Further south from the high table of the
Velay you can see the steep backward escarpment of the Cevennes, inky
blue, desperately blue, blue like nothing else on earth except the
mountains in those painters of North Italy, of the parts north and east
of Venice, the name of whose school escapes me--or, rather, I never knew
it.
Now, as for towns that live in a hollow, it is great fun to come upon
them from above. They are not used to being thus taken at a disadvantage
and they are both surprised and surprising. There are many towns in
holes and trenches of Europe which you can thus play "peep-bo" with if
you will come at them walking. By train they will mean nothing to you.
You will probably come upon them out of a long, shrieking tunnel, and by
the high road they mean little more, for the high road will follow the
vale. But if you come upon them from over their guardian cliffs and
scars you catch them unawares, and this is a good way of approaching
them, for you master them, as it were, and spy them out before you enter
in. You can act thus with Grenoble and with many a town on the Meuse,
and particularly with Aubusson, which lies in the depths of so dreadful
a trench that I could wonder how man ever dreamt of living and building
there.
The most difficult of all places on which to advise, I think, would be
the very great cities, the capitals. They seem to have to-day no noble
entries and no proper approach.
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