stone walls have arisen.

These cheap and narrow tenements attract those whose incomes are equally straitened; and while its old habitués of the world of aristocracy and art go elsewhere, to Cannes, to Cairo, or to Calcutta, there flocks to Florence a new and unlovely population, who have neither eyes to see nor money to spend, and who jam themselves and their innumerable children into these horrible little dwellings with one window on each side of the door, pistachio green blinds, and slate roofs. Ground has been sold at absurdly cheap rates, and has drawn hither hundreds of families of Italian pensioners of the Government, and small commercial folks, who buy a little plot of land for next to nothing and squat on it in some frightful villino. The Municipality has deliberately chosen to make her descend into a third-rate city; and has done all which ignorance and imbecility combined could compass to desecrate her historic glory and banish her modern elegance and

Every road for many miles is choked up with the lumbering dirty trains of steam tramways, or the posts and wires of electric ones; even the glorious avenue of the Poggio Imperiale, once a dusky, cypressshaded, nightingale-haunted dream of beauty, has been invaded by a filthy steam-tram which goes up and down it, dragging its stinking and smoking length over the once noble drive known as the Colli, and under the shadow of the belltower of S. Miniato.

Let these pass, however. Admit that even beneath the walls of the Certosa and by the doors of Dante's Badia, the vulgar haste and muddle and fuss and worry of the dying years of the century must have concession made to them; excuse and need are there none to palliate the infamous obliteration of all the most ancient and precious landmarks in the centre of the city itself. The fortress of the liberties of earliest Florence is now falling beneath the pickaxe of the workmen; and though many a Florentine has uttered his protest against such thankless, senseless, and disloyal parricide, such protestant voices have been too few or too faint to be heard above the clamor of interested speculation and unscrupulous affaristi. There is not one shadow of excuse for the present demolition of the ancient ways of the city, so dear to every historian, artist, and archæol

ogist. That they should not have been equally dear to every son of the soil is incomprehensible.

It will be scarcely believed that a Florentine journal, called the Fieramosca, writing triumphantly of the demolition of the ancient centre of the city, speaks of it as the destruction of "the abode of despotism!" Had the writer known the history of his own town he would have known that the centre was the cradle of the liberties of the Republic of Florence. The strutting and crowing of these ignorant journalists over the barbarous work now in progress is, indeed, the most ludicrous, though the most impudent, part of an unpardonable act. These are the people who dishonor their country more heinously than she was ever dishonored by conqueror or foe.

That the state of the Ghetto was filthy was a sufficient reason to clean it out and rectify its drainage, but none to pull down its buildings. As I have said long since, the general uncleanliness is due to the habits of the people, and any new quarter inhabited by the same classes will be as dirty in twelve months' time. They were fine, tall, strong, ancient dwellings, these houses of the Ghetto which are now reduced to mounds of rubble and refuse; and the buildings adjacent, such as those of the Piazza Orlandi, of the ancient market place and the contiguous streets, were something more than this, since they numbered among them also palaces and towers of noble architecture and deep historical interest, such as the tower of the Amidei and the palace of the Vecchietti, and even. an edifice of such value as the Loggia of the fish-sellers, commonly called the Loggia of Vasari. The classic Column of Abundance adjacent to this loggia, was taken. down some three years since, and no man knows-at least no man confesses that he knows-its whereabouts.

It is a most piteous spectacle to see these fine and historic erections falling under a wanton and shameful greed of destruction at an epoch which is incapable of produc ing anything better than a glass bazaar or an iron railway station. This mediæval centre to a city which was free to expand as it chose in all directions, was the cs. pecial charm of Florence. Shorn of their natural companionship, and surrounded with the bald and garish trivialities of modern architecture, such buildings as the Palace of the Strozzi and the church of

San Michele must lose all their character; they will be the rich brocade of old, mixed with the trumpery cheap stuff of to-day. There is a staring incongruity, a harsh jar of dissonance, an affront to the eyes and to the mind, in the impudence which places modern stucco and glass and gilding beside the works of the giants of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

It is natural that the city may wish to place statues of its contemporary favorites in its midst; but some care and commonsense should be shown in their erection, and in the selection of their sites. It is pitiable to see such figures as those of Manin and Garibaldi, which are now put up on the Lung Arno, and the equestrian statue of the king rather resembles a swollen frog in a cocked hat than a human being. Victor Emanuel was a plain man, with a short, broad figure, but there was a robust vigor in his form and a luminous smile often on his face, which, with that martial manliness in his carriage and regard which were characteristic of him, would have enabled a sculptor of genius to have given to the nation something at least in a ineasure worthy to have a place beside Ferruccio and Gian of the Bande Neri. When one thinks that this frightful and grotesque image is actually placed within a few metres of Donatello's St. George, one wishes that its black metal could melt and rain, in showers of red-hot lead, upon the heads of the men who dared to set it there. Disregarding the beautiful marble which lies in vast quantities a few miles off them, the makers of these intolerable statues prefer to have them cast in a black, unlovely bronze, which, having neither of the precious metals in it, is as heavy and lustreless as lead. In such a climate as that of Italy, marble preserves its beauty for hundreds and thousands of years; and in marble the clumsiness and want of anatomical knowledge shown by modern sculptors would be less conspicuous than when these faults are increased by casting. A vast column with bass reliefs of his battles, as a great and beautiful fountain, would have been a more ornamental record of Victor Emanuel than any statue could be; to sculpture his form and feature are utterly opposed, as are his uniform and general's hat.. It is amazing, it is incomprehensible, how such hideous objects as these modern erections can have been accepted in cities with such traditions as

