The shape of the dome was Italian, and it should have stood in an Italian
landscape, drier indeed than that to which Northerners are accustomed,
but still surrounded by trees, and with a distance that could render
things lightly blue. Instead of that this large building stood in the
complete waste which I have already described at such length, which is so
appalling and so new to an European from any other province of Europe. As
I approached the building I saw that there gathered round it a village, or
rather a group of dependent houses; for the church was so much larger than
anything in the place, and the material of which the church itself and the
habitations were built was so similar, the flat old tiled roofs all mixed
under the advance of darkness into so united a body, that one would have
said, as was perhaps historically the truth, that the church was not built
for the needs of the place, but that the borough had grown round the
shrine, and had served for little save to house its servants.
When the long ascent was ended and the crest reached, where the head of
the valley merged into the upper plain, I passed into the narrow first
lanes. It was now quite dark. The darkness had come suddenly, and, to
make all things consonant, there was no moon and there were not any
stars; clouds had risen of an even and menacing sort, and one could see no
heaven.
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