"The bearer of this letter will be Urbino, who lives in my service. Your ladyship may inform him when you would like me to come and see the head you promised to show me."

With this letter Michael Angelo sent to Vittoria a sonnet which, in the translation made by John Addington Symonds, is as follows:—

"Seeking at least to be not all unfit For thy sublime and boundless courtesy, My lowly thoughts at first were fain to try What they could yield for grace so infinite. But now I know my unassisted wit Is all too weak to make me soar so high, For pardon, lady, for this fault I cry, And wiser still I grow remembering it. Yea, will I see what folly 't were to think That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven, Could e'er be paid by work so frail as mine! To nothingness my art and talent sink; He fails who from his mental stores hath given A thousandfold to match one gift divine."

As a gift to Vittoria Colonna, Michael Angelo designed an episode from the Passion of our Lord, which Condivi describes as "a naked Christ at the moment when, taken from the cross, our Lord would have fallen at the feet of His most holy mother if two angels did not support Him in their arms. She sits below the cross with a face full of tears and sorrow, lifting both her widespread arms to heaven while on the stem of the tree above is written this legend: 'Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa.' The cross is of the same kind as that which was carried by the White Friars at the time of the plague of 1348, and afterward deposited in the Church of Santa Croce at Florence."

In presenting this cross to her he wrote:—

"Lady Marchioness, being myself in Rome, I thought it hardly fitting to give the Crucified Christ to Messer Tommaso, and to make him an intermediary between your ladyship and me, especially because it has been my earnest wish to perform more for you than for any one I ever knew upon the world. But absorbing occupations, which still engage me, have prevented my informing your ladyship of this. Moreover, knowing that you know love needs no taskmaster, and that he who loves doth not sleep, I thought the less of using go-betweens. And though I seemed to have forgotten, I was doing what I did not talk about, in order to effect a thing that was not looked for, my purpose has been spoiled. He sins who faith like this so soon forgets."



In reply Vittoria Colonna wrote:—

"Unique Master Angelo and my most singular friend: I have received your letter and examined the crucifix which truly hath crucified in my memory every other picture I ever saw. Nowhere could one find another figure of our Lord so well executed, so living, and so exquisitely finished. I cannot express in words how subtly and marvellously it is designed. Wherefore I am resolved to take the work as coming from no other hand but yours.... I have examined it minutely in full light and by the lens and mirror, and never saw anything more perfect."

She added:—

"... Your works forcibly stimulate the judgment of all who would look at them. My study of them made me speak of adding goodness to things perfect in themselves, and I have seen now that 'all is possible to him who believes.' I had the greatest faith in God that He would bestow upon you supernatural grace for the making of this Christ. When I came to examine it I found it so marvellous that it surpasses all my expectations. Wherefore, emboldened by your miracles I conceived a great desire for that which I now see marvellously accomplished: I mean that the design is in all parts perfect and consummate. I tell you that I am pleased that the angel on the right hand is by far the fairer, since Michael will place you, with all angels, upon the right hand of the Lord some day. Meanwhile I do not know how else to serve you, than by making orisons to this sweet Christ, whom you have drawn so well and exquisitely, and praying you to hold me yours to command as yours in all and for all."

Again Vittoria wrote to him:—

"I beg you to let me have the crucifix a short while in my keeping, even though it be unfinished. I want to show it to some gentlemen who have come from the most reverend, the Cardinal of Mantua. If you are not working will you not come at your leisure to-day and talk with me?"

It is an interesting fact to the visitor in the Rome of to-day that the convent of San Silvestre where Vittoria Colonna lived was attached to the church of San Silvestre in Capite, now used as the English-speaking Catholic church in the Eternal City. The wing which was formerly the convent (founded in 1318) is now converted into the central post office.

It was in the sacristy of San Silvestre, decorated with frescoes by Domenichino, that a memorable meeting and conversation took place, one Sunday afternoon in those far-away days of nearly five hundred years ago, between Michael Angelo and Francesco d'Ollanda, a Spanish miniature artist,—the meeting brought about by Vittoria Colonna. The Spanish artist was a worshipper of Michael Angelo, who "awakened such a feeling of love," that if d'Ollanda met him in the street "the stars would come out in the sky," he says, "before I would let him go again." This fervent worship was hardly enjoyed by its object, who avoided the Spanish enthusiast. One Sunday, however, d'Ollanda had gone to San Silvestre finding there Tolomei, to whom he was also devoted, and Vittoria Colonna, both of whom had gone to hear the celebrated Fra Ambrosia of Siena expound the Epistles of St. Paul. The Marchesa di Pescara observed that she felt sure their Spanish friend would far rather hear Michael Angelo discuss painting than to hear Fra Ambrosia on the wisdom of St. Paul. Summoning an attendant she directed him to find Michael Angelo and tell him how cool and delightful was the church that morning and to beg him to join Messer Tolomei and herself; but to make no mention of the presence of d'Ollanda. Her woman's tact and her faultless courtesy were successful in procuring this inestimable privilege for the Spanish painter. Michael Angelo came, and began the conversation—which was a monologue, rather, as all three of the friends wished only to listen to the master—by defending artists from the charge of eccentric and difficult methods. With somewhat startling candor Michael Angelo proceeded:—

"I dare affirm that any artist who tries to satisfy the better vulgar rather than men of his own craft will never become a superior talent. For my part, I am bound to confess that even his Holiness wearies and annoys me by begging for too much of my company. I am most anxious to serve him, ... but I think I can do so better by studying at home than by dancing attendance on my legs in his reception room."

Another meeting of this little group was appointed for the next Sunday in the Colonna gardens behind the convent, under the shadow of the laurel trees in the air fragrant with roses and orange blossoms, where they sat with Rome spread out like a picture at their feet. That beautiful terrace of the Colonna gardens, to which the visitor in Rome to-day always makes his pilgrimage, with the ruined statues and the broken marble flights of steps, is the scene of this meeting of Vittoria Colonna, Michael Angelo, and Francesco d'Ollanda. On this second occasion the sculptor asserted his belief that while all things are worthy the artist's attention, the real test of his art is in the representation of the human form. He extolled the art of design. He emphasized the essential nature of nobleness in the artist, and added:—

"In order to represent in some degree the adored image of our Lord, it is not enough that a master should be great and able. I maintain that he must also be a man of good conduct and morals, if possible a saint, in order that the Holy Ghost may rain down inspiration on his understanding."

Of the relative degree of swiftness in work Michael Angelo said:—

"We must regard it as a special gift from God to be able to do that in a few hours which other men can only perform in many days of labor. But should this rapidity cause a man to fail in his best realization it would be better to proceed slowly. No artist should allow his eagerness to hinder him from the supreme end of art—perfection."

Mr. Longfellow, in his unfinished dramatic poem, "Michael Angelo" (to which reference has already been made), has one scene laid in the convent chapel of San Silvestre, in which these passages occur:—

VITTORIA.

"Here let us rest awhile, until the crowd Has left the church. I have already sent For Michael Angelo to join us here."

MESSER CLAUDIO.

"After Fra Bernardino's wise discourse On the Pauline Epistles, certainly Some words of Michael Angelo on Art Were not amiss, to bring us back to earth."

* * * * *

MICHAEL ANGELO, at the door.

"How like a Saint or Goddess she appears! Diana or Madonna, which I know not, In attitude and aspect formed to be At once the artist's worship and despair!"

VITTORIA.

"Welcome, Maestro. We were waiting for you."

MICHAEL ANGELO.

"I met your messenger upon the way. And hastened hither."

VITTORIA.

"It is kind of you To come to us, who linger here like gossips Wasting the afternoon in idle talk. These are all friends of mine and friends of yours."

MICHAEL ANGELO.

"If friends of yours, then are they friends of mine. Pardon me, gentlemen. But when I entered I saw but the Marchesa."

Vittoria tells the master that the Pope has granted her permission to build a convent, and Michael Angelo replies:—

"Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow....

... Yet he beholds Far nobler works who looks upon the ruins Of temples in the Forum here in Rome. If God should give me power in my old age To build for Him a temple half as grand As those were in their glory, I should count My age more excellent than youth itself, And all that I have hitherto accomplished As only vanity."

To which Vittoria responds:—

"I understand you. Art is the gift of God, and must be used Unto His glory. That in art is highest Which aims at this."

The poet, with his characteristically delicate divination, has entered into the inner spirit of these two immortal friends.

Walter Pater, writing of Michael Angelo, truly says:—

"Michael Angelo is always pressing forward from the outward beauty—il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace—to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma universale—that abstract form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the frail and yielding flesh."

Again we find Pater saying:—

"Though it is quite possible that Michael Angelo had seen Vittoria, that somewhat shadowy figure, as early as 1537, yet their closer intimacy did not begin till about the year 1542, when Michael Angelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, an ardent Neo-Catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful and princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had received in the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of great passion. In a dialogue written by the painter, Francesco d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse of them together in an empty church at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, discussing indeed the characteristics of various schools of art, but still more the writings of St. Paul, already following the ways and tasting the sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward things is slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made, or set to work to make, a crucifix for her use, and two drawings, perhaps in preparation for it, are now in Oxford.... In many ways no sentiment could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice than Michael Angelo's for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early youth; Beatrice is a child, with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a child, with a character still unaccentuated by the influence of outward circumstances, almost expressionless. Vittoria is a woman already weary, in advanced age, of grave intellectual qualities. Dante's story is a piece of figured work inlaid with lovely incidents. In Michael Angelo's poems frost and fire are almost the only images—the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or twice the phoenix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock which it afterwards consumes."

