Chapter XXXV: Under the White Stars (5)

These three girls had reached that age when young women's hands are slender but still rosy, when their forms have still that charming delicacy which some people call thinness and others youthfulness, and when their movements have that excessive suppleness which is like awkwardness, but which it would be the height of art to imitate. Leaning back with easy grace in their arm chairs, which were drawn up close together, they were laughing unrestrainedly. Already women and coquettes, they would from time to time stretch out their well-gloved hands and pat their ample draperies with a thousand graceful little gestures. They were already mistresses of the art of looking at things without seeing them, of laughing when they were not amused, of showing their white teeth while smoothing their gloves at the wrist, and while modestly looking down of giving a vibration to their voices like the striking of glass, which cannot fail to attract attention. They had, too, the trick of stopping short in the midst of a movement and posing that you might see the turn of a shoulder or a graceful arm, and of turning their profile to you to show a pretty nose, of catching up their skirts and turning away with a movement like a frightened dove till the ear alone is visible, and replying, "Oh, how you frightened me!" when you have said nothing to them but "How do you do?" Then their way of prattling unceasingly without rhyme or reason, or when both ideas and words fail them of exclaiming, "Oh! oh! oh! yes, indeed!" while stroking their hair!

Ah, dear little creatures! I love them just as they are, so knowing and so pure, so gracious and so skillful. I really love these little angels who make their entrance into the great world between two polkas--who go to a ball instead of going to bed--who broke their doll into pieces two days ago, and now think of painting themselves under the eyes like mamma--who know to a louis the price of a cashmere shawl--are connoisseurs in diamonds, look men straight in the eye, are all worn out when Lent comes, and who during Holy Week, after devoutly nibbling a bit of salmon salad, run off to their religious exercises in boots with tassels and with their hair powdered. I love these little painted lambs as one loves roses in December or green peas in the middle of January. There is simplicity even in their excessive self-possession--something, at any rate, which reminds one of green apples which one longs to taste.

They are already women--in fact, they were when they were born--but still one guesses at their motives, reads their little thoughts: sometimes, too, one finds a clue which is like a revelation. They are--

But pardon me, young ladies! I am afraid I am going too far: perhaps as you turn over these pages you will recall the gentleman who was looking at you so attentively the other evening. Perhaps you will recognize yourselves, however imperfect the sketch may be, and then--But it is too late now not to tell you all.

I slyly opened the library-door, and, turning to the left, I made my way to the conservatory, and stationed myself directly behind you, near the door, in the folds of the curtain, and there I heard it all. I did even more than that: in coming away I snapped off a branch of camellia. What follows is merely the work of a reporter: if memory or skill is lacking, forgive me and I will do better another time.

"No," said the youngest, looking at her pink satin slipper, "I mean the one with the decoration in his buttonhole: don't you see him? He is standing by the mantelpiece, by the side of the big bald man in a white waistcoat."

"Why, the big bald man is not a colonel--no indeed. I know him very well: he comes to see papa. It's Mr. Thingamy--some queer name. After every visit of his we find two casters off the easy-chair. Mamma says he's clever, papa says he's not: as for me, I think he smells of pomade."

"Where does he put his pomade? He has hardly three hairs on his head."

"Yes, but they curl, my dear. I am sure he ought to wear a little crimson velvet cap with tassels. Dear me! how I do hate a man as fat as that! Papa, who is slender in comparison with this bear, seems to me a little--when he is shaving--Well, if it was not papa, I should like to plane him down a little."

"But, girls, I don't mean the stout one: I mean the one by his side, with an aquiline nose and moustaches. There, he is taking an ice. He seems to be a lion. Now he's blowing his nose: he's Colonel C----."

"Oh yes, I see. Dear me! how hard he blows his nose! Your colonel has a cold: one can hear him from here--ha! ha!"

"There is nothing strange in his having a cold: he has just come from Africa: see how tanned he is. Well, my dear, he _is_ a lion."

"Then he is an attaché?"

"Oh, how stupid you are! I said he is a lion because he fought like a tiger, and he--"

"Then say he is a tiger, and have done with it."

--(Shrugging her shoulders) "and that at the battle of Rapata--Ratapa--or Patara--I can't remember exactly what, but it was a frightful battle--where the Arabs bit the dust--That's it, word for word, as papa read it aloud the other day out of the paper."

"Why did they bite the dust?"

"Why, because they were so angry. You know when you are in a passion--Well, in this battle the colonel received a cannon-ball or bullet--I don't remember which--in his left shoulder, and they could not extract it, so he returned to France very ill."

