_In Florence and Pisa._
FLORENCE in May is a very different place from Florence in November.
Still it rained every day, or night, of the month we passed there;
showers that made the earth greener, the air clearer. We were homesick
for Rome, too, although our lodgings with Madame Giotti, then in Via
dei Serragli—now in Piazza Soderini, were the next best thing to the
sunny _appartimento_ No. 8, Via San Sebastiano, that had been home to
us for almost six months.
Madame Bettina Giotti, trim and kindly, who speaks charmingly-quaint
English and “likes Americans,” was to us the embodiment of genuine
hospitality, irrespective of the relations of landlady and boarder.
We had a most comfortable suite of rooms, a private table, where she
served us in person, and which was spread with the best food, as
to quality, variety and cookery, we had upon the other side of the
water—Paris not excepted.
We gave ourselves, thus situated, resolutely and systematically to
sight-seeing.
The Invaluable and Boy had a pass that admitted them daily, and at all
hours, to the Boboli Gardens, and we left them to their own devices
while we spent whole days in the Uffizi and Pitti Galleries, roaming
among the tombs of the illustrious dead in S. Croce and S. Lorenzo,
studying and enjoying art everywhere in this, her home, and where men
most delight to do her honor. History and religion have here their
notable shrines, also. Both combine to make the extensive square before
the Palazzo Vecchio a spot to which pilgrim-footsteps turn from all
quarters of Christendom.
It is the ancient Forum of the Florentine Republic. The surges of
commercial and political life yet beat upon and across it. The Palace
is old, and replete with interest to the historical student. The Great
Hall in its centre was built under the direction of Jerome Savonarola
in 1495. Three years later, they put him to death at the stake in
the Piazza della Signoria—the square just mentioned—and had the wind
set that way, the smoke of his burning must have filled the spacious
chamber planned by him while virtual Dictator of Florence. There
lies upon the table beside me, a photograph of a rude picture of his
martyrdom. The Palace is the same we look upon now, at the side of an
area, vaster then than at present, the same lofty, square tower capping
the gloomy building. The judges sit upon benches against the outer
wall. A temporary gangway extends from their platform to the gibbet
in the open space. On this walk the three condemned monks, in white
shrouds, each between two confessors in black, toward the fire blazing
under the gallows. They burned Savonarola’s body after it had suffered
the extremest indignity of the law, such was their lust of rage against
the man who had turned their world upside down—the Reformer born out of
time by two hundred years. Until very lately it was the custom among
the common people to strew with violets, on each anniversary of the
event, the pavement on which he perished.
“To prove that all the winters that have snowed
Cannot snow out the scent from stones and air
Of a sincere man’s virtues.”
Savonarola had had _his autos-da-fé_ in places as public as the Piazza
della Signoria—pyres, on which women cast rouge-pots, and false hair,
and all manner of meretricious personal adornments; to whose flames bad
books and licentious paintings and statues were resigned by converted
authors and owners. The thunders of his invectives against spiritual
wickedness in high places, reached and jarred the proudest throne
in Christian Europe. To the proffered bribe of a cardinal’s hat, he
returned word—“I will have no red hat, but one reddened with mine own
blood—the crown given to the saints.”
Pope and rabble granted his wish.
From the scene of his death we drove straight to the Convent of San
Marco, his home. Upon the walls and roof of the monastery, the friars
fought like trapped wolves on the night of the requisition for their
brother. It was he, not they, who surrendered the body of Savonarola to
save the sacred place from sack and fire. It was, then, outside of the
town that is now packed in dense, high blocks and far-reaching streets
all around church and cloisters. These last surround a quadrangle
of turf and flowers. The street-gate shut behind us with a resonant
clang, and conventual loneliness and quietness were about us. Above the
sacristy-door is a fresco of Peter the Martyr, his hand laid upon his
mouth, signifying that silence was the rule of the Dominican order.
The spirit of the brotherhood lingers here yet, impressing itself upon
all who pass within the monastic bounds. We spoke and stepped softly,
without bidding on the subject, in going from one to another of the
frescoes on the inner walls of the porticoes or open cloisters. They
are nearly all from the hand—and heart—of John of Fiesole, known best
as Fra Angelico, the monk of sweet and holy memory, who prayed while
he painted; whose demons were all amiable failures; whose angel-faces
came to him in celestial trances. The unoccupied cells of the monks on
the second floor—square closets, each containing a single window, are
adorned with pictures of the Passion from his brush. Faded, now—never
elaborate in color or finish, each tells its story, and with power. How
much more eloquent must that story have been when the solitary inmate
of the chamber knelt upon the bare floor, the awful silence that could
be heard shutting down upon him—the one token of human sympathy left
him, the agonizing image above his oratory!