Visconti notes that among Italian poets, Vittoria Colonna was the first to make religion a subject of poetic treatment, and the first to introduce nature's ministry to man into poetry. Rota, her Italian biographer, states that she died in February of 1547, in the Palazzo Cesarini. This palace is in Genzano, on Lago di Nemi, and has been one of the Colonna estates; but from Visconti and other authorities it is evident that she died in Rome, either in the convent of Santa Anna or in the palace of Cesarini, the husband of her kinswoman, Giulio Colonna, which must have been near the convent in Trastevere, the old portion of Rome across the Tiber. Visconti records that on the last evening of her life when Michael Angelo was beside her, she said: "I die. Help me to repeat my last prayer. I do not now remember the words." He clasped her hand and repeated it to her, while her own lips moved, she gazed intently on him, smiled and passed away. This translation has been made of Vittoria Colonna's last prayer:—

"Grant, I beseech Thee, O Lord, that I may ever worship Thee with such humility of mind as becometh my lowliness and such elevation of mind as Thy loftiness demandeth.... I entreat, O Most Holy Father, that Thy most living flame may so urge me forward that, not being hindered by any mortal imperfections, I may happily and safely again return to Thee."

It is recorded by an authority that her body, "enclosed in a casket of cypress wood, lined with embroidered velvet," was placed in the chapel of Santa Anna which has since been destroyed. Visconti says: "She desired, with Christian humility, to be buried in the manner in which the sisters were buried when they died. And, as I suppose, her body was placed in the common sepulchre of the nuns of Santa Anna." Grimm declares that he cannot discover the place of her burial, and Visconti declares that her tomb remains unknown.

But it is apparently a fact that the body of Vittoria Colonna is entombed in the sacristy of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples, the sarcophagus containing it resting by the side of the one containing the body of her husband, Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara. This church is one of the finest in Naples, with twenty-seven chapels and twelve altars, and it is here that nearly all the great nobles of the kingdom of Naples are entombed. Here is the tomb of the learned Thomas Aquinas and here is shown, in relief, the miracle of the crucifix by Tommaso de Stefani, which—as the legend runs—thus addressed the learned doctor:—

"Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercedem recipies?"

To which he replied: "Non aliam nisi te."

It is in the sacristy in which lie all the Princes of the House of Aragon that the sarcophagi of the Marchese and the Marchesa di Pescara are placed side by side in the high gallery near the ceiling. The altar has a fine Annunciation ascribed to Andrea da Salerno. The ceiling (whose coloring is as fresh and vivid as if painted yesterday) is by Solimena. Around the walls near the ceiling are two balconies or galleries, filled with very large wooden sarcophagi, whose scarlet velvet covers have faded into yellow browns with pink shades, many of which are tattered and are falling to pieces. The casket containing the body of Fernando Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara (the husband of Vittoria Colonna), has on it an inscription by Ariosto; and his portrait (showing in profile a young face with blonde hair and a full reddish brown beard) and a banner, also, is suspended above the casket. That containing the body of the Marchesa, his wife (Vittoria Colonna), has an aperture at the top where the wood is worn away and the embalmed form, partly crumbled, may be seen. This seems strange to the verge of fantasy, but it is, apparently, true. The writer of this volume visited the Church of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples in December of 1906, and was assured by the sacristan that this sarcophagus contains the body of the Marchesa. Inquiries were then made of other prelates and of the Archbishop, who gave the same assurance. Later, learned archaeologists in Rome were appealed to, regarding this assertion made in Naples, and the consensus of opinion obtained declares their assertion true. Professor Lanciani has himself publicly expressed this conviction. Still, it remains a curious question as to when this sarcophagus was placed in the sacristy, for the date goes back into long-buried centuries.

Adjoining Santa Domenica Maggiore is the monastery in which Thomas Aquinas lived and lectured (in 1272), and the cell of the great doctor of philosophy is now made into a chapel. His lectures called together men of the highest rank and learning and were attended by the king and the members of the royal family. The entire locality of this church is replete with historic association. The most distinguished of the nobility of Naples have, for centuries, held their chapels in this church, and in these are many notable examples of Renaissance sculpture.

The Accademia des Arcades of Rome, founded in the seventeenth century to do honor to lyric art, celebrated the placing of a bust of Vittoria Colonna in a gallery of the Capitoline, in May of 1865, by a resplendent poetic festa. According to the gentle, leisurely customs of the land, where it is always afternoon and time has no value, thirty-two poets read their songs, written in Latin or in Italian, for this occasion, which were published in a sumptuous volume to be preserved in the archives of the Arcadians, who take themselves more seriously than the world outside quite realizes. This bust of Vittoria Colonna was the gift of the Duca and Duchessa of Torlonia of that period. It was crowned with laurel, as that of Petrarca had been, and the government took official recognition of the event.

Goethe was made a member of this Accademia that regarded itself as reflecting the glories of the Golden Age of Greece, and which was a century old at the time of his visit to Italy. "No stranger of any consequence was readily permitted to leave Rome without being invited to join this body," he recorded, and he wrote a humorous description of the formalities of his initiation.

Mrs. Horatio Greenough was honored by being made a member of this Accademia in recognition of her musical accomplishments, and the record of it is placed on the memorial marble over her grave in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Every year, on Tasso's birthday (April 25), the Accademia holds a festa in a little amphitheatre near "Tasso's oak," on the Janiculum, at which his bust is crowned with laurel. The gardens in which the seventeenth-century Arcadians disported themselves are now known among the Romans as il Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi.

Throughout Italy the fame of Vittoria Colonna only deepens with every succeeding century. Her nobility of character, her lofty spirituality of life, fitly crowned and perfected her intellectual force and brilliant gifts. Although from the customs of the time the Marchesa lived much in convents, she never, in any sense, save that of her fervent piety, lived the conventual life. Her noble gifts linked her always to the larger activities, and her gifts and rank invested her with certain demands and responsibilities that she could not evade. She was one of the messengers of life, and her place as a brilliant and distinguished figure in the contemporary world was one that the line of destiny, which pervades all circumstances and which, in her case, was so marked, absolutely constrained her to fill. She had that supreme gift of the lofty nature, the power of personal influence. Her exquisite courtesy and graciousness of manner, her simple dignity and unaffected sincerity, her delicacy of divination and her power of tender sympathy and liberal comprehension all combined to make her the ideal companion, counsellor, and friend, as well as the celebrity of letters and lyric art.

No poet has more exquisitely touched the friendship between Vittoria Colonna and Michael Angelo than has Margaret J. Preston, in a poem supposed to be addressed to the sculptor by Vittoria, in which occur the lines:—

"We twain—one lingering on the violet verge, And one with eyes raised to the twilight peaks— Shall meet in the morn again.

* * * * *

... Supremest truth I gave; Quick comprehension of thine unsaid thought, Reverence, whose crystal sheen was never blurred By faintest film of over-breathing doubt; ... helpfulness Such as thou hadst not known of womanly hands; And sympathies so urgent, they made bold To press their way where never mortal yet Entrance had gained,—even to thy soul."

This is the Page de Conti that one reads in the air as he sails past Ischia on the violet sea; and the chant d'amour of the sirens catches the echo of lines far down the centuries:—

"I understood not, when the angel stooped, Whispering, 'Live on! for yet one joyless soul, Void of true faith in human happiness, Waits to be won by thee, from unbelief.'

"Now, all is clear. For thy sake I am glad I waited. Not that some far age may say,— 'God's benison on her, since she was the friend Of Michael Angelo!'"



So sometimes comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries. The sphere of the supernal powers Impinges on this world of ours. The low and dark horizon lifts, To light the scenic terror shifts; The breath of a diviner air Blows down the answer of a prayer:— That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt A great compassion clasps about, And law and goodness, love and force, Are wedded fast beyond divorce. Then duty leaves to love its task, The beggar Self forgets to ask; With smile of trust and folded hands, The passive soul in waiting stands To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, The One true Life its own renew.

WHITTIER.

"For Thou only art holy. Thou only art the Lord. Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the Glory of God the Father."



Sometimes in heaven-sent dreams I do behold A city with its turrets high in air, Its gates that gleam with jewels strange and rare, And streets that glow with burning of red gold; And happy souls, through blessedness grown bold, Thrill with their praises all the radiant air, And God himself is light, and shineth there On glories tongue of man hath never told.

And in my dreams I thither march, nor stay To heed earth's voices, howsoe'er they call, Or proffers of the joys of this brief day, On which so soon the sunset shadows fall; I see the Gleaming Gates, and toward them press— What though my path lead through the Wilderness?

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.



V

VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Oh, Italy! thy strength, thy power, thy crown Lie in the life that in Assisi stirs The heart, with impulse of self-sacrifice; Where still St. Francis gathers weary souls In his great love, which reaches out to all. ... His blessing falls In clear sweet tones: "Benedicat tibi Convertat vultum suum ad te et Det Pacem!" Hushed and holy silence breathes About the wanderer who lifts his heart To catch the echo of that voice of love.

CELIA RICHMOND.

The mystic pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us to think, that encourages the imagination to pierce the world's cobwebs, that forces us to remember that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the invisible, is a fatally impoverished life, a poor, blind, wingless life, but to believe that ever around us is a whole world full of spiritual beings; that this life, with its burdens, is but the shadow which precedes the reality; that here we are but God's children at school, is an invigorating conviction, full of hope, productive of patience and fruitful in self-control."