"How terrible those battles must be!"

"It is the day after a battle that is terrible. Just think of it! They found this poor colonel under a mountain of dead men at the very moment the wild beasts were going to devour him like the missionary in the _Propagation of the Faith_. Being swallowed by a crocodile is indeed terrible."

"That's nothing. When you think you have before you a man with an iron machine in his shoulder that you could hardly lift, you can't help shivering. Oh, it's fine to be a soldier: in fact, you may call it the noblest profession. To begin with, every one respects them, and their life is full of triumph."

"Yes, in time of war, but in time of peace--in time of peace--well, they talk over the way they got their wounds, and the band plays while they are at dinner. It seems the colonel can have the band play whenever he wants to."

"Naturally, since it's his band."

"Well, all that is very nice, and besides that you make calls on the wife of the prefect, the receiver-general and the bishop."

"On the bishop's wife? What are you talking about? Ha! ha!" (She takes off her gloves and begins to bite her nails.)

"I did not say the bishop's wife: you are a naughty girl."

"Besides, it's only a general's wife who makes calls on the prefect's wife, like that."

"I only began with the colonel: one soon gets to be general. Do you suppose that Colonel C----, for instance, won't be a general soon?"

"As for me, I would rather marry a general at once."

"Yes, but a general does not get married in uniform."

"Why not, if you ask him to? That is something fine--a general at the altar. There is nothing more imposing than the military at church. Their gold epaulettes seem to go well with the organ. At the church of the Carmelites there are always one or two officers, but they are little ones, and they do not have the same effect. You did not know I was at the church of the Carmelites on Advent Sunday? Oh, there was a good father there who preached: it was indescribable!--Why don't you wear a braid across the top of your head? My dear child, everybody wears them: won't your mamma let you?"

"It is not that, but you can't possibly make a braid to go over the top and then two rolls behind, all out of your own hair."

"Well, you can get false hair. Ha! ha! what an innocent lamb you are! You can get false hair, my dear child."

"Yes, but papa won't let me: he says I'm too young to begin."

"What a pity! As for me, I had no trouble about it. Mamma said, 'It's vexatious, but what can you do, my child? You can't go to a ball in a cap;' and so we went and bought two beautiful blond braids."

"Why two?"

"Let me finish.--See, there is Madame de V---- coming in: do you hear the door creaking?--Well, as I was saying, I had to buy two braids, for the very simple reason that I lost the first. It was very funny. We had hired a coupé for the day, papa having taken ours for himself: he always does. We started off for the hairdresser's in this hired carriage. I bought a superb braid, and they wrapped it up nicely for me. I got into the coupé and put my little parcel up against the window, you know, under the strap that you pull it up and down by. That was all very nice, but when we got home, and I was looking for my parcel before getting out, no parcel was to be found. I made a great fuss, and mamma did too. Only think! it had slipped in by the glass of the window, and had fallen into the inside of the door. I suppose it's still there. There's no way of getting it again, you see, so I had to buy another braid" (bending down her head coquettishly), "which I have the honor of introducing to you: it is thick, of a good color--one of the very best."

"Oh, I wish I could have one, but I'm afraid I sha'n't before I'm married.--See, there is Jeanne bowing to us. Oh, that everlasting dress of hers! Doesn't she look like a fright with that pink pom-pon in her hair and her red nose? She's a kind-hearted girl, but then that pink! Pink never looks well with light hair. It always looks to me like salmon with white sauce. Ha! ha! Speaking of salmon, by the way, you left too early the other evening: we had such a supper, my dear!"

"Oh, how lovely Juliette looked! Didn't she? What a lovely head she has! I would give ten years of my life to have a head like hers. Ten years, dear me! yes, gladly: life isn't such very good fun, after all. And how becoming that headdress was to her!"

"It was really magnificent: you know it came from Persia."

"Did it, really? From Persia? I heard it came from--you know the place, ever so far off, where the colonies are. And how about her marriage?"

"It's broken off: she said no, and it's all settled."

"But the trousseau? Mamma saw the three cashmere shawls, three wonders! One had red ground with little figures on it--you know the sort they're wearing now: that shawl was really eloquent. I think that sort of thing is like music, it delights one so."

"That was very fine--three cashmeres, and diamonds too, and she said no?"

"She said no, and she was right, for it seems he limped frightfully."

"Who did?"

"The gentleman, of course."