In Savonarola’s room are his chair, haircloth shirt, MSS., crucifix,
and, among other relics, a piece of wood from his gibbet. His portrait
hangs over his writing-table. It is a harsh, strong, dark visage in
striking profile, the monk’s cowl drawn tightly around it. We obtained
photographs of it in the convent, and one of Fra Angelico, a mild,
beautiful face, with a happy secret in the large, luminous eyes. Mrs.
Browning interprets it:
“Angelico,
The artist-saint, kept smiling in his cell.
The smile with which he welcomed the sweet, slow
Inbreak of angels—(whitening through the dim,
That he might paint them).”
Yet he was, in religious phrase, the “dear brother” of Savonarola, and,
for long in daily companionship with him.
Fra Benedetto, the brother, according to the flesh, of John of Fiesole,
was, likewise, an artist. In the library of the convent, together
with many other illuminated missals, are the Gospels, exquisitely
embellished by him, with miniatures of apostles and saints. A smaller
hall, near the library, is lined with an imposing array of flags of all
the towns and corporations of Italy, collected here after the Dante
Festival, May 14th, 1865.
Dante’s monument, inaugurated at that date, on the six hundredth
anniversary of his birth, stands in the Piazza S. Croce, facing the
church. A lordly pile in his honor, on the summit of which he sits in
sombre sovereignty, takes up much space in the right aisle of this
famous fane—“the Pantheon of Modern Italy.” His remains are at Ravenna.
The epitaph on his tomb-stone, dictated by himself, styles Florence the
“least-loving of all mothers.” She exiled him, setting a price upon his
head; made him for nineteen years, he says, “a vessel without sail or
rudder, driven to divers ports, estuaries and shores by that hot blast,
the breath of grievous poverty.” When she relaxed her persecutions so
far as to recall him upon condition of confession and fine, he refused
to enter her gates. Upon bended knee, Florence prayed Ravenna to
surrender his remains to his “Mother-city” less than a century after
he died, a petition oft and piteously renewed. But the plucky little
town holds him yet to her heart, and Florence accounts as holy, for his
sake, such things as the dirty bench fastened in the wall of a house
opposite the Campanile and Cathedral, whereon he used to sit day after
day to watch the building of the latter.
The centuries through which this work was dragged were a woful drawback
to its external comeliness. Since we saw it, as we learn from the
indignant outcries of art-critics, it has been “cleaned.” “A perfectly
uninjured building,” wails one, “with every slenderest detail fine and
clear as the sunshine that streams on it in mid-summer—is drenched in
corrosive liquids until all the outer shell of the delicate outlines
is hacked and chipped away, the laborers hammering on at all these
exquisite and matchless sculptures as unconcernedly as they would
hammer at the blocks of _macigno_ with which they would repave the
streets!” I confess—albeit, as I have intimated before,—not an
art-critic, that in perusing the above, the “corrosive liquids” ate
into my finest sensibilities, and the “hammering” was upon my very
heart. But my recollection of the condition of the building in 1877
is not of harmony, or such fineness and clearness as our plaintiff
describes. These existed unquestionably in form and proportion. But
the walls of black and white marble were “streaky,” soiled and clean
portions, fitted together without intervening shading, denoting where
the builders of one age left off and those of the next began anew. An
attempt to cleanse it, set on foot some years previous, had marred the
Duomo yet more. The effect was that of a “half-and-half” penitentiary
garment. Those who know edifices like this and the Milan Cathedral,
and that one of the “Seven Lamps of Architecture,” Giotti’s Campanile,
from photographs, have one advantage over _bona fide_ travelers. The
stains and cracks of time are softened into mellow uniformity in the
sun-picture that yet preserves faithfully each grace of design and
workmanship. He who dreams over the stereoscopic view which brings
out carvings and angles, and the expression of the whole building
with magic accuracy, is spared the pain of seeing that the miracle of
architectural genius in marble or bronze is undeniably and vulgarly
_dirty_. This is especially true of the Baptistery. The bronze doors (I
am not going to repeat Michael Angelo’s remark touching them upon the
thousandth part of a chance that one man or woman in the United States
may not have heard it) are so encrusted with the dust of as many ages
as they have hung in their present place that one cannot distinguish
between Noah drunk and Noah sober; between Cain slaying his brother and
Adam tilling the ground. The interior would be vastly improved, not by
hammering workmen, and corrosive liquids, but by a genuine New England
house-cleaning. A hogshead of disinfectants would not dispel the
mouldy, sickly odor that clings to the walls and unclean floor. All the
children born in Florence of Roman Catholic parents are brought hither
for baptism. We never peeped in at the mighty door without seeing
one or more at the font. After one closer view of the parties to the
ceremony, we refrained from approaching that part of the building while
it was thus occupied.
