In Rye all such doubt is resolved at once, for Rye is pure
Italy, or at least it seems so in the evening dusk. When I came up
into it in the spring twilight out of the Marsh, I was reminded of one
of those Italian cities which stand up over the lean shore of the
Adriatic to the south of Rimini, but it was not of them I thought when
in the morning sunlight I saw those red roofs piled up one upon
another from the plain: it was of Siena. And indeed Rye is in its
smaller, less complete and of course less exquisite way very like the
most beautiful city in Tuscany. Here, too, as in Siena, the red-roofed
houses climb up a hill, one upon another, a hill crowned at last by a
great church dedicated in honour of the Blessed Virgin. But here the
likeness, too fanciful for reality, ceases altogether. It is true that
Siena looks out beyond her own gardens and vineyards upon a desert,
but it is a very different desolation upon which Rye gazes all day
long, out of which she rises with all the confidence, grace, and
gaiety of a flower, and over which she rules like a queen.
From the Porta Romana of Siena or the outlook of the Servi, you gaze
southward across the barren, scorched valleys to the far-away
mountains, to Monte Amiata, the fairest mountain of Tuscany.
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