Barbaras Heritage | Page 9

the highest she did still aspyre; Or, if ought higher were then that, did it desyre._
--SPENSER.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF THE ANNUNZIATA, FLORENCE.]
One afternoon, about two weeks later, Barbara and Bettina were sitting in their pleasant room in Florence. The wide-open windows looked out upon the slopes of that lovely hill on whose summit is perched Fiesole, the poor little old mother of Florence, who still holds watch over her beautiful daughter stretched at her feet. Scented airs which had swept all the way from distant blue hills over countless orange, olive, and mulberry groves filled the room, and fluttered the paper upon which the girls were writing; it was their weekly letter budget.
The fair faces were flushed as they bent over the crowded sheets so soon to be scanned by dear eyes at home. How much there was to tell of the events of the past week! Drives through the streets of the famous city; through the lovely Cascine; up to San Miniato and Fiesole; visits to churches, palaces, and picture-galleries; days filled to overflowing with the new life among foreign scenes.
Suddenly Barbara, throwing aside her pen, exclaimed:--
"Betty dear, don't you sometimes feel most horribly ignorant?"
"Why? when?"
"Oh! I am just writing about our visit to Santa Croce the other day. I enjoyed so much the fine spaces within the church, the softened light, and some of the monuments. But when we came to those chapels whose walls are covered with paintings,--you remember, where we met that Mr. Sherman and his daughters who came over on the Kaiser with us,--I tried to understand why they were so interested there. They were studying the paintings for such a long time, and I heard some of the things they were saying about them. They thought them perfectly wonderful; and that Miss Sherman who has such lovely eyes said she thought it worth coming from America to Italy just to see them and other works by the same artist. Mr. Sumner, too, heard what she said, and gave her such a pleased, admiring look. After they had gone out from the chapel where are pictures representing scenes in the life of St. Francis, I went in and looked and looked at them; but, try as hard as I could, I could not be one bit interested. The pictures are so queer, the figures so stiff, I could not see a beautiful or interesting thing about them. But I know I am all wrong. I do want to see what they saw, and to feel as they felt!"
"I liked the pictures because of their subject," said Bettina; "that dear St. Francis of Assisi who loved the birds and flowers, and talked to them as if they could understand him. But I did not see any beauty in them."
"We must learn what it is; we must do more than just look at all these early pictures that fill the churches and galleries just as we would look at wall paper, as so many people seemed to do in the Uffizi gallery the other day," said Barbara, emphatically. "This must be one of the things papa meant."
Just here came a knock on the door.
"May we come in, Margery and I?" asked Malcom. "Why! what is the matter? You look as if you had been talking of something unpleasant."
Bettina told of Barbara's trouble.
"How strange!" said Margery. "Mamma has just been talking to us about this very thing. She says that, if you like, Uncle Robert will teach us about the works of the Italian painters. You know he knows everything about them! He has even written a book about these paintings in Florence!"
"Yes," said Malcom with a comical shrug, "the idea is that we all spend one or two mornings every week studying stiff old Madonnas and Magdalenes and saints! I love noble and beautiful paintings as well as any one, but I wonder if I can ever learn anything that will make me care to look twice at some of those old things in the long entrance gallery of the Uffizi. I doubt it. Give me the old palaces where the Medici lived, and let me study up what they did. Or even Dante, or Michael Angelo! He was an artist who is worth studying about. Why! do you know, he built the fortifications of San Miniato and--"
"But," interrupted Barbara, "you know that whenever Italy is written or talked about, her art seems to be the very most important thing. I was reading only the other day an article in which the writer said that undoubtedly the chief mission or gift of Italy to the world is her paintings,--her old paintings,--and that this mission is all fulfilled. Now, if this be true, do we wish to come here and go away without learning all that we possibly can