To an age imprisoned in the fear of God the "sweet saint," Francis, brought the message of the love of God. To an age crushed under the abuses of religion as an organization of feudal bishops and ecclesiastics, St. Francis brought the message of hope and of joy. He revealed to his age the absolute reality of the spiritual world that surrounds us. He was born into a time when there existed on the one hand, poverty and misery; on the other, selfish and debasing self-indulgence of wealth and its corresponding oppression of the poor. The Church itself was a power for conquest and greed. Its kingdom was of this world. St. Bernard and others had nobly aimed to effect a reform and had illustrated by their own lives the beautiful example of simplicity and unselfishness, but their work failed in effectiveness and permanent impress.

"Oh, beauty of holiness! Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."

Not only in beauty, but in power does it stand. St. Francis brought to the sad and problematic conditions of his time that resistless energy of infinite patience, of a self-control based on insight into the divine relationships of life, and of unfailing fidelity to his high purpose. Through good report or through evil report he kept the faith, and pressed onward to the high calling of God. The twelfth and the thirteenth centuries had been a period of religious unrest and chaos. As Archdeacon Wilberforce has so impressively said in the words quoted from him, a life lived with no sense of the invisible is blind and impoverished. The movement initiated by St. Francis proclaimed anew the divine grace and love.

"Tokens are dead if the things live not. The light everlasting Unto the blind is not, but is born of the eye that has vision."

Something not unlike this trend of thought must drift through the mind of every one who journeys through the lovely Umbrian country to Assisi, one of those picturesquely beautiful hill towns of Italy whose romantic situation impresses the visitor. Seen from a little distance, one could hardly imagine how it could be reached unless he were the fortunate possessor of an airship. The entire region is most picturesque in character. Journeying from Rome to Assisi there is a constant ascent from the Campagna to the Apennines, and the road passes through wild defile and valley with amethyst peaks shining fair against the sky, with precipitous rocks, and the dense growth of oak and pine trees. In some places the valley is so narrow that the hills, on either side, rise almost within touch of the hand from the car window. The hill towns are frequent, and the apex of these towns is invariably crowned with a castle, a cathedral, or a ruin, and around it, circling in terraces, is built the town. The charm largely vanishes when fairly in these circling roads, for on either side are high walls, so that one's view is completely bounded by them; but from the summit and from the upper floors of the houses the most beautiful views are obtained. The Umbrian region, in which are located Perugia, Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Spoleto, Terni, Narni, and others, is simply the gem region of all Italy. The Umbrians are the most ancient of the Italian people, and Assisi claims to have been founded eight hundred and sixty-five years before the founding of Rome. It was the scene of constant warfare, and the streets are all underlaid by subterranean passages, in which the inhabitants could disappear from their enemies.

To this ancient Umbrian city, from which went out the life and light that carried wonderful currents of vitality and illumination to all Italy and into almost all parts of the world, one comes as to a special and a sacred pilgrimage. For this mediaeval town, perched on the top of a rocky hill, is the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order; in it were the scenes of his early life, and here, in 1226, at the age of forty-four years, he died. The convent-church of San Francesco, built to his memory in 1230; the lower church, completed at that date, while the upper was finished in 1253; the magnificent Cathedral of Santa Maria Degli Angeli, completed in 1640; the Church of Santa Chiara and the Duomo, are the points of interest.



The purple Apennines, on one spur of which Assisi is built, are a picturesque feature of lovely Umbria. The old houses of Assisi rise white in the sunshine. The ancient walls still surround the city, and its towers stand as they stood before the eyes of St. Francis, almost seven centuries ago. The peak of Mt. Subasio, a neighboring peak of the Apennines, looms above the colossal rock that crowns the hill around whose top Assisi clusters in winding terraces. The massive pile of the Francescan church and monastery—the two churches, one above the other—forms an architectural group whose imposing aspect arrests the eye of every traveller for miles around. The pointed arches of the cloisters and the square campanile contrast rather than blend in an effective and harmonious manner and resemble military fortifications rather than an edifice of the church. The old walls still surround Assisi, and the houses all rise white under the blue Italian sky. The narrow streets, hardly wide enough for one carriage to pass another, are so intricate in their curves as they climb the steep hill, that it requires a faith hardly less than the traditional degree said to move mountains to lead the visitor to suppose that he will ever emerge from one that he has entered. Many of the houses along these curious thoroughfares have no windows, the only light and air coming through the open door. The bells from the campanile of the Francescan convent-church, from the Duomo and from the Church of Santa Chiara ring every quarter of an hour; and this constant clash of bells is almost the only sound that breaks the silence of the mediaeval town, which lends itself to visions and to dreams. On the very air is stamped the impress of St. Francis. His personality, his teachings, his faith pervaded the atmosphere in a way that no one could believe until he had himself entered into the experience. In narration it cannot but seem like a pleasing and half-poetic fancy; but the lingerer in this shrine of religion and art will realize that the actual personality of the man who trod these streets nearly seven hundred years ago is strangely before him. Canon Knox Little, in a series of lectures on St. Francis of Assisi delivered in the Ladye Chapel of Worcester Cathedral a few years since, says of the panorama of the town:—

"The scene which from Assisi presented itself daily to his youthful eyes must have had, did have, as we know, a lasting effect upon his mind. From thence the eye surveys a noble coronet of stately mountains. You look from Radicofani, above Trena, to Monte Catria, famous as the scene of some of Dante's saddest times of solitude, and ever is the eye satisfied with the grace and grandeur of the curves of mountain outline, and the changing hues of an incomparable sky. There are rivers and cities and lakes,—from Thrasymene, just hidden by a line of crests, to the Paglia and Tiber beneath, where Orvieto crowns its severe and lonely rock. With the changing lights and shadows always beautiful in the vivid spring or burning summer, tender-tinted autumn or clear and sparkling winter, with the bright and pure and buoyant atmosphere always giving life and vigor, what spot on earth more fitted as the birthplace of the saint who was, above all things, bright and tender and strong?"

Assisi was an important town in the twelfth century when Francis, the son of Pietro Bernardone di Mercanti, wandered over its hills, and after severe fasting and prayer communed with God. Born in the midst of the constant warfare between Assisi and Perugia, he was first a soldier. He was captured and thrown into prison, and it was a remarkable dream, or vision, that came to him before he was set free, that determined his life of consecration. Tradition invested his birth with legends, one of which is, that in his infancy an aged man came to the door and begged to be permitted to take the child in his arms, prophesying that he was destined to accomplish a great work. Pietro Bernardone was a wealthy merchant of Assisi. Pica, the mother of Francis, is said to have been of noble origin and of a deeply religious nature. The early youth of Francis was given to games, festivals, and pleasures that degenerated into dissipation, but the mother continually affirmed her assurance that, if it pleased God, her son would become a Christian. In this atmosphere was nurtured "the sweet-souled saint of mediaeval Italy," who is described as a figure of magical power, whose ardent temperament and mystic loveliness attracted to him all men.

There is also a legend that Pica went to pray at the Portiuncula and that, for seven years, she prayed for a son. Her prayer was answered in the coming of the infant who was to be the great saint of all the ages. Francis, in his childhood, also knelt and prayed at this shrine. In the year 1211, when Francis was twenty-nine years of age and had entered on his ministry, this chapel was given to him, "and no sooner had they come to live here," it is said, "than the Lord multiplied their number from day to day." At one time he had gone to his devotions in great depression of spirits, "when, suddenly, an unspeakable ecstasy filled his breast. 'Be comforted, my dearest,' he said, 'and rejoice in the Lord, and let us not be sad that we are few; for it has been shown to me by God that you shall increase to a great multitude and shall go on increasing to the end of the world. I see a multitude of men coming to me from every quarter—French, Spaniards, Germans, English—each in their different tongues encouraging the others.'"

At a distance of perhaps a mile and a half from Assisi, down in the valley near the railroad station, four holy pilgrims founded a shrine in the fourth century. Later, on this site, St. Benedict erected a tiny chapel, called "St. Maria della Portiuncula" (St. Mary of the Little Patron), and once, when praying in the chapel, Benedict had a vision of a vast crowd of people kneeling in ecstasy, chanting hymns of praise, while outside greater multitudes waited to kneel before the shrine, and he took this to mean that a great saint would one day be honored there.

So the legends, still conversationally told in Assisi, run on and are locally current. Undoubtedly the dwellers in this curious old town, whose streets have hardly one level spot but climb up and down the steep hillside, realize that their saint is their title to fame and their revenue as well; yet through all the tales there breathes a certain sincerity and simplicity of worship. The little dark primitive shops teem with relics, which make, it is true, a great draft on imagination, and by what miracle modern photography has contrived to present the saint of Assisi in various impressive attitudes and groups it would be as well not to inquire too closely. It is a part of the philosophy of travel to take the goods the gods provide, and the blending of amused tolerance and unsuspected depths of reverential devotion by which the visitor will find himself moved, while in Assisi, can hardly be described. For, surely, here

"... there trod The whitest of the saints of God,"

and Catholic or Protestant, one equally enters into the beauty of his memory. The double and triple arches of the convent church enclose cloistered walls continually filled with visitors. No shrine in Italy holds such mysterious power. Simplicity and joy were the two keynotes of the life taught by St. Francis. "Poverty," he asserted, "is the happy state of life in which men are set free from the trammels of conventionalism, and can breathe the pure air of God's love. The richest inward life is enjoyed when life is poorest outwardly. Be poor," he continued, "try a new principle; be careless of having and getting; try being, for a change. Our life in the world ought to be such that any one on meeting us should be constrained to praise the heavenly Father. Be not an occasion of wrath to any one," he often said, "but by your gentleness may all be led to press onward to good works."