We had been for a long drive in the Cascine—the Central Park of the
Florentines—extended into the country, and, our hands full of wild
flowers, the odors of field and hedge and garden lingering in our
senses, alighted at the Baptistery, attracted by the spectacle of a
group dimly visible from the sunlit street. It had seemed a pretty
fancy to us, this gathering all the lambs of Firenze into one visible
earthly fold, and one that peopled the dusky Rotunda with images of
innocence and beauty. We would make these definite and lasting by
witnessing the solemn rite. A priest in a dirty gown mumbled prayers
from a dog-eared book; a grimy-faced boy in a dirtier white petticoat
and a dirtiest short-gown, trimmed with cotton-lace, swung a censer too
indolently to disturb the foul air. A woman in clothes that were whole,
but not clean, held the _bambino_. I do not like to call it a baby. It
was wound from feet to arm-pits, as are all the Italian children of
the lower classes, in swaddling-linen, fold upon fold, until the lower
part of the body is as stiff as that of a corpse. These wrappings are
never loosened during the day. I cannot answer for the fashion of their
night-gear. The unhappy little mummy in question was, in complexion, a
livid purple, and gasped, all the while, as in the article of death.
The cradle-bands had apparently come down to it through a succession
of brother and sister _bambini_, with scanty interference on the part
of washerwomen, and bade fair to become its winding-sheet if not soon
removed. The priest made the sign of the cross in holy water on the
forehead, wrinkled like that of an old man, never pausing in his Latin
rattle and swing; the acolyte gave a last, lazy toss to the censer,
drawling, “A-a-men!” The woman, as nonchalant as they, covered in the
child from the May air with a wadded quilt, wrapping it over the face
as Hazael laid the wet cloth upon his master’s, possibly to the same
end. The touching rite was disposed of, and the priest shuffled out of
one door, the acolyte went whistling out of another.
The accomplished author of “Roba di Roma,” says of
swaddling-bands—“There are advantages as well as disadvantages in this
method of dressing infants. The child is so well-supported that it can
be safely carried anyhow, without breaking its back, or distorting its
limbs. It may be laid down anywhere, and even be borne on the head in
its little basket without danger of its wriggling out.”
He doubts, moreover, whether the custom be productive of deformity.
Perhaps not. But, our attention having been directed by the ceremony
just described to what was, to our notion, a barbarous invention for
the promotion of infanticide, we noted, henceforward, the proportion of
persons diseased and deformed in the lower limbs among the Florentine
street population. The result amazed and shocked us. On the afternoon
of which I speak, we counted ten cripples upon one block, and the
average number of these unfortunates upon others was between seven
and eight. Join to the tight bands about their trunks and legs the
close linen, or cotton or woollen caps, worn upon their heads, and the
lack of daily baths and fresh clothing, and it is easy to explain why
cutaneous diseases should be likewise prevalent.
The mural tablets of Florence are a study,—sometimes, a thrilling one.
As when, for example, in driving or walking through the old street,
neither wide, light, nor picturesque, of S. Martino, we came upon a
tall, stone house with queer latticed windows very high up in the thick
walls,—and deciphered above the doorway these words:—
“In questa casa degli Alighieri nacque il divina poeta.”
(“In this house of the Alighieri was born the divine poet.”)
There is the tenderness of remorse in the “least-loving mother’s”
every mention of her slighted son—now “chapeled in the bye-way out of
sight”—to wit,—sleepy little Ravenna.
Bianca Capello—fair, fond and false—lived in what is now a very shabby
palace in Via Maggio, bearing the date, “1566.” Amerigo Vespucci was
esteemed worthy of a tablet upon a building in the Borgo Ognissanti.