those of Italy possess, and such statues of glorious renown as the Colleone, the Augustus, and many others which are every day before the eyes of the populace of this country. It is a lèse-majesté against the royalty of art and history which is at once the strangest and the saddest of treasons.

It is not too much to say that no foreign invader could have done the havoc that has been wrought by the Italian Municipal Councils during the last two years. Even shot and shell spare something, as at Strasburg: the Municipal Council has torn down and levelled with the dust the entire centre of Florence. A conflagration or an earthquake would have been merciful in comparison, for either of these would in all probability have swept away, not the ancient buildings which might have withstood both, but the dreadful stuccoed villinos, the frightful modern statues, the long lines of brick cotton-boxes, the filthy tramway stations, and the posts and wires and caldrons of the electric companies.

No municipalities in their senses would. have allowed factory chimneys to rise on the shore of the Florentine Arno, befouling the sky and begriming the river in its central and most conspicuous scenery, or would have permitted the island of S. Elena, within a stone's throw of the Grand Canal in Venice, to be turned into an iron foundry and carriage manufactory; or would have destroyed the Ludovisi, the Farnesina, and the other grand gardens and parks which have been wantonly violated and razed in Rome. These are the acts of a stupid and brutal ignorance, or of a venal and shameful speculation; without excuse or palliation, and inflicting on the cities thus sacrificed an injury and an outrage as gross as it is pitiful. The plea of utility or necessity cannot hold for a moment here; these gas-works, these factories, these new streets, could with equal ease and usefulness have been erected on waste grounds where there was little or nothing of natural or architectural beauty to be destroyed. These things must be eyesores wherever they are placed; but in cities of incomparable loveliness and majesty, such as are, or were, the cities of Italy, the utmost care should have been taken to place them where they would have been least obtrusive and offensive. Instead of this, a perversity which amounts to malignity places them invariably on sites where either some architectural treasure-house of art is

swept away to give room for them, or else some exquisite view of water or of land is rained by their deformity and stench. This is not "6 progress, this is not "civilization;" it is sheer and senseless boorishness, deadness of soul, and blindness of eye; when it is not something even yet worse, i.e., that jealousy of the incomparable greatness of the past which characterizes the sordid and vain temper of this epoch.

Had the Italian Government, imperial or municipal, had the faintest conception of the real interests of their towns, they would have preserved with the most precise care the beauty of their rivers, of their outskirts, of their islands, of their gardens, and of their architecture. They would have planted vast avenues on the banks of their rivers, and cherished all parks, gardens, and groves already in their midst. Rome, Florence, and Venice were, as we know, marvels of sylvan as well as of architectural beauty in the Renaissance and later; indeed, until the last fourteen or fifteen years, luxuriant verdure was to be seen side by side with granite walls and marble domes and heaven-reaching towers. The wanton desecration of the latter has been contemporary and coincident with the wholesale devastation of the former.

From the days of Pliny and of Horace, gardens have been the glory of Italy until now; it has been reserved for the latest years of this century to see the ilex alleys and the cypress-groves barbarously uprooted, that cockney cottages and tram-car sheds may take their place, or dung-heaps and cinder-mounds smoke and shrivel in their stead. All Europe has felt a pang at the destruction, by flood, of the Karl bridge of Prague, an accident of storm and time for which no one was to blame; why was no voice raised to prevent the wanton municipal destruction of the Grazie bridge and chapel in Florence, and the now threatened destruction of the Jewelers' bridge and of the whole historic quarter of S. Jacobo Before the calamities brought about by flood or fire, men are in despair; before the far greater rnin wronght by greed and stupidity, they are indifferent. They care only for

con

cessions,'

