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The Via Aretina, deep in dust that has already whitened the cypresses, passes through Compiobbi on its way southward and west; but for me I will cross the river, and go once more by the byways through the valley now, where the wind whispers in the poplars beside Arno, and the river passes singing gently on its way.
A mile beyond the town, on the Via Aretina, the road of the Consuma Pass leaves the highway on the left, and by this way it is good to go into Casentino; for any of the inns in the towns of the valley will send to Pontassieve to meet you, and it is better to enter thus than by railway from Arezzo. However, I was for Vallombrosa; so I kept to the Aretine way.
These are the Parthenissa of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill and Earl of Orrery; the Aretina of Sir George Mackenzie; and the Pandion and Amphigeneia of "starch Johnny" Crowne. Boyle was a strong Francophile in literature, and his not inconsiderable influence on the development of the heroic play showed it only less decidedly than his imitation of the Scudéry romance.
In the Middle Age, Cortona and Arezzo were not on the road to Rome, but so far as Florence was concerned, Siena, her holding that she acquired these cities to keep Via Aretina open. Cf. Repetti, v. 715. That Pistoja was not on the great Via Francesca goes for nothing, she threatened it. There is a most excellent little book, Nuova Guida di Pistoja, by Cav. Prof.
A certain zest may be given by these oddities, but it hardly lasts out more than 400 pages: and though the lives of Aretina and Philaretes are more simply and straightforwardly told than might be thought likely though there are ingenious disguises of contemporary politics, and though Mackenzie was both a wise man and a wit it is more certain than ever, when we close his book, that this is not the way of the world, nor the man to walk in that way.
It was joined to the city of Ravenna by the long suburb of the Via Caesarea, much I suppose as the Porto di Lido is joined to Venice by the Riva or as Rovezzano is joined to Florence by the Via Aretina. Of all the buildings that together made up the Castello of Classe and the suburb of Caesarea nothing remains to us but the mighty church of S. Apollinare and its great and now tottering campanile.
That is a pleasant way that takes you first to Settignano out of the dust of Via Aretina by the river.
The work of the great Lord Advocate who was traduced by Covenanting malice is in a certain sense more interesting: and that not merely because it is much shorter. Aretina or The Serious Romance, opens with an "apology for Romances" generally, which goes far to justify Dryden's high opinion of Mackenzie as a critic.
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