"But, my dear girl, people always give three cashmeres. Only think a minute: the long cashmere for calls in winter--well, that's one; then you must have a square one: it would kill you to wear a long cashmere in hot weather; and then you could not refuse a third to go to the bath or to mass in--well, that makes three, don't you see? I would not be married with fewer. No, thank you, I wouldn't go about looking like a chambermaid. No, indeed I wouldn't."

"Did the gentleman limp very badly? For, after all, he was a consul."

"Oh, as to that, his position is a magnificent one. It seems that in the country where he is consul people are carried in palanquins."

"That's the least thing they can do for lame people. As for me, I think she has done quite right. I have a horror of deformed people: one is never sure that it may not be something catching. Do you remember Sister Adelaide at the convent, who had one leg shorter than the other? Well, I wouldn't have sat down in her chair for a hundred thousand francs."

"What would you have done if you had had to marry her?"

"How silly you are!--Don't look over there: I see M. Pincette coming to ask us to dance. The more I see of him, the more I detest him. He is stupid, he is fair, his whiskers are too large, he doesn't dance in time: he has no attractions. Don't you think he looks like the Abbé Julien, who used to hear our catechisms, and who was always saying, 'Not another word, my children'?"

"Yes, he does look like him, especially when he is waltzing: he has the same eyes. As for me, I don't like a man who looks like a priest. That is not saying anything against priests, my dear. In the first place, a man ought to have brown moustaches: without them he is not worth looking at. Have you seen my brother's moustaches since he left Saint-Cyr? That is the kind of moustaches I like--pointed, pointed and waxed. I used to do them for him last summer, and I fully understand them."

"Ernest is a fine-looking young man; and then he's so strong."

"I hate a Hercules. M. de Saint-Flair is not handsome, is he? Well, I can see very well how he fascinated Adèle with his pale face, thin hair and his look of illness."

"Your M. de Saint-Flair looks as if he were just getting over a fever. When he is sitting round in the corners I am always tempted to offer him a bowl of gruel."

"Oh, that's all very well, but as for distinction, I don't see any one who comes up to him. And then, too, they say he writes poetry."

"Still, I must say I prefer M. de P----."

"What an idea! M. de P----! He's a perfect barrel, and besides he's forty-six or forty-eight years old."

"Well, my dear, a man has to be as old as that to be able to offer a woman an acceptable position. It's not at all bad to be the wife of a banker."

At this moment the music began, and the men came forward to ask my little neighbors to dance. They accepted languidly, with a half-indifferent air. The gentlemen placed their opera-hats on the chairs the ladies had left, and they all advanced, talking, to join the dancers. I followed them with my eyes through the crowd. Each abandoned herself with charming grace to her partner's arm, turning her head a little to one side, her hair floating on the waves of the waltz. Perhaps there was exaggerated ease and a trace of childish awkwardness in their manner. In ten minutes they came back to their places, out of breath, but with bright eyes. They took up their fans again, and while fanning themselves went on with their conversation.

"That gentleman dances very well, but he's a queer creature: he talked to me about geography. Do you know the principal town in the department of the Eastern Pyrenees?"

"No I have forgotten. Dear me! how warm I am! I danced with that partner of yours the other evening: he talked about geography to me too. Isn't it strange that some partners always say the same thing over and over again?"

"Oh, there is mamma making me a sign that it is time to go home. Oh dear! no indeed! It will be like the other evening, when we should have gone to bed as early as the hens if mamma hadn't been asked for the German. Tell your cousin to ask mamma to dance, and to ask me. I like him very much: he at least makes you laugh, even if you don't understand very well what he is talking about. He seems sometimes to be making fun of you, but that's no matter: he's very nice; and then, too, he holds you firmly while dancing, so that you feel perfectly comfortable."

* * * * *

Toward two o'clock in the morning, after having looked through M. de B.'s collection of etchings and played a game of whist, I returned to my station behind the three girls. Two were bravely drinking a glass of claret, and the third a cup of chocolate. They were laughing so loud while leaning back in their chairs, and so talking all together, that I could scarcely catch what they said, but I saw by their loosened hair and the brilliancy of their eyes, and their feverish agitation, that they had not wasted their time. Their mothers, who were quite as animated, had collected together, and three or four gentlemen had gathered round them saying a thousand charming bits of nonsense. The gayety had become so fast and furious in that corner that I despaired of hearing anything more, so I went back to the ante-chamber.

What charming women my adorable little girls will have become in a few years!

