As far beyond Venice as Venice is beyond Verona lies the gentle ctiy of Udine, citàt zintil as they call it there, for all the common people and all the scholars and poets speak, or can speak, a language like that of the troubadours. The city lies on the level plain of Friuli like a town held by a patron saint on the palm of his hand; but in the midst of it rises an abrupt hill, and under the hill spreads a tree-planted hollow. This hill, say the Udinese, arose at the bidding of Attila the Hun. Every soldier of the Hunnish army contributed a helmetful of earth. And when the great mound was made, the king stood alone on the top to watch the burning of Aquileia.

Forty kilometres of country road lie between Aquileia and Udine to-day; and a vast, silent basilica, a vast silent museum, a scattering of poor farms among vast, silent fields of tall corn and small vines are all that is left of Aquileia when you reach it. The Guide Bleu gives the names of two inns. Personally I saw no sign of them, but then my visit was a short one. Yet when our Lord was born under Augustus in the middle of the great peace, Aquileia was the second town in Italy. It boasted two hundred thousand ‘Roman’ citizens, besides Roman legionaries and a unique con course of foreign merchants; it possessed enormous markets of wine and corn; its palaces, baths, circuses, temples, tombs and triumphal arches were like nothing outside Rome;