The supreme aim of Francis was that of service to humanity. He gave himself with impassioned fervor to this one work. For him there were no ideals of cloistered seclusion or of devotion to learning and art, but the ideal alone to uplift humanity. It was literally and simply, indeed, the Christ ideal. Of the "Rule" made, one of his biographers says:—

"Amid all these encouragements the Rule was made. It consists, like other monastic rules, of the three great vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, differing only in so far that the poverty ordained by Francis was absolute. In other rules, though the individual was allowed to possess nothing, the community had often rich possessions, and there was no reason why the monks should not fare sumptuously and secure to themselves many earthly enjoyments, notwithstanding their individual destitution and their vow. But among the Brothers Minor there was not to be so much as a provision secured for the merest daily necessities. Day by day they were to live by God's providence, eating what was given to them, taking no thought how they were to be fed, or wherewithal clothed; 'neither gold nor silver in your purses;' not even the scrip to collect fragments in—as if God could not provide for every returning necessity. There had been monasteries in Italy for centuries, and the Benedictines were already a great and flourishing community; but this absolute renunciation of all things struck a certain chill to the hearts of all who heard of it, except the devoted band who had no will but that of Francis. His friend, the Bishop of Assisi, was one of those who stumbled at this novel and wonderful self-devotion. 'Your life, without a possession in the world, seems to me most hard and terrible,' said the compassionate prelate. 'My lord,' said Francis, 'if we had possessions, arms and protection would be necessary to us.' There was a force in this response which perhaps we can scarcely realize, but the Assisan bishop, who knew something of the temper of the lords of Umbria, and knew how lonely were the brethren dwelling on the church lands—the little plot (Portiuncula) a whole half league from the city gates—understood and perceived the justice of the reply.

"Another grand distinction of the Rule drawn up by Francis was the occupation it prescribed to its members. They were not to shut themselves up, or to care first for their own salvation. They were to preach—this was their special work; they were to proclaim repentance and the remission of sins; they were to be heralds of God to the world, and proclaim the coming of His kingdom. It is not possible to suppose that when he thus began to organize the mind of Francis did not make a survey of the establishments already in existence—the convents bound by the same three great vows, where life at this moment was going on so placidly, with flocks and herds and vineyards to supply the communities, and studious monks in their retirement, safe from all secular anxieties, fostering all the arts in their beginning, and carrying on the traditions of learning; while all around them the great unquiet, violent world heaved and struggled, yet within the convent walls there was leisure and peace. Blessed peace and leisure it was often, let us allow, preserving for us the germs of many good things we now enjoy, and raising little centres of safety and charity and brotherly kindness through the country in which they were placed. But such quiet was not in the nature of Francis. So far as we can make out, he had thought little of himself—even of his own soul to be saved—all his life. The trouble on his mind had been what to do, how sufficiently to work for God and to help men. His fellow creatures were dear to him; he gave them his cloak from his shoulders many a day, and the morsel from his own lips, and would have given them the heart from his bosom had that been possible."

These are the "voices" that still echo in the air of Assisi. In the suburbs is still shown the spot where the chapel of St. Damian stood up a rocky path on the hillside in an olive grove. It was here that the scene of the miracle of the crucifix is laid. Before the altar Francis knelt, praying: "Great and Glorious Father, and thou, Lord Jesus, I pray ye, shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. May I in all things act in accordance with thy holy will."

It is recorded that while he thus knelt in deep prayer, he was unable to turn his eyes from the cross, conscious that something marvellous was taking place. The image of the Saviour assumed life; the eyes turned attentively on him; a voice spoke accepting his service and he felt at once endowed with the most marvellous tide of vitality, of joy, and of exhilaration. At this moment he entered on that life whose impress is left on the ages. Of the character and the peculiar quality of its influence Mrs. Oliphant well says:—

"It is not always possible to follow with our sympathy that literal, childlike rendering of every incident in the life of the Master, which sometimes looks fantastical and often unmeaning. He was a man of his time, and could live only under the conditions which that time allowed. He made visible to a literal, practical, unquestioning age the undeniable and astounding fact that the highest of all beings chose a life of poverty, hardship, and humbleness; that He chose submission instead of resistance, love instead of oppression, peace and forgiveness instead of revenge and war. Christ had died in their hearts, as said the legend of that Christmas at Greccia; and, as in one of the bold and artless pictures just then beginning to yield to a more refined and subtle art, Francis set forth before the world the image of his Master. The Son of man was lifted up, as on another cross, before the eyes of Umbria, before all Italy, warlike and wily, priest and baron, peasant and Pope. In this world Francis knew nothing, acknowledged nothing, cared for nothing save Christ and Him crucified—except, indeed, Christ's world, the universe redeemed, the souls to be saved, the poor to be comforted, the friends to be cherished, the singing birds and bubbling fountains, the fair earth and the sweet sky. Courteous, tender, and gentle as any paladin, sweet-tongued and harmonious as any poet, liberal as any prince, was the barefooted beggar and herald of God. We ask no visionary reverence for the Stigmata, no wondering belief in any miracle. As he stood, he was as great a miracle as any then existing under God's abundant, miraculous heavens; more wonderful than are the day and night, the sun and the dew; only less wonderful than that great Love which saves the world, and which it was his aim and destiny to reflect and show forth."

That mystic union to which all the ages attest, the union that may, at any moment, be formed between the soul and God, that mystery which the church calls conversion and which finds its perfect interpretation in the words of St. Paul, when he said, that if any man be in Christ he is a new creation, had been accomplished in the life of Francis. He realized the fulness of the knowledge of God's will; he longed only for wisdom and for spiritual understanding. Nor is this experience one to be relegated to the realm of miracle. It is simply entering into the supreme completeness of life. It is not alone St. Paul, but every man, who may truly say, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me." Nor does this experience, when translated aright into daily life and action, require any abnormal form of expression. It does not, in its truest significance, mean a life apart from the ordinary duties, but rather it means that these duties shall be fulfilled in the larger and nobler way. The exceptional man may be called to be the standard bearer; to renounce all domestic ties and give his service to the world; but such a life as this differs only in degree from that which in the ordinary home and social relations finds ample means for its best expression. The persistent aim after perfection should be the keynote of every life. No one should be satisfied to hold as his supreme ideal any lesser standard of ultimate achievement than is involved in the divine command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." This is the soul's ideal, whatever ages and eternities it may require for it to recognize this trackless path.

St. Francis recognized joy as a factor of the nobler life. "It was his constant effort," writes one biographer, "that there should be bright looks and cheerful tones about him. To one of his brethren, who had the habit of walking about sadly with his head drooping, he said,—it is evident, with a spark of the impatience natural to his own vivacious spirit,—'You may surely repent of your sins, my brother, without showing your grief so openly. Let your sorrow be between God and you: pray to Him to pardon you by His mercy, and to restore to your soul the joy of His salvation. But before me and the others be always cheerful, for it does not become a servant of God to have an air of melancholy and a face full of trouble.'"

An incident in the early life of St. Francis, which had determining significance, was his meeting with Dominic. The story is told "that Dominic, praying in a church in Rome, saw, in a vision, our Lord rise from the right hand of the Father in wrath, wearied at last with the contradiction of sinners, with a terrible aspect and three lances in his hand, each one of which was to destroy from the face of the earth a distinct class of offenders. But while the dreamer gazed at this awful spectacle, the Virgin Mother arose and pleaded for the world, declaring that she had two faithful servants whom she was about to send into it to bring sinners to the feet of the Saviour; one of these was Dominic himself, the other was a poor man, meanly clad, whom he had never seen before. This vision came to the devout Spaniard, according to the legend, during the night, which he spent, as he was wont, in a church, in prayer. Next morning, while he mused on the dream which had been sent to him, his eye fell all at once upon a stranger in a brown tunic, of aspect as humble and modest as his garb, coming into the same church to pray. Dominic at once ran to him, fell on his neck, and, saluting him with a kiss, cried, 'Thou art my companion: thy work and mine is the same. If we stand by each other, nothing can prevail against us.'"

No magic mirror, however, revealed to Francis the wonderful panorama of his future. No sibyl turned the leaves of the records yet to unfold. "He was preparing himself for a life of penitence rather than a life of activity," in the opinion of Paul Sabatier, and he had dreamed no dream of becoming a religious founder. He was so entirely without any personal ambition, save that of being obedient to the Heavenly Vision, that this absolute consecration of purpose enabled the divine power to work through him without obstruction. He became a very perfect instrument, so to speak, in the divine hand. After repairing the little chapel called the Portiuncula, on the level ground at the foot of the hill, some two miles from Assisi, his plan was to there pass his time in meditation and prayer. But the legend runs that on the feast of St. Mathias (February 24), in the winter of 1209, a Benedictine monk was celebrating mass and on his turning to read, "Wherever ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand," Francis was profoundly and peculiarly impressed, and he exclaimed: "This is what I desire, O Father; from this day forth I set myself to put this command in practice." He felt that Jesus himself had spoken to him through the priest. Love and sacrifice became to him the supreme ideals, and in this moment, in that poor and bare little chapel, was inaugurated one of the greatest and most far-reaching religious movements of the entire world.

"Not always as the whirlwind's rush On Horeb's mount of fear, Not always as the burning bush To Midian's shepherd seer, Not as the awful voice which came To Israel's prophet bards, Nor as the tongues of cloven flame, Nor gift of fearful words,—

"Not always thus with outward sign Of fire or voice from Heaven The message of a truth divine, The call of God is given!"