Galileo’s house is near the Boboli Gardens, and, removed by a block or
two, is the Museum of Natural Sciences, enshrining, as its gem, the
Tribuna of Galileo, enriched by his portrait, his statue, paintings
illustrative of his life, and instruments used by him in making
mathematical and astronomical calculations. His tomb is in the church
of S. Croce, almost covered with ascriptions to his learning, valuable
scientific discoveries, etc., etc. Of tomb and epitaph the Infallible
Mother is the affectionate warden, guarding them, it is to be presumed,
as jealously as she once did the canon he was convicted of insulting.
“The world moves,” and so must The Church, or be thrown off behind.
“Casa Guidi”! “Twixt church and palace of a Florence street!” From
which the clear-eyed poetess bent to gaze upon the hosts who,—
“With accumulated heats,
And faces turned one way as if one fire
Both drew and flushed them, left their ancient beats
And went up toward the Palace-Pitti wall,”
on a day which “had noble use among GOD’S days!” How well we had known
them, and the face that will look from them no more—while as yet the
sea divided us from the land of her love and adoption!
Surely, never had poet more prosaic dwelling-place. Casa Guidi is a
plain, four-story house, covered with yellowish stucco, lighted by
formal rows of rectangular windows, without a morsel of moulding or the
suspicion of an arch to relieve the tameness of the front elevation. It
opens directly upon the sidewalk of as commonplace a street as Florence
can show to the disappointed tourist. Yet we strolled often by it,
lingeringly and lovingly; studied with thoughts, many and fond, the
simple tablet between the first and second-story casements:
“_Qui scrisse e mori Elisabetta Barrett Browning che in
cuore di donna conciliava scienza di dotto e spirito di
poeta, e del suo verso fece un aureo anello fra Italia
e Inghilterra. Pone alla sua memoria Firenze grata,
1861._”
(“Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who
combined with a woman’s heart, the science of the
savant and the mind of the poet, and by her verse
formed a golden link between Italy and England. Erected
to her memory by grateful Florence. 1861.”)
This is a free English translation, but it does not—it cannot, being
English—say to ear and soul what the musical flow of the original
conveys.
She is buried in that part of grateful Florence known as the English
Cemetery. It is smaller than that in Rome, and not comparable to it
in loveliness or interest. We coveted for the woman and the poet a
corner of the old Aurelian wall beside Shelley instead of the small
plot of the main alley of this village of the dead;—Keats’ coverlet of
violets rather than the marble sarcophagus, with a pillared base, set
hard and flat upon her grave. One panel bears her medallion profile in
basso-rilievo, and the initials “E. B. B., 1861.” There was no need
to write more. We would have been better satisfied with less—marble!
Buttercups and daisies pressed over the closed, cold mouth of the tomb,
and a tea-rose tree at the head had strewed it with blushing petals.
Florence is the acknowledged Queen of Modern Art and gives lessons in
the same to all civilization. Yet this English Burial-ground can show
almost as many specimens of poor taste and mediocre manipulation as
there are monuments within its gates;—a puzzle and a pain to those who
have luxuriated in galleries and loggie, the very atmosphere of which
ought to be, not only inspiration, but education.
Galileo’s Observatory, where he watched the stars pale before the
dawn for many happy nights,—and the Villa, in which he lived for
the last eleven years of his mortal life,—blind, illustrious, and,
if we may believe him, contented;—whither Milton came to visit and
console him and was moved to congratulation at the sight of his deep
tranquillity,—stand upon a hill from whose brow Florence is, indeed,
_la Bella_. Galileo’s lamp hangs in the Cathedral of Pisa.
Our excursion to this city was in mid-May. It is distant from Florence
but four hours by rail. The intervening country is one of the loveliest
tracts in Northern Italy. The wheat-fields were ripening into palest
green, and every breath of wind that ruffled this revealed the
scarlet sheen of the poppy underrobe. The railway banks were beds of
mountain-pinks, separated by acres of buttercups and blue flax, clumps
of wild roses and geraniums. Up to this we had felt no oppressive
heats, fast though the season was advancing, and to-day, while the
train was in motion, we rather enjoyed the blaze of sunshine under
which the landscape glowed, while we gazed, into more vivid coloring.
But the radiations from the white streets of Pisa were blinding. The
breeze lost itself among the flat outskirts of the town, and was never
suspected inland.