"commissions," and similar transactions. They would sell the Venus of the Tribune to be burned for lime, and despatch the Campanile to Chicago with delight, were the age advanced enough for such progress. Italian cities are sacrificed to a few men, who make a career of municipal despotism and mutilation. They are Rabayas on a small scale. They know nothing of Art, and care nothing for it. They do not see their own absurdity; they have not wit enough to be conscious of it. They pompously adore their own stove-pipe, their own checked trowsers, their own melon hats, their own halfpenny newspaper, their own arsenic'd wall-hanging, and seriously deem all these hideous articles of more value than Taddeo's bridge, than Sansovino's shrine, than the Barbadori tower, than the Gardens of Farnesina. They are incapable of decent creation. They are only capable of destruction. They are envious of the glori ous past which lies like the glow of the sunset behind them. They hide their faces in their pot hats, which cost five francs each, and vow that the petroleum flame of their twopenny tin lamps is lovelier and worthier than the dawn which rose with Perugino, or the noon which smiled with Raffaelle. To see the tawdriness, the paltriness, the coarseness and the soullessness of modern works is painful enough in cities which, having sprung up in this century, are, from no fault of their own, destitute of all except what this century can bestow on them. But it is infinitely worse to behold one of the most enchanting and richly endowed cities of the past, such as is Florence, obliterated wilfully, wantonly, bit by bit, in senseless and brutal waste, merely that this intriguer or the other may make a fortune, a speculation, or a naine. The loss to the present is irreparable, and to the future immeasurable. Rome, Florence, Venice, in all by which they still touch the past, are priceless treasure-houses of history, of art, of inspiration, of beauty, of genius: what is modern in them all is absolutely worthless, and, not only worthless, but offensive to every higher sense of nature, of history, and of art.-National Review.

The idea has, I confess, occurred to ine, but there is a youth of my acquaintance who also loves her and that is why I have never yet seriously entertained it. He, too is a Christian, and he loves us both dearly, and I could not for a moment think of doing anything that might give him pain. So I live on without giving these ideas any place in my thoughts. All my desires are centred in one aim-to fulfil the law of love-love for our fellow-men. That is the one thing necessary. As for wedlock, I shall marry when I am convinced that it is my duty to do so.

"Those are your ideas. But the moth er's standpoint may be different. It cannot surely be immaterial to her whether she gets a son-in-law who is kindly and industrious or one who is the reverse. She will be naturally desirous of having you for such a near relation.."

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By no means. It is perfectly indifferent to her, because she is well aware that all our brethren are to the full as willing as I am to serve her, just as we are to be useful to every other brother and sister, and that I shall continue to do what I can for her in exactly the same way, whether I do or do not become her son-in-law. If the outcome of it all should be my marriage with her daughter, I shall welcome such a consummation with joy, just as I should her marriage with somebody else." is No, no, what you are saying now is utterly impossible. And herein lies the most terrible thing I have observed in you Christians-that you so completely deceive yourselves! And in this way you deceire others as well. That stranger whom I told you about a few minutes ago was right in what he asserted about you. While listening to your glowing descriptions I involuntarily succumb to the spell of the charming life which you depict; but when I think it carefully over, I see that it is all deception, and a deception which leads to savagery, to brutality, to a life approaching that of the beasts."

"In what do you discern this savagery?'' "In the circumstance that as you work to earn a livelihood, you have no leisure or opportunity to devote yourselves to science and art. Here are you, for instance, attired in a ragged garment, with rough horny hands and feet, while your mate, who might well be a goddess of beauty, is as like a slave as a freed woman could be. You Christians have no hymns of Apollo,

no temples, no poetry, no games-in a word, nothing of all those gifts of the gods to man which adorn life and make it beautiful. To grind, grind, and grind, like slaves or oxen, merely in order to support yourselves on the coarsest of foodwhat else is that but a voluntary and impious renunciation of the human will and nature.

"There it is again, "exclaimed Pamphilius, "that tiresome human nature. In what does this nature consist, pray ? Is it in torturing slaves with work beyond their strength, in butchering one's brothers or reducing them to slavery; or is it in transforming woman from what she was and is into an object of amusement? And yet all this is absolutely indispensable to that beauty and life which alone you consider beseem human nature. Is that the essence of human nature, or does it not rather consist in living in love and fellowship with all men, and in feeling one's self a member of one universal brotherhood?

"Moreover you are grievously mistaken, if you imagine that we refuse to recognize science and arts. We highly appreciate all the gifts and talents with which human nature is endowed. We look upon

all man's inborn capacities as means given to assist him to attain one sole end, to the realization of which our whole life is devoted, and that is the fulfilment of the will of God. In science and the arts we discern not a vulgar pastime fit only to give transient pleasure to idle people, but serious avocations of which we have a right to demand what we require of all human callings, namely that in pursuing them, the same active love of God and of one's fellow-man be made manifest which permeates all the acts of a Christian. We do not recognize as true science anything so called which fails to help us to live better; neither do we value art other than that which purifies our thoughts and projects, raises up the soul, and increases the forces necessary to a life of labor and of love. We lose no opportunity to develop as far as is possible knowledge of this kind in ourselves and in our children; and the charms of such art we feel and delight in during our leisure moments. We read and study the writings bequeathed to us by the wisdom of men who lived before us; we chant songs, we paint pictures, and our songs and our pictures comfort us, cheer