Etruscan Perusia, Roman Augusta Perusia, mediæval and modern Perugia, holds no mean place. And the last act in the long drama is not the least notable. It sounds like a bit out of Plutarch's "Life of Timoleôn," when we read or when we remember how, twice within our own days, little more than twenty and thirty years back, the fortress of the tyrants was swept away, as the great symbolic act which crowned the winning back of freedom in its newest form. When a city has such a tale as this to tell, we do not expect, we do not wish, that its only or its chief interest should gather round the monuments of an early and almost præhistoric day of greatness. At Cortona we are glad that things Etruscan are undoubtedly uppermost. At Perugia we are glad that things Etruscan are there to be seen in abundance; but we also welcome the monuments of Roman days, pagan and Christian; we welcome the streets, the churches, and palaces of mediæval times, and even the works of recent times indeed. The Place of Victor Emmanuel with the modern buildings which crown it, supplanting the fortress of Pope Paul, as that supplanted the houses, churches, and palaces of earlier times, is as much a part of the history of Perugia as the Arch of Augustus or the Etruscan wall itself.
The difference between the abiding greatness of Perugia and the abiding littleness of Cortona is no doubt largely due to the physical difference of their sites. Both are hill-cities, mountain-cities, if we will; but they sit upon hills of quite different kinds. The hill of Perugia is better fitted for growth than the hill of Cortona. Cortona sits on a single hill-top. Perugia sits, not indeed on seven hills, but on a hill of complicated outline, which throws out several – possibly seven – outlying, mostly lower, spurs, with deep valleys between them. The Etruscan and Roman city took in only the central height, itself of a very irregular shape and at some points very narrow. The lower and outlying spurs were taken within the city in later times. Hence it is only in a small part of their circuit that the original walls remain the present external walls; it is only on part of its western side that we can at all go behind Perugia. But the lower city is still thoroughly a hill-city. The hill of Perugia is lower than the hill of Cortona, while the city of Perugia is vastly greater than the city of Cortona. But Perugia is as far removed as Cortona from coming down into the plain. On the little hill of Arezzo such a process could happen, and it has happened. Not so with the loftier seats of its neighbours. Cortona is not likely to grow; Perugia very likely may. But it will take a long period of downward growth before unbroken dwellings of men stretch all the way from its railway station to its municipal palace.
At Perugia, as becomes its history, no one class of monuments draws to itself exclusive, or even predominant, attention. Perhaps, on the whole, the municipal element is the most striking. The vast pile of the public palace, its grand portal, its bold ranges of windows, its worthy satellites, the Exchange, and the great fountain with its marvels of sculpture, utterly outdo, as the central points of the city, the lofty but shapeless and unfinished cathedral which stands opposite to them. And at this point, the Church and the commonwealth are the only rivals; the remains of earlier times do not come into view. For them we must seek, but at no great distance. Go down from the central height, and stand on the bridge which spans the Via Appia of Perugia, a strange namesake for the Via Appia of Rome. There the walls of the Etruscan city, rising on the one side above the houses, on the other above one of the deep valleys, form the main feature. And, if they lose in effect from the modern houses built upon them, the very incongruity has a kind of attractiveness, as binding the two ends of the story together. From this point of view, Perugia is specially Perugian. And, if the walls are less perfect than those of Cortona, they have something that Cortona has not. The Arch of Augustus, the barrier between the older and the newer city, spans the steep and narrow street fittingly known as Via Vecchia. At Perugia the name of Augustus suggests the thought whether he really made the bloody sacrifice to the manes of his uncle with which some reports charge him. The gate at least makes no answer, save that we see that the Roman built on the foundations of the Etruscan, save that the legend of "Augusta Perusia" is itself a record of destruction and revival. The gateway, tall, narrow, gloomy, the Roman arch springing from two vast Etruscan towers, is a contrast indeed to such strictly architectural designs as the two gates of Autun. The Roman builder was evidently cramped by the presence of the older work. In fact the general character of the gateway has more in common with the endless mediæval gateways and arches which span the streets of Perugia. Of really better design, though blocked and in a less favourable position, is the other gateway, the Porta Martis, which now makes part of the substructure of the new piazza, as it once did of that of the papal fortress. And he who looks curiously will find out, not indeed any more Roman gateways, but the jambs from which at least two other arches, either Roman or Etruscan, once sprang.
The walls and gateways of a city can hardly be called its skeleton, but they are in some sort its shell. And at Perugia the body within the shell was of no mean kind. Take away every great public building, church, or palace, and Perugia itself, its mere streets and houses, would have a great deal to show. With no grand street arcades like Bologna, few or no striking private palaces like Venice and Verona, Perugia once had streets after streets – the small and narrow streets not the least conspicuously – of a thoroughly good and simple style of street architecture. Arched doors and arched windows are all, and they are quite enough. Some are round, some are pointed; some are of brick, some of stone; and those of brick with round arches are decidedly the best. But never were buildings more mercilessly spoiled than the Perugian houses. As in England mediæval houses are spoiled to make bigger windows, so at Perugia they are spoiled to make smaller windows. Most of the doorways and windows are cut through and blocked, and an ugly square hole is bored to do the duty of the artistic feature which is destroyed. No land has more to show in the way of various forms of beauty than Italy; but when an Italian does go in for ugliness he beats all other nations in carrying out his object.
Perugia, we need hardly say, is a city of paintings, and it is as receptacles for paintings that its churches seem mainly to be looked on. But some of them deserve no small attention on other grounds. At the two ends of the city are two churches which follow naturally on the Etruscan and Roman walls and gates. At one end, the Church of St. Angelo, circular within, sixteen-sided without, forms one of the long series of round and polygonal churches which stretch from Jerusalem to Ludlow. And this, clearly a building of Christian Roman times, with its beautiful marble and granite Corinthian columns, though not one of the greatest in size, holds no mean place among them. At the other end, the Abbey of Saint Peter, amid many changes, still keeps two noble ranges of Ionic columns, the spoils doubtless of some Pagan building at its first erection in the eleventh century. Nor must the duomo itself be judged of by its outside. The work of a German architect, it shows a German character in the three bodies of the same height, and its pillars consequently of amazing height. But at Perugia it is not churches or palaces or earlier remains which we study, each apart from other things. Here they all unite to form a whole greater than any one class alone – Augusta Perusia itself.
The Volumnian Tomb
The ancient Etruscans have some points of analogy with the modern Freemasons. This last familiar and yet mysterious body seems to let the outer world know everything about itself, except what it is. We have read various books by Freemasons about Freemasonry, about its history, its constitution, its ritual. On all these points they seem to give us the fullest particulars: we have only to complain that the historical part is a little vague, and its evidence a little uncertain. We should not like rashly to decide whether Freemasonry was already ancient in the days of Solomon or whether it cannot be traced with certainty any further back than the eighteenth century. But we know the exact duties of a Tyler, and we know that at the end of a Masonic prayer we should answer, not "Amen," but "So mote it be." Still, what Freemasonry is, how a man becomes a Freemason, or what really distinguishes a Freemason from other people, are points about which the Masonic books leave us wholly in the dark. So it is with the Etruscans. We seem to know everything about them, except who they were. As far as we can know a people from their arts and monuments, there is no people whom we seem to know better. We have full and clear monumental evidence as to the people themselves, as to many points in their ways, thoughts, and belief. We know how they built, carved, and painted, and their buildings, sculptures, and paintings, tell us in many points how they lived, and what was their faith and worship. We have indeed no Etruscan books; but their
