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Updated: June 8, 2025
It means all this, I fear, for me far more than theories about Lars Porsena and Etruscan ethnology. Gubbio ranks among the most ancient of Italian hill-towns. With its back set firm against the spine of central Apennines, and piled, house over house, upon the rising slope, it commands a rich tract of upland champaign, bounded southward toward Perugia and Foligno by peaked and rolling ridges.
On some of these hillsides little villages were perched. Yung Pak noticed that on the upper side of each of these hill-towns was a moon-shaped wall. "What is that wall for?" he asked Wang Ken as they passed one. "That protects the village in time of rainstorms," replied the tutor.
The Baussenques of to-day struck me as a very mild and agreeable race, with a good deal of the natural amenity which, on occasions like this one, the traveller who is waiting for his horses to be put in or his dinner to be prepared observes in the charming people who lend themselves to conversation in the hill-towns of Tuscany.
Everywhere in these stiller regions was the sound of running waters, and I soon discerned that Longobucco is an improvement on the usual site affected by Calabrian hill-towns the Y-shaped enclosure, namely, at the junction of two rivers inasmuch as it has contrived to perch itself on a lofty platform protected by no less than three streams that rush impetuously under its walls: the Trionto and two of its affluents.
Then as the road turned back again behold! a great valley, opening out westward, beyond Orvieto, the valley of the Paglia; a valley with wooded hills on either side, of a bluish-green colour, chequered with hill-towns and slim campaniles and winding roads; and binding it all in one, the loops and reaches of a full brown river.
The Baussenques of to-day struck me as a very mild and agreeable race, with a good deal of the natural amenity which, on occasions like this one, the traveller, who is, waiting for his horses to be put in or his dinner to be prepared, observes in the charming people who lend themselves to con- versation in the hill-towns of Tuscany.
He who is unloving of the past may well rush by its treasures in a puffing automobile, he who is bored by olden thoughts can hurry on by rail, but the man who wishes to know the old hill-towns of France, to see them as they seemed to their makers, and realise their one-time magnificence and strength, must walk from one town to the next, and climb their steep heights; must see great towers rise before him, great walls loom above him, and realise how grandly strong these places were when it was man to man and sword to sword, strength against strength.
That is, church and fortress stand together on the highest point in the town. Is Argentan therefore to be set down among the hill-towns? Falaise, of all places in the world, assuredly is not; the castle is set on a hill, but not the town. But can we give the name to Argentan? Some scruple may be felt by one who has come from Saint-Lo, from Coutances, or from Avranches.
Over military age, but fit for a lot of our use. I miss my guess if bunches of 'em wouldn't jump at a chance to get busy under their own flag. "We sent out a call and they came. Down from hill-towns, out of cities, from villages we'd never heard of it was amazing how they came. We didn't dream there was such a number. Every one middle-aged, American all, and gentlemen all.
Too often at present the rural parish is regarded either as a convenient laboratory for the clerical novice, or as an asylum for the decrepit or inefficient. The country parish must be a parish for our ablest and strongest. The ministry of the most Christlike must be to the hill-towns of Galilee as well as to Jerusalem. There is still another truth that the country church cannot afford to ignore.
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