We took carriages at the hotel and drove, untempted to loiterings
in the shadeless thoroughfares, directly to the Cathedral. It is
fortunate for travelers who come to Pisa in spring or summer, that the
four principal objects of interest, all that one cares to see in the
whilom “queen of the western waves,” are grouped within a radius of
fifty yards from the Duomo. Seeking its shadow from the pitiless sun,
we looked up at the Leaning Tower “over the way.” It did not lean as
emphatically as we had hoped for, nor was it as high as it should have
been. But from the first glimpse of it, its lightness and grace were an
agreeable surprise. And it was _clean_! Seven hundred years have not
defiled it to the complexion of the Florentine Duomo, or even to the
cloudiness of “that model and mirror of perfect architecture,” Giotto’s
Tower. Its eight-storied colonnades of creamy tints passing into white,
were cast up upon the deep blue background like the frost arcades
raised at night by winter fairies. It was loftier, presently, and as it
heightened, inclined more gracefully toward the earth.
“Like an ice-cream obelisk melting at the base,” suggested a heated
spectator pensively.
We walked around the beautiful, majestic wonder; gazed up at its bent
brow from the overhanging side; measured the dip of the foundation by
the deepening of the area in which it is set, and laughed at ourselves
for the natural recoil from walls that seemed to be toppling over upon
us. While the young people, in the convoy of a guide, climbed the three
hundred—save six—stairs winding up to the summit of the Campanile,
Caput and I gladly took refuge in the cool dimness of the Cathedral.
Seated upon a bench exactly over the spot where Galileo used to set
his chair in order to gaze at the mighty chandelier pendent from the
ceiling, we, too, watched it.
It is a grand sight—that great bronze lamp, its scores of disused
candle-sockets hanging empty from the three broad bands. Five naked
boys brace themselves upon their chubby feet against the lower band,
and do Caryatide-duty for the upper. Scrolls, branches, and knops are
exquisitely wrought, and the length of the chandelier must be at least
twelve feet. The sacristan told us, in a subdued voice, how Galileo had
the “habitude” of resorting to the church, day after day, and sitting
“just here” to think and to pray. How his eyes, fixed mechanically upon
the lamp, noted, one day, that the inclination of the long, slender
rod to which it is attached was not quite the same at different hours;
of his excitement as he divined the cause of the variation; that,
after this, he haunted the Duomo continually until he thought out
the truth—“or”—crossing himself, apologetically—“the Blessed Virgin
revealed it to her faithful worshipper.”
Having Protestant and inconvenient memories, we had our thoughts
respecting the reception the discovery, to which the Virgin helped her
_protégé_, had from her other faithful sons. But we liked the story all
the same. We were still more pleased when he deserted us to escort two
German priests, the only other persons present beside ourselves, to the
contemplation of a large picture of the birth of Our Lady. There are
many paintings in the Cathedral and some good ones. Ninety-nine and a
half per cent. are in honor of the Virgin Mary. The Madonna and Child
over the _bénitier_ near the entrance are attributed to Michael Angelo.
We saw all these things while waiting for our juniors; then, went back
to our bench and our contemplation of the lamp, until they rejoined us.
The Campo Santo is a quadrangle enclosed by chapels, with corridors
open toward the burial-ground, and paved with flat tomb-stones. When
the Crusaders of the thirteenth century lost the Holy Land, a pious
archbishop of Pisa had between fifty and sixty ship-loads of earth
brought hither from Mount Calvary, and made into a last bed for those
who loved Jerusalem and mourned her loss. The sacred soil had the
property of converting bodies laid within it into dust so quickly and
thoroughly that others could follow them within a short time without
inconvenience to dead or living. The Campo Santo became tremendously
fashionable, and graves were bought at terrifically high prices when
one considers the dubious character of the privilege connected with
the situation. No interments have been made here for so long that the
quadrangle is a smooth lawn edged with flower-borders.
The frescoes of chapels or corridors are the leading curiosity of the
place. Guide-books and local inventories, without a gleam of humor,
write these down as “remarkable,” “admirable,” “celebrated.” Only
by beholding them can one bring himself to believe in the horrible
grotesqueness of these Biblical and allegorical scenes. Hideous and
blasphemous as they were to me, I bought several photographs that my
home-friends might credit my story of mediæval religious art. The lower
part of one I draw, at random, from my collection, represents the
Creation of Adam. The Creator, a figure with a nimbus about his head,
a train of attendants similarly crowned, behind him,—lifts a nude,
inert man from the earth. A toothed parapet separates this scene in the
Drama of Life from one above, where the same crowned Figure, in the
presence of a larger retinue, draws Eve from the side of sleeping Adam.