Pray do not think that the fever of pleasure, that candlelight and love of waltzing will at all impair the solid treasures which a good education has stored up in their little hearts. This very night when they go to bed these three little angels will piously fold their hands beneath the quilt, so as to keep warm, and will thank Heaven for all that has been done for them, and will beg that they may not catch a horrible cold in the head which will prevent their going to the opera to-morrow. Then, having kissed the little gold medal which protects them from fire and spraining their ankles, and makes them dance in time, they will fall fast asleep to the dim murmur of a waltz, like a bird in his nest.

T. S. PERRY.

A MODERN ART-WORKSHOP IN UMBRIA.

I met with a book on Italy some little time ago by an American author, whose name was not given--or if it was, I have forgotten it, and beg his pardon for the negligence--of which this was the first sentence: "Art is fast asleep in Italy, and that is why Italy is called the cradle of Art." If the statement be not altogether accurate, it is neatly said enough. But I am afraid that the facts of the case go farther than one would wish to believe toward bearing out the severe critic's judgment. Assuredly, the arts if not fast asleep, are but beginning to arouse themselves from a very long and lethargic nap in their classic cradle-land. But I think that signs are not wanting that they _are_ beginning to shake off their slumber, and that when they shall have effectually done so, it will once again become evident to the world that this Italian race is very specially endowed with those gifts and qualities which go to make up the artistic temperament and to fit eye and head for artistic creation. A recent visit to an Italian country-town, one of the secondary centres of population in the Peninsula, has done much to confirm the correctness of these views, and has at the same time introduced me to some circumstances and scenes so interesting, and lying so far out of the path of the experiences and ideas of our ordinary nineteenth-century world, that I cannot but think some account of them will be acceptable to the general reader, and especially worthy of the attention of lovers of art.

The town in question is Perugia, where I spent a week in the early part of last February, and which boasts the best inn in all Central Italy, ruled by a clever and notable English landlady, who has entirely un-Italian notions of a good fire and warm rooms. Let travelers, whether in winter or in summer, ask for the "Hotel Brufani," disregarding the fact that, being recently established, it is not mentioned in some of the guidebooks, and they will, I am very sure, thank me for the recommendation.

There is an immense wealth of fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth century Umbrian art to be seen in Perugia, besides some of the most interesting extant remains of Etruscan antiquity. But I am not going to trespass on the domain of the guidebooks, though, truth to say, the best of them are very defective in completeness as well as accuracy of information. Nor are the professional local _ciceroni_ much more to be trusted. They will indeed probably show the traveler all or almost all that there is to be seen. But he must guard himself against accepting their statements in the matter of names and dates, and such like archæological particulars. If the stranger can have the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Signor Adamo Rossi, the accomplished and learned archivist and librarian of the municipal library, he will hardly fail to bring away with him from this centre of the old Umbrian art-world a considerably larger stock of ideas and information upon the subject than he carried thither with him.

But now for the special experience which it is my present object to share with the reader. We went as a matter of course into the Duomo or cathedral. We did not enter the huge old church in the hope of seeing its special and much-boasted treasure, "the marriage-ring of the Virgin Mary." And if such had been our object, it would have been baffled, for the ring in its casket of mediæval jeweler's work (which really is worth seeing, as far as may be judged from engravings of it) is only shown on St. Joseph's Day; and being locked up under Heaven knows how many different keys, all in the custody of an equal number of ecclesiastical bigwigs, no human power short, I suppose, of that of the pope in person, can get at the relic on any other occasion. But what we did see--what instantly arrested and riveted our attention--was a modern painted window which has been put up for the adornment of the chapel where the ring is kept. It is by far the finest specimen of modern painted glass which I have seen in any country; and I have seen a great deal of all the manufactures, English, Belgian and Bavarian, which have recently been competing for the approval of the artistic world. The window in question in the cathedral at Perugia fills a plain Gothic arch seven mètres in height by one mètre eighty-five centimètres in width, and it is divided into two parts by a slender column of stone eighteen centimètres broad. The window which fills this space is occupied by a representation of one subject only, the Virgin and Child in--or rather sitting in front of--the stable; Saint Joseph leaning on his staff and gazing at the Divine Infant; a knot of shepherds in adoration, some bringing gifts and others playing on bagpipes, exactly similar to the instruments still used in the Neapolitan Apennines; other figures in the middle distance; beyond these a delicious bit of mountain-landscape; "a glory" above; and in the arch of the window a half-figure representation of God the Father. The composition, drawing and disposition of this design, which I had subsequently an opportunity of examining in the cartoon, is truly masterly. The figure of the Virgin, with long flowing locks of the richest and most sunny auburn, is of very great beauty and quite Peruginesque in style and conception. Her figure and the others in the immediate foreground are somewhat above life-size, so that the Virgin would be, if standing, about six feet in height, and the male figures in proportion. Those in the middle distance are about ordinary life-size. And in all of them there is that dignity of pose and conception inseparable from perfect unself-conscious simplicity which is so prevalent in the Italian art up to the period of the end of Raphael's first manner, which he began to lose in his second, and from which his successors strayed ever farther as the generations succeeded each other. The fullness and richness of coloring of the glass leaves really nothing to be desired. It is as brilliant, as jewel-like, and at the same time as free from opacity and heaviness, as the best ancient glass; and it is mainly in these respects that it so far excels the productions of other makers of painted glass. The landscape is treated with a pellucid delicacy and accuracy of truth which I have seen very rarely equaled in ancient windows. In a word, we were absolutely struck dumb with astonishment at finding such a work in such a place. And it may be imagined that this surprise was in no small degree increased, and a vivid sentiment of interest and curiosity added to it, when we were told on inquiry that this magnificent work of an art which was but recently deemed all but lost was produced wholly and entirely in Perugia, and, far more astonishing still, by the brain and hands of one single artist! In other countries--in England, at Munich, at Brussels--a cartoon prepared by an artist who has not the smallest knowledge of glass-painting or its special needs and limitations is taken to a _factory_, where a variety of artificers are employed in carrying out the various processes needed for the completion of the product. But in this case the conception of the design, the preparation of the cartoon, the selection of the colors, the arrangement of the glass, the coloring and burning of it, all are the work of one brain and one pair of hands.

