• The people of Arezzo. Forsyth, Italy , p. 128:⁠— “The Casentines were no favorites with Dante, who confounds the men with their hogs. Yet, following the divine poet down the Arno, we came to a race still more forbidding. The Aretine peasants seem to inherit the coarse, surly visages of their ancestors, whom he styles Bottoli . Meeting one girl, who appeared more cheerful than her neighbors, we asked her how far it was from Arezzo, and received for answer, ‘ Quanto c’e. ’ ” “The valley widened as we advanced, and when Arezzo appeared, the river left us abruptly, wheeling off from its environs at a sharp angle, which Dante converts into a snout, and points disdainfully against the currish race.⁠ ⁠… “On entering the Val di Chiana, we passed through a peasantry more civil and industrious than their Aretine neighbors. One poor girl, unlike the last whom we accosted, was driving a laden ass, bearing a billet of wood on her head, spinning with the rocca, and singing as she went on. Others were returning with their sickles from the fields which they had reaped in the Maremma, to their own harvest on the hills. That contrast which struck me in the manners of two cantons so near as Cortona to Arezzo, can only be a vestige of their ancient rivality while separate republics. Men naturally dislike the very virtues of their enemies, and affect qualities as remote from theirs as they can well defend.” ↩