Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 | Page 2

the bells of the churches were sounding the Ave Maria, filling
the air with sweet and solemn vibrations, as if angels were passing to
and fro overhead, harping as they went; and ever and anon the great
bell of the Campanile came pulsing in with a throb of sound of a
quality so different that one hushed one's breath to hear. It might be
fancied to be the voice of one of those kingly archangels that one sees
drawn by the old Florentine religious artists,--a voice grave and
unearthly, and with a plaintive undertone of divine mystery.

The monk and the cavalier bent low in their saddles, and seemed to join
devoutly in the worship of the hour.
One need not wonder at the enthusiasm of the returning pilgrim of
those days for the city of his love, who feels the charm that lingers
around that beautiful place even in modern times. Never was there a
spot to which the heart could insensibly grow with a more home-like
affection,--never one more thoroughly consecrated in every stone by
the sacred touch of genius.
A republic, in the midst of contending elements, the history of Florence,
in the Middle Ages, was a history of what shoots and blossoms the
Italian nature might send forth, when rooted in the rich soil of liberty. It
was a city of poets and artists. Its statesmen, its merchants, its common
artisans, and the very monks in its convents, were all pervaded by one
spirit. The men of Florence in its best days were men of a large, grave,
earnest mould. What the Puritans of New England wrought out with
severest earnestness in their reasonings and their lives these early
Puritans of Italy embodied in poetry, sculpture, and painting. They built
their Cathedral and their Campanile, as the Jews of old built their
Temple, with awe and religious fear, that they might thus express by
costly and imperishable monuments their sense of God's majesty and
beauty. The modern traveller who visits the churches and convents of
Florence, or the museums where are preserved the fading remains of its
early religious Art, if he be a person of any sensibility, cannot fail to be
affected with the intense gravity and earnestness which pervade them.
They seem less to be paintings for the embellishment of life than
eloquent picture-writing by which burning religious souls sought to
preach the truths of the invisible world to the eye of the multitude.
Through all the deficiencies of perspective, coloring, and outline
incident to the childhood and early youth of Art, one feels the
passionate purpose of some lofty soul to express ideas of patience,
self-sacrifice, adoration, and aspiration far transcending the limits of
mortal capability.
The angels and celestial beings of these grave old painters are as
different from the fat little pink Cupids or lovely laughing children of

Titian and Correggio as are the sermons of President Edwards from the
love-songs of Tom Moore. These old seers of the pencil give you grave,
radiant beings, strong as man, fine as woman, sweeping downward in
lines of floating undulation, and seeming by the ease with which they
remain poised in the air to feel none of that earthly attraction which
draws material bodies earthward. Whether they wear the morning star
on their forehead or bear the lily or the sword in their hand, there is still
that suggestion of mystery and power about them, that air of dignity
and repose, that speak the children of a nobler race than ours. One
could well believe such a being might pass in his serene poised majesty
of motion through the walls of a gross material dwelling without
deranging one graceful fold of his swaying robe or unclasping the
hands folded quietly on his bosom. Well has a modern master of art and
style said of these old artists, "Many pictures are ostentatious
exhibitions of the artist's power of speech, the clear and vigorous
elocution of useless and senseless words; while the earlier efforts of
Giotto and Ciniabue are the burning messages of prophecy delivered by
the stammering lips of infants."
But at the time we write, Florence had passed through her ages of
primitive religions and republican simplicity, and was fast hastening to
her downfall. The genius, energy, and prophetic enthusiasm of
Savonarola had made, it is true, a desperate rally on the verge of the
precipice; but no one man has ever power to turn back the downward
slide of a whole generation.
When Father Antonio left Sorrento in company with the cavalier, it was
the intention of the latter to go with him only so far as their respective
routes should lie together. The band under the command of Agostino
was posted in a ruined fortress in one of those airily perched old
mountain-towns