Our next demand, after again admiring in all its details the work, was to see the man who was the author of it, and our desire was very readily gratified.

We have all heard much of the circumstances and conditions, so different from those of our day, under which the old Italian art-workers of the palmy days of art lived and worked. We have read Vasari's naïve gossiping, and have endeavored to picture to ourselves the life and surroundings of the craftsman of a time when the line which is now-a-days supposed to divide the artist from the artisan did not exist or was ignored. We have followed the patient investigations which Leonardo, while his brain was teeming with forms of beauty and new creations, did not disdain to expend on matters which we in these days deem the province of the colorman. We have been delighted by Cellini's simple accounts of his methods of subjecting matter to the conceptions of his brain, uncaring and unconscious whether such methods involved processes that belonged to high art or low art, fine art or not fine--caring only for the beauty that his handiwork was to create. The modern "studio" is a phrase that claims greater affinity with strictly intellectual processes, but in the days and generations when immortal works were being produced in every little town throughout the central part of Italy, the men who created them were content to call the place in which they worked a _bottega_--"a shop." And the blacksmith who wrought with sturdy arm and hammer the ironwork that museums now contend against each other for the possession of, and pay for as if it were gold--the wood-carver who produced by his free fancy the gems which our best artists are content to servilely copy--the sculptor who would sign works that now make the cities that possess them famous--the _lapicido_ ("stone-cutter"), like that Agostino Fiorentino whose inimitable chisel produced the front of the oratorio of Saint Bernardino in this same Perugia--the goldsmith, the delicate fancy of whose handiwork puts to shame the coarser and heavier work of our time--the painter for whose presence at their courts princes were bidding against each other,--all these alike lived and labored in a _bottega_, and would have scorned the notion of calling themselves or imagining themselves other than craftsmen.

