united. According to Janet's and Venitia's report,- for they understand this Genoese dialect, the girls were

saying all manner of saucy things to their beaux.

Their brilliant eyes shot out sparkling jets of fire, their lips were as red as the coral beads encircling their proud, well-formed throats, throats which looked like bits of fine columns, and the skin! O that was delicious, "Phoebus had loved it and kissed it brown," and the genial warm blood mounted up in a rich glow on their cheeks.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "if an artist would only deign to copy such pieces of nature from these street corners of Italian towns, his pictures would be ravishing before he hardly knew it. As Stendhal says, 'Filippo Lippi and Frère Angelico da Fiesole, when they had the good luck to meet with a fine bit in nature, copied it with conscientious fidelity. It was this close study of real life in its most perfect form which makes the works of the painters of the last half of the fifteenth century so enchanting.' "But those old Italian artists," said Janet, 66 were something more than mere painters. When you come to see the numberless walls, ceilings, and altars in South Italy, covered with fine decorative frescoes and paintings, you will say they were the works of men possessing more than ordinary mind, and higher, purer culture than we see now. Their creations must have cost them vigils of meditation, days of labor, and concentrated thought; then, added to this, they had a gift of conception, such as great poets or famous writers possess."

"Lord Lindsay," I remarked, "after giving the first period, from the sixth century to the fifteenth, to architecture, as the voice of the simple, pure faith of the age, devotes the fifteenth century to sculpture, as the expres

sion of Christianity battling with Intellect; the third, however, extending from the latter half of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, he says witnessed the successive triumphs of that struggle, and Painting became then the handmaid and exponent of Christianity."*

"There is something very earnest and true in architecture," responded Janet, "I mean that architecture of the early ages of the Church. Jean Paul was right, or felt right, when he said, 'the giant stood out of it and close before the soul.' The men who built those great works were nourished on 'plain living and high thought'; they must have had a faith, not childlike, but godlike. The painters who followed them-those marvellous men I was just speaking of - seem to me to have been earnest believers too; but they had become poets, and were as little children in their expression of the new gift. They looked up into the throbbing heavens, and saw adoring cherub heads crowding in to behold the glory of the Infant God; and on the long, cool, level clouds beautiful Madonnas stood, crowned with the glory of the setting sun of old Heathenism beaming on them, while the long folds of their chaste garments swept above the young crescent moon of Christ's faith, which was just rising. These men had hearts running over with love, bodies brimming up with rich exuberant life, and minds not so full of learning as of heavenly inspiration. A great Word was given to mankind in each one of those periods; but we do not seem to possess, now-a-days, organs capable of hearing or comprehending the language. Even the few of us who fondly think we possess them, grope as children at twilight or see as 'through a glass darkly.””

* Lord Lindsay's Christian Art, Vol. II. p. 4.

The night has closed in completely; the turmoil still goes on in the strada, but as a sea-breeze is blowing, and it is cool, I have come in and closed the window. Venitia is playing mad wild bursts of music, broken bits of conception suggested by these Carnival sights. She is more than clever, but her thoughts to-night are disjointed and rugged.

Here comes our refreshing nine o'clock tea; for we Americans, like the English, never lose our home habits, whatever part of the world we may float to. We shall have a little pleasant talk over the teacups, and then we shall part for the night, as the confusion of the Carnival has wearied us sadly.

PRIDE, PIETY, AND AMBITION.

E have spent the day in church-visiting. First we went to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, one of the oldest churches in Italy, built in the beginning of the eleventh century; but only one of its towers was ever completed. It remains unfinished, as do so many of these old churches on the Continent, notwithstanding the early date of its foundation.

The traveller soon grows accustomed, however, to these half-completed works of Europe; and, indeed, to so much that might seem to be hinderances to enjoyment;—to ruins that are not even sublime; to all the surroundings of rugged footpaths, and the rude makeshifts of an indolent population, such as hovels and ignoble buildings, crowding close in against these vast piles of architecture.

But these drawbacks are no more noticed than the withered branches, dead leaves, unsightly bugs, or woody paths made muddy by the trickling of a wandering rivulet in a vast forest. The unfinished towers and spires, too, are like some forest-trees that have shot out one complete branch to its full and perfect height, and quite forgotten, through stress of storm, or some other forest trial of earth, or air, or sky, the rest of the branches belonging to the original tree-plan.

The exterior of the Cathedral of San Lorenzo is curiously ornamented with blocks of white and black marble, a Saracenic fashion of decoration. In the interior, the nave has sixteen columns of black and white Parian marble. The architecture is of no particular style, and ineffective, the church having evidently undergone those alterations which the architects of the Renaissance saw fit to make.

San Lorenzo has a number of side chapels, into one of which Venitia was obstinately bent on entering, and had quite a playful, coaxing talk with the Sacristan, endeavoring to bribe him, not only with silver lira, but with her own bewitching smiles and beguiling words; - all in vain.

It was the Chapel of St. John the Baptist; and Innocent VIII. having been attacked with a fit of anger against the memory of the pretty dancing daughter of the cruel Herodias, resented her sin on her sex, by forbidding all women to step foot over the threshold of this Chapel, except one day in the year, the fête day, which does not fall during our stay.

"Your church, Ottilie," said Janet, "has always been sadly wanting in gallantry to our sex."

"On the contrary, my dear," I replied, "it has always acknowledged our great power."

"Not in very courteous terms or ways. But do listen to that witch, Venitia. How well she remembers this Genoese dialect! Dear child! She makes me think of those old days. Her born tongue is that caressing, childlike Venitian; but she was always very quick in catching these peculiarities of speech which make up the different dialects of a language. Hear! how she rings out this Gallicized Genoese, as good, I assure you, as any of the people might speak it themselves."