She stares about her in true feminine curiosity, clasping her hands in
a gesture of amazement, or delight, designed, no doubt, to contrast
strongly, as it does, with the stupid, half-awake air with which Adam
comes into the world. The sleeping bridegroom is disturbed by the
extraction of his rib, for, without awaking, he puts his hand under
his arm, touching Eve’s toe as it leaves his side. The gravest Puritan
cannot but see that he is _tickled_ by the operation. The lower section
of this panel has Adam, clothed in skins, digging with a rude hoe, in
the parallelograms and circles of an Italian garden. The sequence of
the narrative is interrupted here to put the curse of labor in more
significant juxtaposition with the gift of a wife. At the right-hand
corner of the photograph appears what properly belongs to the third
place in the series;—the guilty pair crouching together, after the
transgression, amid the trees of the garden, and betrayed in their
covert by a darting ray of light from heaven. Below this are Adam and
Eve, driven by two angels in knight’s armor through the Norman-Gothic
door of a machicolated tower. Cain and Abel, quarreling beside an altar
modeled after the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery, are crowded into the
background.
The lack of room for the amplification of subjects and the artist’s
conceptions of these, led to a terrific “mix” upon the walls, which
are literally loaded with frescoes. The entire Book of Genesis is
illustrated upon the surface of the North wall, my photograph being a
fair specimen of the style of the decorations. The partisans of Pietro
di Paccio and of Buffalmacco claim for their respective masters the
honor of the upper line of scenes. A Florentine, Benozzo Gozzoli,
began with Noah’s drunkenness,—a favorite theme in wine-growing
countries—and ran the Jewish history down to the interview of Solomon
and the Queen of Sheba. To him was awarded the distinction of a grave
beneath the history of Joseph.
The two German priests were going into convulsions of merriment before
a monstrous spectacle of the Last Judgment and Hell, in which devils in
green, red and yellow, are fighting over souls of equivocal reputation,
with angels in blue-and-white liveries. The spirits in dispute have
so dire a time between them that the terrors of the fate which befall
them, when relinquished by the angels, must be materially mitigated
by recollections of the escaped horrors of dismemberment. The Inferno
of Dante’s countryman the artist, whose name is unknown, is a huge
chaldron, crammed with heretics, apostates and Jews. The Chief Cook,
his very horns a-tingle with delight, is ramming down some and stirring
up others with a big pudding-stick. The priests laughed themselves
double over our dumb disgust. Probably they credited the fidelity of
the representation less than even we.
The Baptistery is a four-storied rotunda. The lower story is set around
with half-columns; the second, with smaller whole pillars. Above this
rise two tiers of pointed arches, the first row enclosing niches in
which are half-length figures of saints. The upper arches are windows.
A fine dome covers all. An octagonal font occupies the centre of the
one vaulted chamber whose ceiling is the roof. It is raised by two
steps from the floor, and is of white marble carved into patterns as
delicate and intricate as the richest lace-work. The pulpit is scarcely
less lovely, being adorned with bas-reliefs descriptive of the Life of
our Lord from the Annunciation to the Last Judgment. It is a hexagon
and there are five of these panels, the sixth side opening upon the
steps. The reticulated marble is singularly pure in quality and wrought
into elaborateness of finish that has never been excelled.
We were examining it and objurgating the ubiquitous Goth who has
mutilated several of the finest figures, when the custodian, standing
a little apart from us, sounded three notes in a sonorous baritone.
Angel-voices caught them up and repeated them in every variety of
harmonious intonation; then, a loftier choir echoed the strains;
another and another, and still another until the rejoicings were lost
in the heaven of heavens.
We sank upon the steps of the font, and listened, as, in obedience to
our wordless gesture, the man, once and again, gave the signal for
the unearthly chorus. The voices were human, if human tones are ever
perfect in sweetness, roundness and harmony, the transition of the
theme from each band of singers to a higher, a complete illusion of
the enchained senses. The responses, clear, tender, thrilling, invoked
such images as we had seen in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries—concentric
circles of cherubim and seraphim and rapturous redeemed ones, with
uplifted faces and glad, eager eyes, reflecting the effulgence of the
Great White Throne and Him that sat thereon.
Carlo Dolci knew how to paint such, and Raphael, and Fra Angelico. We
had heard their quiring while looking upon the pictured canvas. We
_saw_ them as we hearkened to the hymning that ascended to the stars.