That great ministry of St. Francis, whose influence pervades all time,—that lies between the opening years of the thirteenth and the opening years of the twentieth centuries,—was initiated the next morning in Assisi, when Francis preached for the first time. He spoke simply, emphasizing the truths he had learned to realize through his own experience: the absolute duty of following after perfection; the importance of realizing the shortness of life and the need of repentance. The first disciple of Francis was a wealthy resident of Assisi, named Bernardo. He was impressed with the conviction that he should distribute his possessions and unite with Francis in all his aims and work. Without definite organization, others joined them. They passed that spring and summer going up and down the country, sometimes assisting the harvesters and haymakers, and everywhere entering into the common life of the people. The Bishop of Assisi, however, remonstrated with Francis, saying that to him it seemed very harsh and unwise to try to live without owning anything. To which Francis replied that he did not desire temporal possessions, as these required arms for their defence and were an obstacle to the love of God and one's neighbor. It has remained for later years to discern the still truer significance of the teachings of Jesus, that neither possessions nor the lack of possessions form the real test, but the use which is made of them. As spiritual insight is developed it is more and more clearly realized that the quality of the life lived is the sole matter of importance, and not the conditions that surround it.

The brotherhood increased. The abbot of the Benedictines on Monte Subasio ceded to Francis and his order the little chapel called the Portiuncula, now enclosed within the vast and magnificent church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. M. Paul Sabatier, in his admirable biography of St. Francis, points out clearly that the founder of the Franciscans contemplated a laboring and not a mendicant order. During the decade 1211 to 1221, which Francis and his followers passed at the Portiuncula, a portion of the time was constantly passed in industrial pursuits. "With all his gentleness, Francis knew how to show an inflexible severity toward the idle," says Sabatier, "and he even went so far as to dismiss a friar who refused to work." Although Francis espoused poverty, declaring that she was his bride, he was unfalteringly loyal to the ideals of honest industry and integrity.



The mystic legends of the life of their saint that abound in Assisi are touched with poetic romance in that a companion figure is always seen by his side, that of Santa Chiara. Not more inseparable in popular thought are Dante and Beatrice, or Petrarca and Laura, than are Francis and Clara. Their statues stand side by side in the Duomo; they are represented together by both painter and sculptor in the churches of Santa Chiara and Santa Maria degli Angeli in the old hill town. Chiara was the daughter of a noble family, and as a girl of sixteen, coming under the influence of Francis from hearing one of his sermons, she, too, became one of his followers and left her father's palace in Assisi to take the vows of perpetual and voluntary poverty at the altar of the Portiuncula. Followed by two women, she passed swiftly through the town in the dead of the night, and through dark woods, her hurrying figure seeming like some spirit driven by winds towards an unknown future. One thing alone was clear before her—that she was nearing the abode of Francis Bernardone whose preaching at San Giorgio only a month before had thrilled her, inspiring her in this strange way to seek the life he had described in fiery words. Just as she came in sight of the Portiuncula the chanting of the brethren, which had reached her in the wood, suddenly ceased, and they came out with lighted torches in expectation of her coming. Swiftly and without a word she passed in to attend the midnight mass which Francis was to serve, and the scene is thus described:—

"The ceremony was simple, wherein lies the charm of all things Franciscan. The service over and the last blessing given, St. Francis led Clare toward the altar, and with his own hands cut off her long, fair hair and unclasped the jewels from her neck. But a few minutes more and a daughter of the proud house of Scifi stood clothed in the brown habit of the order, the black veil of religion falling about her shoulders, lovelier far in this nun-like severity than she had been when decked out in all her former luxury of silken gowns and precious gems.

"It was arranged that Clare was to go afterward to the Benedictine nuns of San Paolo, near Bastia, about an hour's walk farther on in the plain. So when the final vows had been taken, St. Francis took her by the hand and they passed out of the chapel together just as dawn was breaking, while the brethren returned to their cells gazing half sadly, as they passed, at the coils of golden hair and the little heap of jewels which still lay upon the altar cloth."

Clara founded a convent and lived as its abbess, and the great church of Santa Chiara is built on the site of this convent. She was born in Assisi in 1194, and died in 1253, surviving Francis by twenty-seven years. Her father was the Count Favorini Scifi, and he had destined his daughter—who had great beauty—to a rich and brilliant marriage. He violently opposed her choice of the religious life, but no earthly power, she declared, should sever her from it.

The beauty of the lifelong friendship between Francis and Clara is thus touched upon by Mrs. Oliphant:—

"It was one of those tender and touching friendships which are to the student of history like green spots in the desert; and which gave to the man and the woman thus voluntarily separated from all the joys of life a certain human consolation in the midst of their hardships. They can have seen each other but seldom, for it was one of the express stipulations of the Franciscan Rule that the friars should refrain from all society with women, and have only the most sparing and reserved intercourse even with their sisters in religion. And Francis was no priest, nor had he the privilege of hearing confession and directing the spiritual life of his daughter in the faith. But he sent to her to ask enlightenment from her prayers, when any difficulty was in his way. He went to see her when he was in trouble; especially once on his way to Rieti to have an operation performed on his eyes. Once the two friends ate together at a sacramental meal, the pledge and almost the conclusion on earth of that tenderest, most disinterested, and unworldly love which existed between them. That he was sure of her sympathy in all things, of her prayers and spiritual aid, whatsoever he might be doing, wheresoever he might be, no doubt was sweet to Francis in all his labors and trials. As he walked many a weary day past that church of St. Damian, every stone of which was familiar to him, and many laid with his own hands, must not his heart have warmed at thought of the sister within, safe from all conflict with the world, upon whose fellow-feeling he could rely absolutely as man can rely only on woman? The world has jeered at the possibility of such friendships from its earliest age; and yet they have always existed,—one of the most exquisite and delicate of earthly ties. Gazing back into that far distance over the graves, not only of those two friends, but of a hundred succeeding generations, a tear of grateful sympathy comes into the student's eye. He is glad to believe that, all those years, Francis could see in his comings and goings the cloister of Clara; and that this sacred gleam of human fellowship,—love purified of all self-seeking,—tender, visionary, celestial affection, sweetened their solitary lives."

Legends innumerable, attesting supernormal manifestations regarding Francis, sprang up and have been perpetuated through the ages. One is as follows:—

"Hardly more than three years from the moment when the pale penitent was hooted through Assisi amid the derisive shouts of the people, and driven with blows and curses into confinement in his own father's house, we find that it has already become his custom on Sunday to preach in the cathedral; and that, from his little convent at the Portiuncula, Francis has risen into influence in the whole country, which no doubt by this time was full of stories of his visit to Rome and intercourse with the Pope, and all the miraculous dreams and parables with which that intercourse was attended. Already the mind of the people, so slow to adopt, but so ready to become habituated to, anything novel, had used itself to the sight of the brethren in their brown gowns, and, leaping from one extreme to the other, instead of madmen, learned to consider them saints. The air about the little cloister began to breathe of miracles,—miracles which must have been a matter of common report among the contemporaries of the saint, for Celano wrote within three years of Francis's death. Once, when their leader was absent, a sudden wonder startled the brethren. It was midnight between Saturday and Sunday, and Francis, who had gone to preach at Assisi, was at the moment praying in the canon's garden. A chariot of fire, all radiant and shining, suddenly entered the house, awaking those who lay asleep, and moving to wonder and awe those who watched, or labored, or prayed. It was the heart and thoughts of their leader returning to them in the midst of his prayer, which were figured by this appearance."

When Francis died a pathetic scene is thus described:—

"All the clergy of Assisi, chanting solemn hymns, came out to meet the bier, and thus they climbed the hill to the birthplace of the saint, the city of his toils and tears and blessing. When they came to St. Damian an affecting pause was made. Clara within, with all her maidens, waited the last visit of their father and friend. Slowly the triumphant crowd defiled into the church of the nuns, hushing, let us hope, their songs of joy, their transports of gratulations, out of respect to the grief which dwelt there, and could scarcely, by all the arguments of family pride, or the excitement of this universal triumph, be brought to rejoice. The bier was set down within the chancel, the coffin opened, and opened also was the little window through which the nuns received the sacrament on ordinary occasions. To this little opening the pale group of nuns, ten of them, with Clara at their head, came marching silently, with tears and suppressed cries. Clara herself, even in face of that multitude, could not restrain her grief. 'Father, father, what will become of us?' she cried out; 'who will care for us now, or console us in our troubles?' 'Virgin modesty,' says Celano, stopped her lamentations, and with a miserable attempt at thanksgiving, reminding herself that the angels were rejoicing at his coming, and all was gladness on his arrival in the city of God, the woman who had been his closest friend in this world, whose sympathy he had sought so often, kissed the pale hands—'splendid hands,' says Celano, in his enthusiasm, 'adorned with precious gems and shining pearls'—and disappeared from the little window with her tears into the dim convent behind, where nobody could reprove her sorrow."

The personality of Chiara comes down to us through the ages invested with untold charm. It is said that when she was dying there came "a long procession of white-robed virgins, led by the Queen of Heaven, whose head was crowned with a diadem of shining gold, each of the celestial visitors stooped to kiss Chiara as her soul passed to its home."

During all the life of Francis, whenever any new movement or work was to be undertaken, he invariably sent to ask the counsel and the prayers of Chiara.