Well, we sought and easily found an introduction to the artist who had produced the new window in the cathedral. His name is Signor Francesco Moretti. A common friend accompanied us to his workshop-studio. It is situated in a part of a suppressed convent, or some such place, which has come into the hands of the municipality, and a vast chamber in which has been placed at the disposition of the artist. The _locale_ itself has an Old-World look about it. A huge stair, up which you might almost drive a coach and four, ascends from a cloister running round a quadrangle. At the top of this we knocked at a great door, which looked wormeaten and decayed. It was opened by a little boy, and strange and striking indeed was the scene that presented itself. The room is an immense and very lofty one, reaching to the rafters of the building. It is lighted by one enormous window to the north, giving the artist just the light his work requires. On one wall, opposite to the window, was the cartoon which Signor Moretti had executed for the window we had been admiring. It is of the size of the original, and is in all respects a perfectly and highly finished drawing in black and white. The colors are not shown on it. On an easel near it was the drawing of a colossal head of Saint Donato, bishop and martyr, destined for a window for a church in Arezzo. It is full of life and vigor. The head is that of an evidently born and Nature-ordained ruler of men. And such Rome's bishops for the most part were in the days when Saint Donato gave his life for the faith. The window for which this drawing has been made will be a circular one in the centre of the west front of the church in Arezzo. Other designs, large and small, were hung with a total disregard of symmetry or order on the wide white walls, and among them an infinity of plaster casts of almost every part of the human body. The floor and furniture of the vast chamber seemed to the eye of a stranger to offer an inextricable and wellnigh indescribable medley of objects in the utmost confusion. Quaint-looking bottles and jars of every conceivable and inconceivable form, and of many more than all the colors of the rainbow, were on all sorts of tables and brackets and shelves, containing the coloring-matters which, when let out from beneath the stoppers that held them down, were, like imprisoned genii in the Arabian Nights' tales, destined to produce such marvelous effects. Other suspicious-looking flasks, wearing a warning touch-me-not air, contained chemical agents of varied kinds and properties. And everywhere, upon, among and under all this heterogeneous litter, was glass of every kind--plain glass, colored glass of every hue under the sun, unshaped panes of glass, glass cut into every imaginable form. And all to any eye save that of the master seemed to be a very type of orderless confusion. On a large easel backed against the abundant light from the great window was the partly-completed portion of another work, also destined for Arezzo, consisting of two life-sized figures of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Francis. They appeared to me to be treated in a somewhat more archaic style than the subject of the window in the cathedral, but were in no degree inferior in truth and accuracy of drawing and brilliancy of color.

Above all, on one side of the room, were the furnaces in which the great work of burning in the colors is achieved. Does the reader know under what conditions of difficulty this part of the work is performed? When the harmony of the coloring of a picture, especially in a branch of art in which color goes for so much, has been duly considered and determined on, it would not do to have that which was intended for a scarlet robe turning out a crimson one, nor a brilliant emerald-green changed to a bottle-green, nor, even yet more fatal, the delicate azures and lilacs and grays of a distant landscape changed to comparative opacity, or indeed altered by the shadow of a half-tint from that which the artist's eye has designed for them. But if this is so with respect to the hues of drapery or of landscape, it is easy to imagine how much more fatal would be the slightest alteration of tint in those pieces of the glass which are destined to represent the naked portions of the human body--in the faces, the hands, the feet. And when, bearing these considerations in mind, we further learn that the very smallest degree of heat in excess of that which is required for the purpose in hand, or the very smallest deficiency in the heat, or the greater or less degree of rapidity with which this heat is communicated to the glass--any variation from the exact point needed in each of these conditions--will without fail have the effect of altering the result, it may be imagined how great are the difficulties with which the artist has to struggle. And let it be remembered that in other establishments for the revival of this beautiful art the great modern principle of the division of labor is called into aid in producing the result. The man whose business it is to manage the furnace does this alone. All the power of his intelligence, all the rule-of-thumb derived from his practice, is devoted to this alone. Unable to do anything else, he has acquired the art of heating a furnace to the exact degree needed. It is hardly necessary to insist on the greatness of the change in the conditions when this specialty has to be undertaken by the same brain and hands which perform equally all the purely mental and all the purely mechanical portions of the work. The conditions of the problem may be assimilated to those which would surround the search for a first-rate astronomer who was also capable of manufacturing first-rate mathematical instruments. And yet, on the other hand, let the inevitable results of applying the principle of the division of labor to the fine arts be considered. Mechanical excellence attained at the cost of artistic deadness is and must be the result. The individuality, the soul of the artist, the expression which his cunning hand can put into his work, is found to have been lost, evaporated in the process. What is the special value, of which the world has heard so much lately, of an etching? A first-rate engraving is _per se_ a more beautiful thing than an etching; but the value, the charm of the latter is that it is the work of the hand which was directed by the designer's brain--that, in a word, there is no division of labor in the production of the result. And it is impossible to avoid the conviction that the wonderfully artistic feeling and power which pervades the work in the Duomo of Perugia are due in a great measure to the fact that there has been no division of labor in the production of it.

