It was only a few days after writing these lines that he "broke the Sabbath" for the first time in his life, by climbing a hill after church.

That was the first shot fired in a war, in one of the strangest and saddest wars between conscience and reason that biography records; strange because the opposing forces were so nearly matched, and sad because the struggle lasted until their field of battle was desolated before either won a victory.
Later on we have to tell how he dwelt in Doubting Castle, and how he escaped.

But the pilgrim had not yet met Giant Despair; and his progress was very pleasant in that spring of 1845, the year of fine weather, as he drove round the Riviera, and the cities of Tuscany opened out their treasures to him.

There was Lucca, with San Frediano and the glories of Romanesque architecture; Fra Bartolommeo's picture of the Madonna with the Magdalen and St.Catherine of Siena, his initiation into the significance of early religious painting: and, taking hold of his imagination, in her marble sleep, more powerfully than any flesh and blood, the dead lady of St.Martin's Church, Ilaria di Caretto.

There was Pisa, with the Campo Santo and the jewel shrine of Sta.