The miraculous preservation of the body of Santa Chiara is one of the articles of faith in Assisi. In 1850—six hundred years after her death—a tomb believed to be hers was found and opened in the presence of a distinguished group of ecclesiastics, among whom was Cardinal Pecci, later Pope Leo XIII. In this tomb a form is said to have been found, and it has been placed in a reliquary of alabaster and Carrara marble especially constructed for it. This sanctuary is placed in the church of Santa Chiara, in the crypt, behind a glass screen, where candles are kept perpetually burning. Lina Gordon Duff, writing the history of Assisi, says of this curious spectacle:—

"As pilgrims stand before a grating in the dimly lighted crypt, the gentle rustle of a nun's dress is heard; slowly invisible hands draw the curtain aside, and the body of Santa Chiara is seen lying in a glass case upon a satin bed, her face clearly outlined against her black and white veils, whilst her brown habit is drawn in straight folds about her body. She clasps the book of her Rule in one hand, and in the other holds a lily with small diamonds shining on the streamers."



In all these churches—the great convent church, upper and lower, of the Franciscans elaborately adorned with frescoes by Cimabue and by Giotto; in the ancient Duomo; in Santa Chiara and in Santa Maria degli Angeli—statues of the two saints, Francis and Chiara, are placed side by side. She shares all the exaltation of his memory and the fulness of his fame.

The strange problem of the stigmata has, perhaps, never been absolutely solved. Canon Knox Little says that as to the miracles of St. Francis generally speaking, there is no intrinsic improbability; that "his holy life, his constant communion with God, the abundant blessings with which it pleased God to mark his ministry, all point in the same direction." Latter-day revelations of psychic science disclose contemporary facts of the power of mental influence on the physical form that are, in many instances, hardly less wonderful than this alleged miracle of St. Francis. Whether the story is accepted literally or only in a figurative sense does not affect the transcendent power of his influence. His entire life and work illustrate the beauty of holiness. "Art in its widest sense gained a marvellous impulse from his work and effort," says Canon Knox Little. The French and Provencal literature and the schools of Byzantine art preceded the life of Francis; but his influence imparted a powerful wave of sympathetic and vital insight and awakened a world of new sensibilities of feeling. Indeed, it is a proverb of Italy, "Without Francis, no Dante." Certainly the life of Francis was the inspiration of the early Italian art. Cimabue and Giotto drew from the inspiration of that unique and lovely life the pictorial conceptions that have made Assisi the cradle of Italian painting. The great works of Giotto are in the lower church of the Franciscan monastery. One of these frescoes represents chastity as a maiden kneeling in a shrine, while angels bring to her branches of palm. Obedience is depicted as placing a yoke upon the bowed figure of a priest, while St. Francis, attended by two angels, looks on; Poverty, whom Francis declared to be his bride, is pictured as accompanied by Hope and Charity, who give her in marriage to St. Francis, the union being blessed by Christ, while the heavenly Father and throngs of angels gaze through the clouds on this nuptial scene. The fresco called Gloriosus Franciscus is perhaps the crowning work of Giotto. Francis is seen in a beatitude of glory, with a richly decorated banner bearing the cross and seven stars floating above his head and bands of angels in the air surrounding him. Canon Knox Little, alluding to these interesting works of Giotto, says that "even in their faded glories they give an immense interest to the lower church of Assisi. No one can look at them now unmoved, or wander on the hillside to the west of the little city, with the rugged rocks above one's head, and beneath one's feet the rich carpets of cyclamen, and before one's eyes long dreamy stretches of the landscape of Umbria, without being touched by the feeling of that beautiful and loving life devoted to God and man and nature, in utter truth, which therefore left such an impress on Christian art."

The Madonna and saints painted by Cimabue are faded almost to the point of obliteration, yet there still lingers about them a certain grace and charm. The visitor to this Franciscan monastery church realizes that he is beholding the art which was the very pledge and prophecy of the Renaissance, and he realizes, too, that the Renaissance itself was the outgrowth of the new vitality communicated to the world by the life and character of St. Francis. He gave to the world the realization of the living Christ; he taught that religion was in action, not in theology. He liberated the spirit; and when this colossal church was being built (1228-53) the artists who had felt the new thrill of life opened by his teaching hastened to Assisi to express their appreciation by their pictorial work on its walls. The qualities of spiritual life—faith, sacrifice, sympathy, and love—began, for the first time, to be interpreted into artistic expression.

The tomb of St. Francis is in the crypt of the church. The stone sarcophagus containing his body was discovered in 1818, and then placed here in a little chamber especially prepared, surrounded by an iron latticework with candles perpetually burning.

From the sacristy of the lower church, stairs ascend to the upper, with its beautiful nave and transept with a high altar, and the choir stalls. While the lower church with its great arches is always dark, the upper is flooded with light from vast windows. There is a series of frescoed panels on either side, accredited to pupils of Giotto, full of forcible action and a glow of color. But the upper church, while it is magnificent, lacks somewhat of that mystic atmosphere one is so swiftly conscious of in the gloom and mystery of the lower church.

Stretching behind the churches, along the crest of the high hill, is the colossal monastery itself, with that double row of arches and colonnades that makes it so conspicuous a feature of all the Umbrian valley. Formerly hundreds of monks dwelt here; but the Italian government suppressed this monastery in 1866, and since that time it has been used as a school for boys.

The ancient Duomo, whose facade is of the twelfth century, has three exquisite rose windows, and on either side, as one approaches the high altar, stand the statues of St. Francis and of Santa Chiara. In the little piazza in front of the church is a bronze copy of Dupre's famous statue of St. Francis.

The colossal church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, with its magnificent dome, is a contrast, indeed, to the primitive little Portiuncula where Francis knelt in prayer, and which is now preserved in the centre of this vast cathedral,—the rude structure encased in marble, and decorated, above the entrance, with a picture by Overbeck, whose motive is St. Francis as he stands, hushed and reverent, listening to the voice that tells him to embrace poverty. There is a fine Perugino in the church, representing the Saviour. The cell in which St. Francis died, enclosed in the little chapel which St. Bonaventura built over it, is preserved in this great cathedral.

"And who was he that opened that door in heaven?" questions Canon Knox Little in reference to St. Francis. "Who was he that gave that fresh life and thought? Who but the man who had brought down in his own person the living Christ into his century, who had taught men again the love of God, and then the love of man and the love of nature; who had lifted the people out of their misery and degradation, and awakened the church out of its stiffness and worldliness; it was he, too, who inspired, who may at most be said to have created, Italian art,—the great St. Francis! Such are the deep, such are the penetrating, such are the far-reaching effects of sanctity. If a soul is, by divine grace, given wholly to God, it is impossible for us to say to what heights it may attain, or what good, in every region of human effort, it may do."



Perugia, the neighboring city only fifteen miles from Assisi, is the metropolis of all this Umbrian region. Like Assisi, it is a "hill town," built on an acropolis of rock, its foundations laid by the Etruscans more than three thousand years before the Christian era, and its atmosphere is freighted with the records of artists and scholars. The Perugians were the forerunners. They held the secret of artifice in metals and gems; they were architects and sculptors. The only traces of their painting that have come down to us are their works on sarcophagi, on vases or funeral urns,—traces that indicate their gifts for line and form. It was about 310 B.C. that all Umbria became a Roman province. The colossal porta of Augustus—a gateway apparently designed for the Cyclops—still retains its inscription, "Augustus Perusia." The imperishable impress of the great Roman conqueror is still seen in many places. Perugia was a firm citadel, as is attested by the fact that Totila and his army of Goths spent seven years in besieging it. The centuries from the thirteenth to the fifteenth inclusive, when it was under the sway of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, were years of tragic violence. Even the cathedral became the scene of riot, and its interior was entirely washed with wine, and it was reconsecrated before it could be again used for holy offices. The little piazza in front of the cathedral, now dreaming in the sun, has been the scene of strange and contrasting crises of life. Strife and warfare have desolated it; the footsteps of Bernardino of Siena have consecrated it, as he passed within the great portals to preach the gospel of peace. He was one of the most potent of the Francescan disciples, and Bernardino (born of the noble family of the Albizzeschi, in 1380, in Siena, the year after St. Catherine's death) for forty years wandered over Italy, preaching peace and repentance. Vespasiano da Bisticci, a contemporary historian, records that Bernardino "converted and changed the minds and spirits of men marvellously and had a wondrous power in persuading men to lay aside their mortal hatreds." Bernardino died at the age of sixty-four in Aquila, and the towns in which he had faithfully carried on his apostolic work placed the sacred sign of the divine name (I.H.S.) upon their gates and palaces, in his memory. In the Sienese gallery is a portrait of San Bernardino by Sano, painted in 1460, representing the saint as the champion of the Holy Name, with the inscription, "I have manifested Thy name to men." In one of his impressive and wonderful sermons San Bernardino said:—

"There still remain many places for us to make. Ah! for the love of God, love one another. Alas! see you not that, if you love the destruction one of the other you are ruining your very selves? Ah! put this thing right for the love of God. Love one another! What I have done to make peace among you and to make you like brothers, I have done with that zeal I should wish my own soul to receive. I have done it all to the glory of God. And let no one think that I have set myself to do anything at any person's request. I am only moved by the bidding of God for His honor and glory."

Opposite the Duomo of Perugia, on the other side of the piazza, is the Palazzo Municipio, with a Gothic facade, a beautiful example of thirteenth-century architecture. Here also is the colossal fountain with three basins, decorated with pictorial designs from the Bible by Niccolo Pisano and Arnolfo of Florence, and in the shadow of this fountain St. Dominic, St. Francis, and St. Bernardino often met and held converse.

Perugia easily reads her title clear to artistic immortality in having been the home of Perugino, the master of Raphael. Here he lived for several years working with Pinturicchio in the frescoes that adorn the Collegio del Cambio, now held as a priceless treasure hall of art. They still glow with rich coloring,—the Christ seen on the Mount of Transfiguration; the Mother and Child with the adoring magi; and the chariot of the dawn driven by Apollo a century before Guido painted his "Aurora" in the Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome.