Truly, it was a remarkable and striking scene, that strange workshop, appealing very powerfully to the imagination, and carrying the visitor very forcibly out of the ordinary surroundings of this nineteenth-century world, and back to the habits, ways and associations of the great centuries of art. There in the midst of it was the master-spirit, the artist; and in truth he was, mere outward circumstances of costume apart, a worthy representative of the olden time, and one well calculated to carry on and complete the illusion. Signor Francesca Moretti is a man, I should suppose, on the better side of forty, of a tall, stalwart figure, such as becomes a genuine workman, with a bearded face which, put a velvet toque above it, might well recall some of the heads which the wood-cut blocks in the old editions of Vasari have preserved for us. A modest, unassuming man--that one might, _a priori_, have been quite sure of--delighted to talk of his work and of the processes connected with them, doing so with frankness, enthusiasm and unreserve--utterly above the affectation of mystery or secresy as to his _modus operandi_, and quite ready to say to all the world, "Do the same if you will, and better if you can." I need hardly say that he received us with the utmost courtesy, and with that genuinely unaffected simplicity of manner which is the heritage and the specialty of genius, and is the true workman's patent of gentlemanhood.

Our talk was long and various, and the subject-matter of it did not tend to dispel the illusion that we were by means of some strange magic-lantern taking a peep into a resuscitated bit of the old cinquecento art-life, so full were the mind and heart of the artist of the special art-glories of his native city. Social philosophers have much to say against the restricted nature of that intensely concentrated form of patriotism in which the love and pride in one's own native place--one's _paese_, as the old Italian phrase went--is a species of religion. But it would not be difficult to show that the objections these philosophers adduce would, if carried out logically, be fatal to the reasonableness of all patriotism. Pure philanthropy no doubt is a very grand sentiment, but, somehow or other, it has never as a motive-power produced the great achievements that the narrower sentiment of love of country has produced. And I am inclined to believe that in the case, at all events, of ordinary people the love of one's own "paese"--that church-steeple patriotism that it has become a fashion with a certain school of politicians to deride--is very often a yet stronger passion and a more powerful incentive to great deeds than even the love of country in a larger sense. Such was undoubtedly the case during the great days of Italian hegemony in literature and the arts. It is difficult for those who have not made a special study of the subject to conceive the strength of the tie that during the whole of the mediæval period, and for a couple of centuries beyond it, bound every Italian citizen to the special community of which he was a member. The fact and the consideration that he was an Italian in no degree stirred his sympathies or moved his imagination, but that he was a Venetian, a Florentine, a Pisan, or even that he was an Aretine, a Bolognese, a Comasque, a Sienese or a Perugian, was all in all to him. The tie, save perhaps in the cases of some of the greater of the historical families, was a stronger one than even that of family. The Capulet or the Montague may have felt that his place in the world was marked as such, but the simple burgher who, had he not been entitled to call himself so, would have been little better than a pariah, one whom all might have kicked because he had no friends, a mere waif on the turbulent current of the surging and unruly life of those days, felt in every fibre of his being, and from his cradle to his grave, that what he _was_ in the world, and what all that he cared for in the world depended on, was the fact that he was a constituent part of this, that or the other civic community. His fellow-citizens were his friends; and it but too naturally followed that the members of other, and especially of neighboring communities, were his enemies: even in the best times, and in the case of the best and largest natures, they were his rivals. The relative superiority of his own city in arts, in arms and in glory of every kind was the strongest sentiment and most fondly-cherished belief of all those men on whom the world now looks back as forming the diadem by virtue of which Italy claims to have led the van of modern European civilization, but who in their own estimation belonged wholly and exclusively to their own city. If Dante, the range of whose intellectual sympathies can hardly be deemed a narrow one--Dante the exile, whose chequered life made him the denizen of so many foreign homes--could speak of the degeneration of the pure Florentine blood by the admixture of that of _foreigners_ whose native place was some five or ten miles outside the walls of Florence it may be estimated how smaller minds and narrower natures would feel on the subject. Each townsman felt that he was the heir to all the glories achieved or inherited by his community. Each artist, each workman who attained to praise and excellence in his craft, felt that he was increasing the store of those glories, and was deserving well of a body of compatriots who would lovingly appreciate his works and be the jealous guardian of his fame. Dreadful that men living within walls on the eastern slope of a valley should be bred to hatred of those inhabiting other walls on the opposite slope, and be ever ready at a moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats! Contrary to every principle alike of morality, religion, political economy and social science! All true; and yet how wonderful, how matchless was the amount of deathless work produced under the conditions of that order of things!

