the portrait of the church founder, - I sat and listened to Janet's account of the cause of the building of the church. "Near the middle of the sixteenth century the Marquis de Sauli was one of Genoa's richest and most esteemed noblemen. He owned, among other delightful things, a number of city palaces; and the one in which he loved best to live was a magnificent building standing high and lordly on the Hill de Carignan. "Although the Marquis was so passing rich, strange to say, he had no chapel nor church of his own. He was in the habit of going to hear Mass in the church belonging to his old friend, Count Fieschi, the Santa Marie in Vie Lata; and he continued doing this even when his old brother nobleman died and the haughty eighteen-yearold heir succeeded to the title and vast estates of the Fieschi family. It never entered into his head that he might not be as welcome to the young Count; for we middle-aged people are very apt to think lightly, and often not at all, of the likes and dislikes of young folk. It was only yesterday they were children, and had to obey; it is hard to step aside and give them our path, while we fall off into the shadowy one of the elders; and this stepping aside to make way for the young comes to almost every one of us unawares; we suddenly awaken and find not only the old gone, but ourselves lifted into their places. "To return to the Marquis de Sauli. "Every church-day the good nobleman went, as he had done all his life, taking his family with him, to the Fieschi church. Now family,' in those days, did not simply mean one's children and grandchildren, but also retainers, a household guard of soldiers it might be, or something of the kind, which made an addition to one's congregation not always agreeable to a nobleman, who wished to worship God as he lived with man, in solitary grandeur. The young Count Fieschi, I fancy, was one of these same social, pious aristocrats, for one day he advanced the hour of celebration, so that when the Marquis de Sauli and his suite arrived, Mass was over, the church empty. The first time the Marquis met his young friend, Count Fieschi, after this occurred, he complained good-naturedly about it. "My dear Marquis,' said Fieschi, in a stately way, "if a gentleman wishes to hear Mass he should have a church of his own.' "So he should,' replied the Marquis curtly, and, turning on his ringing heel, he gave orders to have his superb palace on the Carignan Hill, the grandest he owned, razed to the ground; and after some years of patient and costly labor, the handsome Church of St. Marie de Carignan rose in its place. He wished to show the haughty, churlish young nobleman that a gentleman could indeed have a church of his own, and at the same time destroy a superb palace if he pleased." - This story being told, we looked up at the sorrowful "Pietà" of Luca di Cambiaso (Luchetto da Genova), that natural, unaffected artist of a period when nature had nearly died out in art,- the mannerist era of the sixteenth century. We thought of the poor, gifted painter's sorrowful life, and talked of him and his lovely sisterin-law, whom he has painted in this picture as the woman who weeps, and has wept silently there for near three hundred years! Luca is kneeling hopelessly beside his dead Lord; the two have brought their mortal love and anguish to that Sacred Presence of Immortal Life in Death, that passionate human love which man forbade, and which sent the great artist to his grave and the woman he adored to the cloister, when they found nor man nor God could help them. I looked at the portrait of the stately founder of the church, and then upon the fine well-proportioned building, which had been raised to display wealth, to gratify family pride, and heal wounded vanity, not for the love of God. O no! piety was as dead as that painted Christ of the heart-broken painter, for "'Tis the substance that wanes ever, 't is the symbol that exceeds." This church is a specimen of fine architectural unity. It is built on a square of a hundred and fifty feet, without including the absis, and was erected on the original plan of Michael Angelo for St. Peter's at Rome. Three naves divide the interior, and a Greek cross is formed by the intersections. In the centre is a grand cupola, supported by four massive pillars; at the four angles of the cross are four smaller cupolas. We went up into the large central dome to see the magnificent view it commands of the gulf and part of the city. On the left of us were the ramparts, with the whole length of the picturesque wharves bordered by the fishermens' huts, and the petty gulfs of the harbor making graceful indentations in the shore. The peaks of the Apennines rose behind the town, the west was gorgeous with light, the blue waters of the harbor tossed up the sun's rays playfully, then seemed to rush off with frolicsome glee out of the clasping arms of the Mole into the green sea beyond. Towards the west the beautiful shore stretched out, looking like strips of lapis lazuli, the headlands were so blue, resting on 66 The waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire We sat silent for sometime, feeling that it was quite impossible to point out to each other the quick succeeding beauties which were causing us such sweet, unutterable rapture. But gradually our eyes, as if satisfied with the first eager sweep over the distance, rested on the objects nearer at hand, and at last upon the church itself. Then we felt that need of expression which comes to us when some strong emotion has been roused and gratified on the instant. We do not care to talk of the cause of our joy precisely, but talk we must, of something, or deep sadness will ensue. The beautiful church made one common subject for us, and was a pleasant theme, as it satisfied our yearning for social communion. Venitia was the first to speak; for the young are always restless and impatient when fronting these silent, invisible barriers which stand between the world of emotion and this outside life. "These great 'symphonies in stone,'" she repeated, "that expression is very beautiful." "There is a fitness in comparisons made between architecture and music, Venitia," I said, "that is seldom thought of. Goëthe called architecture 'frozen music,' and remarked that the influence which flows upon us from it is as that from music. Lord Lindsay, too, from whom we have been quoting so much lately, says, apropos to this very subject, as symbolical and expressive of emotion, not of definite ideas, Music and Architecture are identical in principle, and distinct, the one from Painting and Sculpture, the other from Poetry or verse, and not only distinct, but independent of them to such a degree that, in proportion as they rise to absolute perfection, the addition of words to the one, or of subsidiary design to the other, becomes not only unnecessary, but obtrusive.'"* I then gave her a short and rapid outline of the deep symbolic meaning contained in the construction of a church when architects were the great poets and wrote their epics in stone. The position of the church had to be first considered. It was placed towards the east in memory of the birth of our blessed Lord. It was built on a hill or elevated place if possible as an emblem of divine superiority, and also as an intermediate place between heaven and earth. These two points obtained, then rose the church. Four parts were essential to it, the porch, the nave, the choir, and the sanctuary, as emblems of the life of the penitent, of the Christian, the saint, and the angel. Thus in the early ages of the Church, the penitents, called audientes and prostrati, prostrated themselves in the porch during the offering of the Sacrament, not being considered pure enough to be present during the holiest part. of the celebration. In the nave were the consistentes or members. In the ambo, or choir, which was always elevated a step or two above the nave, the clergy or participantes sat: while at the sanctuary stood the representative of our blessed Lord offering the Holy Sacrifice. The church sometimes had four doors, two symbolical of earthly life, specioræ porta; two of celestial life, portæ The sanctuary, which could be entered only by sanctæ. *Lord Lindsay's Christian Art, Vol. II. p. 13. |