From the parapets of Perugia are views of supreme poetic beauty. The play of light and color on the picturesque hills and mountains of the Umbrian country; the gray-green gleam of olive orchards and the silver threads of winding streams; the towers and ruins and castles of a dozen towns and villages that crown the slopes, and the violet shadows of deepening twilight, with Assisi bathed in a splendor of rose and gold,—all combine to make this an ever-changing panorama for the poet and painter.

No journey in Italy is quite like that to the lovely Umbrian valley and its Jerusalem, Assisi, the shrine which, with the single exception of Rome, is the special place of pilgrimage for the entire religious world. Perugia offers the charm of art, and attracts the visitor, also, by an exceptional degree of modern comfort and convenience; but Assisi is the shrine before which he kneels, where the footsteps of saints who have knelt in prayer make holy ground, and where he realizes anew the consecration of faith and sacrifice. The very air is filled with divine messages, and in lowly listening he will hear, again, those wonderful and thrilling words of St. Francis:—

"By the holy love which is in God I pray all to put aside every obstacle, every care, every anxiety, that they may be able to consecrate themselves entirely to serve, love, and honor the Lord God, with a pure heart and a sincere purpose, which is what He asks above all things."



White phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting Shadows of palaces and strips of sky; I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets Seen in mirage, or towers of clouds uplifting In air their unsubstantial masonry.

LONGFELLOW.

Fair as the palace builded for Aladdin, Yonder St. Mark uplifts its sculptured splendor— Intricate fretwork, Byzantine mosaic, Color on color, column upon column, Barbaric, wonderful, a thing to kneel to! Over the portal stand the four gilt horses, Gilt hoof in air, and wide distended nostril, Fiery, untamed, as in the days of Nero. Skyward, a cloud of domes and spires and crosses; Earthward, black shadows flung from jutting stonework. High over all the slender Campanile Quivers, and seems a falling shaft of silver.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.



As one who parts from Life's familiar shore, Looks his last look in long-beloved eyes, And sees in their dear depths new meanings rise And strange light shine he never knew before; As then he fain would snatch from Death his hand And linger still, if haply he may see A little more of this Soul's mystery Which year by year he seemed to understand; So, Venice, when thy wondrous beauty grew Dim in the clouds which clothed the wintry sea I saw thou wert more beauteous than I knew, And long to turn and be again with thee. But what I could not then I trust to see In that next life which we call memory.

PHILLIPS BROOKS.[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] From "Life of Phillips Brooks," by kind permission of Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co.



VI

THE GLORY OF A VENETIAN JUNE

I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice. The Heaven of it is ineffable—never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous color and carving, the enchanting silence, the music, the gondolas,—I mix it all up together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, no second Venice in the world.

MRS. BROWNING, in the June of 1850.



The first glimpse of enchanted Venice, as her towers and marble palaces rise wraith-like from the sea, is an experience that can never fade from memory. Like a mirage, like a vision invoked by some incantation or magician's spell, the scene prefigures itself, bringing a thrill of some vague and undefined memory, as if a breath floated by,—

"An odor from Dreamland sent, That makes the ghost seem nigh me, Of a splendor that came and went; Of a life lived somewhere,—I know not In what diviner sphere,— Of memories that stay not and go not,"

which eludes all translation into words. Nor does the spell dissolve and vanish when put to the test of one's actual sojourn in the Dream City. It is an experience outside the boundaries of the ordinary day and daylight world, as if one were caught up into the ethereal realm to find a city

"... of gliding and wide-wayed silence With room in the streets for the soul."

The sense of remoteness from common life could hardly be greater if one were suddenly swept away to some far star, blazing in the firmament; or if Charon had rowed him over the mystic river and he had entered the abodes of life on the plane beyond. Even the hotel becomes an enchanted palace whose salons, luxuriously decorated, open by long windows on marble balconies overhanging the Grand Canal. Dainty little tables piled with current reading matter, in French, English, and Italian, stand around; the writing-desks are sumptuous, filled with every convenience of stationery; and the matutinal coffee and rolls are served the guest in any idyllic niche wherein he chooses to ensconce himself, regardless of the regulation salle-a-manger. One looks across the Grand Canal to the beautiful Church of Santa Maria della Salute. The water plashes against the marble steps as gondolas glide past; the blue sky of Italy reflects itself in the waters below, until one feels as if he were floating in the air between sea and sky. In the heart of the city, with throngs of people moving to and fro, all is yet silence, save the cry of the gondolier, the confused echo of voices from the people who pass, and here and there the faint call of a bird. No whir and rush of electric cars and motors; no click of the horses' feet on the asphalt pavement—no pavement, indeed, and no horses, no twentieth-century rush of life. It is Venice, it is June, and the two combine to make an illuminated chapter. To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal. How wonderful it is to drift—a sky above and a sky below—on still waters at sunset, with the Dream City mirrored in the depths, every shade of gold and rose and amber mirrored back,—the very atmosphere a sea of color, recalling to one Ruskin's words that "none of us appreciate the nobleness and the sacredness of color. Of all God's gifts to man," he continues, "color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. Color is the sacred and saving element." If the enthusiasm in these words savor of exaggeration, Venice is the place that will lure one to forgetfulness of it. One is simply conscious of being steeped in color and revelling in a strange loveliness. One no longer marvels at the glory of Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese. They but interpreted on canvas the shining reality. A charming writer on Venice has well said:—

"The aspects of Venice are as various, as manifold, as the hues held in solution upon her waters beneath a sirocco sky. There is a perpetual miracle of change; one day is not like another, one hour varies from the next; there is no stable outline such as one finds among the mountains, no permanent vista, as in a view across a plain. The two great constituents of the Venetian landscape, the sea and the sky, are precisely the two features in nature which undergo most incessant change. The cloud-wreaths of this evening's sunset will never be repeated again; the bold and buttressed piles of those cloud-mountains will never be built again just so for us; the grain of orange and crimson that stains the water before our prow, we cannot be sure that we shall look upon its like again.... One day is less like another in Venice than anywhere else. The revolution of the seasons will repeat certain effects; spring will chill the waters to a cold, hard green; summer will spread its breadth of golden light on palace front and water way; autumn will come with its pearly-gray sirocco days, and sunsets flaming a sombre death; the stars of a cloudless winter night, the whole vast dome of heaven, will be reflected in the mirror of the still lagoon. But in spite of this general order of the seasons, one day is less like another in Venice than anywhere else; the lagoon wears a different aspect each morning when you rise, the sky offers a varied composition of cloud each evening as the sun sets. Words cannot describe Venice, nor brush portray her ever-fleeting, ever-varying charm. Venice is to be felt, not reproduced; to live there is to live a poem, to be daily surfeited with a wealth of beauty enough to madden an artist to despair."

It was in the autumn of 1882 that the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, later Bishop of Massachusetts, visited Venice and wrote of San Marco:—

"Strange how there is nothing like St. Mark's in Venice, nothing of the same kind as the great church. It would have seemed as if, standing here for so many centuries, and always profoundly loved and honored, it would almost of necessity have influenced the minds of the generations of architects, and shown its power in their works. But there seems to be no sign of any such influence. It stands alone."

Dr. Brooks noted that Venice had "two aspects, one sensuous and self-indulgent, the other lofty, spiritual, and even severe. Both aspects," he continues, "are in its history and both are also in its art. Titian often represents the former. The loftier, nobler Tintoretto gives us the second. There is something in his greatest pictures, as, for instance, in the Crucifixion, at St. Rocco, which no other artist approaches. The lordly composition gives us an impression of intellectual grasp and vigor. The foreground group of prostrate women is full of a tenderness. The rich pearly light, which floods the centre, glows with a solemn picturesqueness, and the great Christ, who hangs like a benediction over the whole, is vocal with a piety which no other picture in the world displays. And the Presentation of the Virgin, in Santa Maria dell'Orto, is the consummate presentation of that beautiful subject, its beauty not lost in its majesty."

Of other pictures Dr. Brooks said:—

"In the Academia there is the sunshine of three hundred years ago. Paris Bordone's glowing picture of the Fisherman who brings the Ring of St. Mark to the Doge, burned like a ray of sunlight on the wall. Carpaccio's delightful story of St. Ursula brought the old false standards of other days back to one's mind, but brought them back lustrous with the splendor of summers that seemed forever passed, but are perpetually here. Tintoretto's Adam and Eve was, as it always is, the most delightful picture in the gallery, and Pordenone's great St. Augustine seemed a very presence in the vast illuminated room."

Tennyson loved best, of all the pictures in Venice, a Bellini,—a beautiful work, in the Church of Il Redentore; and he was deeply impressed by the "Presentation of the Virgin," from Tintoretto, in the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto. "He was fascinated by St. Mark's," writes the poet's son, "by the Doge's Palace and the Piazza, and by the blaze of color in water and sky. He climbed the Campanile, and walked to the library where he could scarcely tear himself away from the Grimani Breviary."

Venice, though not containing any single gallery comparable with the Pitti and the Uffizi, is still singularly rich in treasures of art, and rich in legend and story. The school of encrusted architecture is nowhere so wonderfully represented as here, and it is only in this architecture that a perfect scheme of color decoration is possible. In all the world there is no such example of encrusted architecture as that revealed in St. Mark's. It is a gleaming mass of gold, opal, ruby, and pearl; with alabaster pillars carved in designs of palm and pomegranate and lily; with legions of sculptured angels looking down; with altars of gold ablaze with scarlet flowers and snowy lilies, while clouds of mystic incense fill the air. One most impressive place is the baptistery, where is the tomb of St. Mark and also that of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, who died at the age of forty-six, having been chosen Doge ten years before. His tomb is under a window in the baptistery, and the design is that of his statue in bronze, lying on a couch, while two angels at the head and the feet hold back the curtains.

