HUMAN FAME.

ALKING of the Toledo crowd, "what a sight it is to be sure," as Mrs. Folham says. Every clear morning we drive through it, getting out

of the carriage occasionally to hunt up old buildings, or spend an hour or two looking at the wonderful things contained in the Museo Borbonico. The bronzes, and marbles, and pictures, and precious relics. of "those palimpsests of Nature," as Heine so finely called Herculaneum and Pompeii," where the original old stone text is brought out,” · these are all safely deposited in the fine halls of this building, and displayed

there with striking effect.

But most often we go and study in the churches; for study indeed it is, to hunt up the old tombs and monumental marbles contained in them, and link correctly together the double and treble chain of the artist who carved the story, of the man who lived it, and the full period of history which rounded it into a whole.

Persons who visit Naples are hardly aware of the vast amount of sepulchral wealth contained in her churches. They are lined and floored and almost roofed with tombs, sarcophagi, statues, bas-reliefs, and stone chests, covered with fine old monumental sculpture, the works of the artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. We

go again and again to certain favorite ones. Santa Chiara, for example, is an unexplored mine of curious. beauty and wealth. The old pulpit and bas-reliefs overhanging the western entrance are fine leaves, as it were, in the history of Middle-Age sculpture, for they are the works of the elder Masuccio, who died on the threshold of the fourteenth century (1308).

By means of ladders and glasses we examined both of these old relics. The bas-reliefs contain the whole of the beautiful legend of that learned and saintly woman, St. Catharine of Alexandria, she whose history has inspired so many great artists. The daughter of a king, and renowned for her beauty, her learning, and her pride, when a mighty prince asked her in marriage, she refused him, saying she would take no one as her husband unless as noble, as rich, and as wise as herself.

Some time after, her mother, the queen, sent her to see a holy hermit, who, having promised her a spouse that should be not only her equal, but far exceeding her in rank and all beauty of mind and body, then showed her a tablet on which was traced an image of the Mother of God, holding her Son in her arms. The princess returned home, and dreamed that the figures she had seen on the tablet came to her, as if alive; and when she went to receive the lovely Child, he turned from her, saying she was not beautiful enough.

Through her mother's prayers, and the intercession of the hermit, she was secretly converted to Christianity; then again she had a vision, and in it Christ's Mother came to her with her Holy Infant, who held a ring in his little hand, and the royal maiden was wedded to him with that ring, which the Child put on her finger.

All the principal passages in her life are told with

touching simplicity in these bas-reliefs. Her first visit to the hermit, her visions, her mystic marriage, her great dispute with the learned heathen doctors, her scourging, exposure to the wheel, and the angel of God breaking it to pieces, her martyrdom, — each one is sculptured with curious grace. They seem uncouth and rude to some eyes. Venitia, for example, sees no beauty in them; on the contrary, she considers them barbarous and frightful. But to Janet and me they unveil all the lovely thought and feeling which lie folded up in them, as the manyhued petals of the flower in the green bud-sheath.

The secret is, we love the old masters who lived in the early ages of art; we reverence their labors and their memory. These are the master-keys of entrance into the closed chambers of Art's mansion. Some one has beautifully said: "These old sculptures and frescoes remind one of the beneficent fairies, who appear disguised as withered hags, and bestow diamonds and pearls on the discreet maidens who accost them with reverence."

These bas-reliefs of Masuccio I., rude and unattractive as they may seem to modern eyes, have served, as Spenser said of Chaucer, as a "well of sculpture undefiled "* for great artists. The famous Florentine painter, Masaccio (1402–1443), one of the great founders of a dynasty in art, whose age was an epoch, who had his successors hailing from him like a mighty emperor, and whose frescoes greatly influenced Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, not only studied, but borrowed freely from them for his frescoes at Rome in San Clemente. When we go from such old works to a church filled with modern sculpture, such as the Santa Maria della Pieta de' Sangri, with its figures covered

* "Well of English undefiled."

with veils and nets, feats of skill rather than fruits of genius, it is like passing from fresh, pure, mountain air, into the oppressive atmosphere of a conservatory.

After seeing these bas-reliefs, we never rested until we had hunted up all we could find of Masuccio's works. We left Santa Chiara without examining the beautiful royal tombs sculptured by his nephew, Masuccio II.; they must take another day of study, we said, and we drove off to the cathedral to find his labors there.

The cathedral or Duomo building was designed by him for Charles of Anjou, in 1272. The troubles arising out of the "Sicilian Vespers" (1282), which cost Charles the central gem of his newly-acquired crown, Sicily, prevented both king and architect from seeing it completed; it was finished, however, by his nephew, the younger Masuccio, during the reign of Robert the Wise, grandson of Charles of Anjou (1316).

Several earthquakes damaged the original edifice so much as to require frequent rebuildings; thus its original character is nearly destroyed, little remaining of Masuccio's work except the four lofty towers in the centre of which the architect placed the church. It is a Latin cross, with a nave and two aisles. There are one hundred and eighteen columns in these aisles, of Oriental or Egyptian granite, and African and Cipollino marble, taken by Masuccio I. from the ruins of the temples of Neptune and Apollo, on whose site the cathedral was built. The baptismal font at the entrance, over which we lingered, is a beautiful antique vase, of Egyptian basalt, with a porphyry pedestal, and sculptured with Bacchanalian masks, thyrsus, and festoons of ivy, showing that it must have been a lustral basin in one of the old temples.

Not wishing to have our chains of dates hopelessly tangled, we did not stop to look at the numberless points of attraction which beckoned to us at every footstep, but proceeded to the Minutoli chapel, to see the tribune, or Gothic altar, and crucifix, with its statues of the Virgin and St. John, which are said to be by Masuccio I., though Lord Lindsay attributes these statues to his friend Pietro de' Stefani.

Under the tribune of this chapel is inserted the tomb of the Archbishop Filippo Minutoli, by another of Masuccio's pupils, Bamboccio. I should not have noticed it, but Janet, with roguish eyes dancing merrily, said, pointing to it:

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"O, those naughty, wicked poets! How their bright fun intrudes into these sacred places! . Look, Ottilie. This is the very sarcophagus Boccaccio describes in his story of the Jockey of Perugia.* This fellow, Andreuccio by name, came here with two robbers, the night after the Archbishop was buried, to steal a ruby ring of great value which was said to be on his finger. They made a cat's-paw of Andreuccio; but he was more cunning than puss in the fable, for although they frightened him into entering the sarcophagus while they lifted the lid, they could not make him give up the ring. After he found it, he secreted it, and declared it was not there. They did not believe him, of course, and became so provoked that they let the lid fall, and left him, half dead with fright, shut up with the dead body. But they had scarcely gone, when another set of robbers, headed by a naughty priest, entered this chapel on the same errand. They lifted the lid, propped it up, and the priest entered the sarcophagus boldly. Andreuccio said not a word, but gave a furious

* Decam, Giorn. II. Nov. V.