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appearance, been open originally down to the pavement. In their present state they are not unlike so many Gothic windows stripped of their glass. Indeed, it is pity that they had not been glazed, for the frescos, with which the walls are covered, might thus perhaps have been protected in some degree from the effects of damp. As it is, they are rapidly going to decay.

In this Campo Santo it was, that, at the dawn of modern painting, the more distinguished of the Tuscan artists were taught to emulate each other's powers. Here Giotto executed certain historical pieces from the life of Job, which, though amongst his earliest performances, are not altogether devoid of merit. Here Gozzoli finished, in the short space of two years, his Noah inebriated, his Building of the Tower of Babel, with other scriptural subjects which cover one entire wing of the cemetery— a work that might, as Vasari well observed of it, appal a whole host of painters. Here, also, Andrea Orcagna gave a representation of the Last Judgment; and Bernardo Orcagna, another of the Inferno. In a painting in the corner of the rectangle to the right of the entrance, Andrea has taken occasion to represent the effects of the sacred soil of which the cemetery is composed *. First

* It is said to have been filled, to the depth of nine feet, with earth brought by the Pisans from the Holy Land, on their return from the third crusade. This earth was thought to possess the property of decomposing animal substances in the space of four-andtwenty-hours. Such, at least, is the prevailing notion, though Simond, on the contrary, asserts, that "bodies buried in it are said to be safe from decay."

you see the swelling, then the bursting, of the trunk, then its gradual decomposition, and, lastly, the bare skeleton; all which you are required to believe was the work of only twenty-four hours. In this picture Orcagna has also represented the soul quitting the body, under the semblance of an infant. In some instances the devil is in the act of seizing this infant; in others, an angel is seen bearing it away to heaven. In one case, where the defunct seems, as Madame Sevigné says of herself, to have belonged "ni au Dieu, ni au diable," an angel takes this semblance of a soul by the hands, while the devil keeps fast hold of it by the legs.

Had the various works executed here by the earlier painters been preserved in their pristine state, they would have afforded an admirable field for the study of the rise and progress of modern art. Retouched, however, as they have been, they still exhibit a sort of palæology of painting; they still serve to "shew the art growing, through several stages, from the simplicity of indigence, to the simplicity of strength." "The first pictures," continues Forsyth, "betray a thin, timid, ill-fed pencil; they present corpses rather than men, sticks rather than trees, inflexible forms, flat surfaces, long extremities, raw tints, any thing but nature. As you follow the chronology of the wall, you catch perspective entering into the pictures, deepening the back-ground, and then adjusting the groups to the plans. You see the human figure first straight, or rather stretched; then foreshortened, then enlarged; rounded, salient, free, various, expressive. Throughout this sacred ground Painting pre

serves the austerity of the Tuscan school: she rises sometimes to its energy and movement, she is no where sparing of figures, and has produced much of the singular, the terrible, the impressive; but nothing that is truly excellent. All the subjects are taken from scripture, the legends, or Dante; but, in depicting the life of a patriarch or a saint, the artists have given us the dress, the furniture, and the humours of their own day."

LUCCA.

L'uliva, in qualche dolce piaggia aprica,
Secondo il vento, par or verde, or bianca:
Natura in questa tal serba, e nutrica,
Quel verde, che nell' altre frondi manca.

LORENZO DE' MEDICI.

ABOUT four miles north of Pisa, the Lucca road approaches the mountains whose marble quarries furnished the former city with the materials for its splendid edifices. At their foot stand the Baths of San Giuliano, once in considerable repute, but now less attractive than those of Lucca. After skirting the base of these mountains for a few miles, you come to the pretty village of Ripa Fratta-the Tuscan boundary-whose name "indicates how little the proudest embankments can resist the Serchio, when its floods are repelled by a south wind."

LUCCA is seated in a rich and highly cultivated valley, watered by the above-mentioned river, and surrounded by a belt of lofty Apennines, which gradually sink down into "vine-clad hills, where the celebrated villas rise on such sites as court admiration from the city." In its broad ramparts, its stately palaces with their massive walls and barred windows, its historical statues, and monumental memorials of departed patriots, we may still trace the vestiges of its former prosperity, when, elate with the ad

vantages of liberty and commerce, it had, like so many other petty Italian states, "a public soul too expansive for the body." The ramparts, useless as a defence, are now converted into a promenade planted with forest trees: hence it has been observed, not unaptly, that, to a spectator without the walls, the city wears the appearance of a fortified wood, with a watch-tower in the middle—that watch-tower being the cathedral itself.

This structure is of the same date, and the same material, as that of Pisa. Its chief peculiarities are-the wide porch, consisting of three large semicircular arches, supported by piers with slender shafts and crowded with sculpture-and the round temple of the Santo Volto insulated in the nave. The other churches-decorated in a manner at once costly and fantastic, with variegated marbles, chequered or in stripes-are all of them, more or less, imitations of the Pisan cathedral, though on a small scale. Of the city itself, taken as a whole, it has been remarked by Chateauvieux, that "its crooked streets, pointed roofs, and irregular edifices, give it somewhat the air of a Flemish town."

This little state, comprising a territory scarcely exceeding fifty-four square leagues, contains a population of about one hundred and forty-three thousand souls. It is, indeed, one of the best peopled, as well as one of the best cultivated districts in Italy; and, as regards the plain itself, may truly be said to exhibit "the economy and shew of a large kitchen garden." The hills are covered especially the latter,

with vineyards and olive-groves,

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