The sarcophagus that is said to contain the body of St. Mark is of the richest description, encrusted with gold and jewels on polished ebony and marble. There is a legend that after St. Mark had seen the people of Aguilia well grounded in religion he was called to Rome by St. Peter; but before setting off he took with him in a boat the holy Bishop Hennagoras and sailed to the marshes of Venice. The boat was driven by wind to a small island called Rialto, on which were some houses, and St. Mark was suddenly snatched into ecstasy and heard the voice of an angel saying, "Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest."

There is also a legend that in the great conflagration which destroyed Venice in 976 A.D., the body of St. Mark was lost and no one knew where to find it. Then the pious Doge and the people gave themselves to fasting and prayer, and assembled in the church, asking that the place be revealed them. It was on the 25th of June that the assemblage took place. Suddenly one of the pillars of the church trembled, and opened to disclose the sarcophagus,—a chest of bronze. The legend goes on to say that St. Mark stretched his hand out through the side and that a noble, Dolfini by name, drew a gold ring off the finger.

The place where this miracle is said to have been wrought is now marked by the Altar of the Cross.

Ruskin declares that "a complete understanding of the sanctity of color is the key to European art." Nowhere is this sanctity of color so felt as at San Marco. The church is like the temple of the New Jerusalem.

The origin of Venice is steeped in sacred history. It is pre-eminently the city founded in religious enthusiasm. The chronicles of De Monici, written in 421, give this passage: "God, who punishes the sins of men by war, sorrow, and whose ways are past finding out, willing both to save the innocent blood, and that a great power, beneficial to the whole world, should arise in a place strange beyond belief, moved the chief men of the cities of the Venetian province both in memory of the past, and in dread of future distress, to establish states upon the nearer islands of the Adriatic, to which, in the last extremity, they might retreat for refuge.... They laid the foundation of the new city under good auspices on the island of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to the mouth of the Brenta, on March 25, 471."

The first Doge of Venice was Paolo Lucio Anafesto, elected by the tribunal of commonalty, tribunals, and clergy, at Heraclea, in 697. The period of the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the ducal and patrician powers followed. The "Council of Ten" was established in 1335, and the last Doge elected was Lodovico Manin in 1789, who exclaimed, "Tole questo: no la dopero piu," as the French Revolution destroyed the Republic of Venice.

The finest example of Renaissance architecture in Venice is that of the Libreria Vecchia, the work of Jacobo Sansovino, completed in the sixteenth century. Never were the creations of poet and philosopher more fittingly enshrined. The rich Doric frieze, the Ionic columns, the stately balustrade, with statues and obelisks, the resplendent richness of ornamentation, offer a majesty and beauty seldom found even in the best classical architecture of Europe. On the ceiling of one sala is a picture by Titian representing "Wisdom" as a woman, reclining on a cloud, her right hand outstretched to take a book that Genius is offering her. There are two beautiful caryatides by Vittoria and rich mural work by Battista Franco and De Moro.

Petrarca, returning from his wanderings in 1362, pleaded with the Senate of Venezia to give him a house, in return for which he offered the inheritance of his library. This was the nucleus of the fine collection which since 1812 has been included in the Palace of the Doges. In it are some magnificent works by Paolo Veronese, one portrait by Tintoretto, and others by Salviati and Telotti.

The Doge's Palace is a treasure house of history. One enters the Porta della Carta, which dates back to 1638, erected by Bartolomeo Buon. The portal is very rich in sculpture, and among the reliefs is a heroic one of Francesco Foscari, kneeling before the lion at St. Mark's. One recalls his tragic fate and passes on. Perhaps, en passant, one may say that his pilgrimage through Venice and Florence is so constantly in the scenes of tragedy that he is prone to sink almost into utter sadness, even, rather than seriousness. The air is full of ghosts. One feels the oppression of all the life that has there been lived, all the tragedies that have been enacted in these scenes.

In Renaissance nothing more wonderful in Europe can be found than the court of the Palace of the Doges. Antonio Rizzo began the east facade of the building in 1480, and it was continued by Lombardo, and completed by Scarpagnino. "Words cannot be found to praise the beauty of these sculptures," says Salvatico, "as well as of the single ornaments of the walls and of the ogres which have been carved so delicately and richly that they cannot be excelled by the Roman antique friezes."

By the golden staircase one goes to the council chambers,—the hall of the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the Council of Three. In the great council chamber is that most celebrated mural painting in the world, "The Glory of Venice," by Paolo Veronese, which covers the ceiling. In a frieze are the portraits of seventy-six of the Doges, but in one space is a black tablet only, with the inscription: "This in place of M. F., who was executed for his crimes."

The "Sala del Maggior Consiglio" (hall of the grand council) is very rich in paintings. Above the throne is Tintoretto's "The Glory of Paradise," and the walls are covered with battle pieces and symbolic and allegorical paintings. There is "Venice Crowned by Fame," by Paolo Veronese, "Doge Niccolo da Ponte Presenting the Senate and Envoys of Conquered Cities to Venice," by Tintoretto; "Venice Crowned by the Goddess of Victory," by Palma Giovane, and many another of the richest and most wonderful beauty.

Descending into the prisons and dungeons brings one into a vivid realization of the grim history of which these were the scenes. The Bridge of Sighs has two covered passages, one for the political and one for the criminal prisoners. Here is shown a narrow ledge on which the condemned man stood, with a slanting stone passageway before him, which, when the guillotine had done its swift and deadly work, conveyed the crimson flood into the dark waters of the canal below, while the body was thrown in the water on the other side. There are the "Chambers of Lead," where prisoners were confined, intensely hot in the summer, and as intensely cold in the winter. Many of these dark, close, narrow cells—in which the one article of furniture allowed was the wooden slanting rack, that served as a bed—still remain. In many of these are inscriptions that were written by the prisoners. One reads (in translation): "May God protect me against him whom I trust; I will protect myself against him whom I do not trust."

The murderer, Giovanni M. Borni, wrote in his cell: "G. M. B. was confined very unjustly in this prison; if God does not help it will be the last desolation of a poor, numerous, and honest family."

All visitors to these gloomy dungeons recall the lines of Byron:—

"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand."

The piazza of St. Mark's is a distinctive feature, even in all Europe. It is not large; it is surrounded on three sides with shops, which are merely glittering bazaars of jewels and bric-a-brac; the sidewalk is blockaded with cafes al fresco, the ground is half covered with the dense flocks of white doves, but here all lingers and loiters. The facade of St. Mark's fills one end—a mass of gleaming color. At one corner is the tall clock tower (Torre dell'Orologio) in the Renaissance style of 1400, crowned with the gilded lion of St. Mark. On the festa days three figures, the Three Wise Men, preceded by an angel, come forth on the tower and bow before the Madonna, in a niche above,—a very ingenious piece of mechanism. With its rich architecture and sculptures and masses of color, the piazza of San Marco is really an open-air hall, where all the town congregates from morning till midnight.

To study the art of the Venetian school is a work of months, and one that would richly repay the student. The churches and galleries of Venice give a truly unique opportunity. In the Church of San Sebastiano lies Paolo Veronese, the church in which he painted his celebrated frescoes, now transformed into a temple for himself. Here one finds his "Coronation of the Virgin," "The Virgin in the Gloria," "Adoration of the Magi," "Martyrdom of San Sebastian," and many others. In the Scuola di San Rocco are the great works of Tintoretto, "St. Magdalene in the Wilderness," the "Visitation," and the "Murder of the Innocents."

In the San Maria dei Frari is the tomb of Titian,—an exquisite grouping of sculpture in Carrara marble, erected in 1878-80 by the command of the Emperor of Austria, the work of Zandomenighi. In this church is Titian's most famous painting, the "Madonna of the Pessaro," the work of which is probably, too, the greatest in all Venetian art. The Hall of Heaven is shown, supported by colossal columns. St. Peter, Francis, and Antoninus are commending the Pessaro family to the Virgin, who is enthroned on high. The beauty of line, the splendor of color, and the marvellous composition render this immortal masterpiece something whose sight marks an epoch in life. Canova's tomb in San Maria dei Frari is a wonderful thing. It is a pyramid of purest marble, with a door opening for the sarcophagus, above which is a portrait of Canova in relief, and on either side the door angels and symbolic figures are sculptured.

The Church of Santa Maria della Salute, to which one is always returning, is a wonderful example of artistic architecture, as its snowy towers and dome seem to rise out of the water and float in the air.

The fall of the Campanile in 1904 was regarded as a calamity by all the civilized world. For a thousand years it had stood at the side of St. Mark's; but the disaster aroused the attention of experts to the condition of the great cathedral itself, and it was found that the vast area of over fifty thousand square feet of matchless mosaic needed restoration in order that they should be preserved.

The Palazzo Rezzonico, which dates to Clement XIII, usually known as the "Browning Palace," has been for many years one of the special interests to the visitor in Venice. In the early months of 1907 it passed out of the hands of Robert Barrett Browning, who had purchased it in 1888, and had held it sacredly, with its poetic and personal associations, since the death of his father, the poet, in 1889. To Mr. Barrett Browning is due the grateful appreciation of a multitude of tourists for his generous and never-failing courtesy in permitting them the privilege of visiting this palace in which his father had passed many months of enjoyment. It was from this residence that the poet Browning wrote, in October of 1880, to a friend:—