CONSEQUENCES OF THE BALL.

WAS up so late last night, that when my maid came at the usual hour this morning I dismissed her, and slept until ten o'clock.

After I had breakfasted, I learned that both Janet and Venitia had gone driving. Feeling as if I needed some pleasant occupation out doors, I sent for a carriage, intending to drive to the Church of L' Incoronata. I wished to be alone in the gallery of that old building, and dream my waking visions beside those ceiling frescos of Giotto, which are so suggestive to me of pleasing memories both in history and art; for if, as old Montaigne says, "les historiens sont ma droicte balle," the early artists are also "le vray gibier de mon estude."

"At any rate, I love the season

Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy."

While looking at Giotto's pictures, after studying those of the Byzantine school, I understand well what F. Schlegel meant when he wrote, "Where clear intelligence is combined with an instinctive power over the mechanism of a work, the glowing apparition called Art, which we venerate and welcome as a stranger visitant descending from loftier regions, springs at once into existence."

Giotto! With that name what rich associations are

connected. The friend of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The popular artist of one of the most brilliant and luxurious courts ever known, where beauty and genius, and, alas! sin and sorrow also, dwelt. From this painter's pencil has come to us, in the ceiling frescos of L' Incoronata, the face of that lovely, hapless queen, Joanna. In this portrait she looks pleasure-loving and insouciante; her long, almond-shaped eyes ask only tenderness and ease; her full lips, soft cheeks, and beautiful head, which bears the crown with sweet dignity, all express love and joy more than pride and ambition.

The haughty beauties standing behind her in this fresco picture of her marriage — her cousins, Boccaccio's Fiammetta, and the Countess Durazzo have enough of these dangerous passions in their faces; but the countenance of this calm, happy-looking woman is free from all harsh

emotions.

E tu madre d' amor, col tuo giocondo

E lieto aspetto."

Pretty creature!

She and her gay, pleasure-loving cousins had great poets for lovers; world-poems to fetch down their names to us; and Giotto, "the lord of painting's field," to give us their delicious forms; but alas! they had history, also, to stand grimly by, and point with red, dripping finger to their poison bowls and headsman's block and axe!

"merely born to bloom and drop, Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop; What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

'Dust and ashes'! so you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too, what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.” *

* Browning's "Toccata of Galuppi."

When the servant brought me word the carriage was ready, I stepped out of my window on the terrace, and found Philip there reading.

"I thought I smelled your cigar. Why did you not announce yourself?"

"I have been waiting patiently for you ever since Mrs. Dale went out," he said. "You are going out also.

May I accompany you?"

"Certainly, if you wish to." "Where are you going?"

"I intended driving to L' Incoronata; but as you doubt the verity of my beloved Giotto frescos, you would be bored. Therefore we may go somewhere else, and I can visit the old ceiling another time."

"Of course," he said, in a gentle tone; "you allow me to be bored, and you yield to instead of controlling me, and making me more amiable. Dear Ottilie, you are an angel!"

"Not quite, Philip. But say, where shall we go?"

"To L' Incoronata, my friend; and I will promise not to utter one slighting word against the objects of your sweet faith. Where is San Lorenzo? I wish to visit it some time, for it is the church in which Boccaccio first met his Fiammetta."

Love is making Philip heavenly, I thought. I let him lift me into the carriage, arrange the cushions and footstool, and do everything for my comfort he could, while I directed the coachman to drive to the Largo de San Lorenzo. While we were driving there he said: “Ottilie, you and I should have been lovers. You understand me so well. I wonder if any other woman could now be as patient and forbearing with me as you are?”

"If you loved her, Philip, she would not have the

need; and as to understanding you, the knowledge I have a wife should not wish,—indeed, would be better without."

"Why, fair Portia ?”

"Because a wife does not need to understand her husband as I do you. Sweet love and faith are her best gifts."

“And have you not love for and faith in me?”

"Yes, both; but, with them, a deeper knowledge of you, which places us abreast. I am not the sort of wife you should have.”

"What sort of wife should I have, Ottilie?

"Some one to love you trustingly, confidingly, adoringly, with a young, fresh, happy heart; just as I could and ought to have loved your father, Philip."

As

Philip remained silent, but he held my hand in his kindly, and once in a while grasped it with a firmer clasp. We reached the Franciscan church of San Lorenzo. we looked up at the great marble doorway, which is one of the last remains of its original Gothic glory, and then stood under the vast stone arch, which spans the interior with stern beauty, we helped each other's memory in running back over the famous history of this great old church.

Every stone we stepped on had a legend or commemorated a great name. The very ground on which the church stands is classic. Here was the Forum, the Augustinian Basilica, and near it a temple of Castor and Pollux, in old Roman days.

The church was built by Charles of Anjou, that warlike, adventuring brother of St. Louis, to commemorate his victory over the "flaxen-haired Manfred," at Benevento (1266). Robert the Good and Wise, his grandson, finished it. Good and Wise! How sad those titles make

us feel; for when this good and wise king died, all those virtues seemed to be buried with him.

"Heavens!" wrote Petrarch to Cardinal Colonna, after his arrival in Naples, when sent there on an embassy to the new government succeeding good old King Robert's death, "Heavens! what a change has the death of one man produced in this place. No one would know it now. Religion, justice, and truth are banished. I think I am at Memphis, Babylon, or Mecca."

On entering the church, our first footsteps fell upon the tombstone of Giambattista della Porta, that friend of all hasty, eager, nineteenth-century students, who have so much to learn; for Time's book has grown very ponderous, and life has not one day more added to its length, nor is its strength any greater.

"Blessings on the memory of the old Italian!" I said, as we stooped to read his name chiselled in the stone, and the date of his death, 1515. "From his plan came all these great digests of knowledge, called encyclopædias, which has formed a true community system for the mind, more successful than those which political dreamers have attempted for governments."

Then Philip hunted up the tomb of Tasso's enthusiastic friend and biographer, the young Neapolitan nobleman Manso. After that we groped back in the old Chapterhouse, where we admired a remarkable window, and the vaulted halls, now in ruins, which retain the original Gothic form of the church. As it was very dusty and close there, we returned to the front and sat down in one of the polygonal chapels, near the tribune or choir, where we talked over the Petrarch and Boccaccio history of the building. It was in the monastery of this church Petrarch resided during the period of his embassy from Rome to