Doubtless, Signor Francesco Moretti would not feel the smallest desire to belittle the works of any contemporary artist of the still rival cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art. But that Perugia was not greater and more glorious in arts and in arms than any of her rival cities in the great olden time--that her artistic history is not the richest, her school the most worthy of persistent study--this it would be too much to expect him to think possible for an instant. And accordingly our talk was of the school that had produced Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Pintusicchio, Perugino, Giannicola (generally but erroneously called Giannicola _Manni_) and so many others. Signor Moretti's own style has very evidently been formed on a long and loving study of the works of Pietro Vannucci, more generally known as Perugino, unquestionably the greatest of the school. The delicious figure of the Virgin in his great window in the cathedral is thoroughly and entirely Peruginesque. Yet in the treatment especially of his male figures Signor Moretti has profited by the wider range of study possible at the present day, and by the juster feeling springing from it, to avoid that mannerism and too constantly recurring affectation of dainty grace--often much out of place--which must be admitted to be a marking characteristic of Perugino. There is a sturdy unself-consciousness about Signor Moretti's figures which is incompatible with the somewhat dandified airs and attitudinizing which Perugino often attributes to figures to whom such characteristics seem the least appropriate, and in cases where they would be least expected. It cannot be denied that Perugino's figures are dignified, and that in a very remarkable degree; but they are so by virtue of bearing, of proportion, of grace, and, above all, of expression of face and feature; and in the case of his full-length figures especially it is the dignity of a fine gentleman, rather than that of a grand nature, objective and in no wise subjective in its thoughts and preoccupations. In a word, it cannot, I think, be denied that the grandeur and dignity of Perugino's men and women are due rather to outward than to inward characteristics. It occurred to me to reflect whether certain portions of our conversation in Signor Moretti's studio might not, while illustrating in a singular manner the value of much of the current talk of the present day about the great Umbrian painter, throw at the same time some light on the peculiarity which I have been mentioning. And I am the more tempted to give my readers the gist of the conversation alluded to in that it discloses certain interesting facts and anecdotes which are new to the world, and will not be made known to any other part of it save the readers of _Lippincott's_ till next year.

We were talking, as I have said, of Perugino and his works, apropos of the spirit in which those of Signor Moretti have been conceived, and our friend Signor Adamo Rossi was present. I had been reading an English magazine article in which, after the manner of a certain English school in literature and art, a great deal was said of the spirituality and piety of sentiment which are thought to characterize the great Umbrian painter's works, and I cited some of the remarks which I had been reading. I saw a somewhat wicked smile mantling on the learned professor's face and a merry twinkle shining in his eye, which led me to ask him if his estimate of this quality in Perugino's works differed from that of the English writer.

"Only in that it is rather amusing," said he, "to hear those special qualities attributed to the work of a man who had no belief whatsoever, and no sympathy with the devotional feeling he is thought to have expressed so well."

The statement was quite new to me, as it will probably be to every reader of these lines; and with no little surprise I asked whether the professor were drawing an inference from any general circumstances of probability, or whether he had any documentary evidence to support his assertion. I was aware that Signor Adamo Rossi is one of the most accomplished and indefatigable readers of archives in Italy, especially on the subject of Umbrian art, and I was sure that if any documentary evidence were in existence which could throw any light on the facts, he would be in possession of it.

"Documentary evidence!" cried he: "to be sure there is. Here is a little anecdote which I came upon the other day. Perugino fell ill at a village about half-way between Città di Piese (where, as I may mention, by the by, a second large fresco by his hand, fully equal, I am assured to the well-known Adoration of the Magi still preserved in that little town, has quite recently been discovered) and Perugia. He was very sick, and like to die. The parish priest of the place came to him as a matter of course, and would have proceeded to administer the last sacraments, but the apparently dying artist refused to avail himself of the priest's ministry in any way. He absolutely declined to confess, saying that he had a mind to see whether one did not fare quite as well where he was going without any such practices."

Somewhat later he did die, and his infidelity was then so notorious that he was refused burial in holy ground. He obtained the rites of Christian burial eventually, it is true, but it was under the following somewhat amusing circumstances, as appears from a notarial contract, the original draft of which Signor Rossi has recently discovered. This very curious document is the legal record and stipulation of a contract between the prior of the Augustinian monastery in Perugia and the son of Perugino. It is recited that whereas a portion of the sum due from the convent to the deceased artist for a series of pictures painted for the convent of the Augustines (these works, with the exception of one part of them stolen by the French, and now, I believe, in the Musée at Lyons, are to be seen at the present day in the Pinacotheca of Perugia, and very grand they are) had not been paid at the time of the painter's death, it was now hereby agreed between the prior and the representative of the creditor that in consideration of five ducats in money paid down, and on condition that the prior should at his own cost cause the remains of the artist to be transported from the place where they lay in unhallowed ground to Perugia, and should there give them Christian burial in the church of his convent of the Augustines, the outstanding balance of the debt should be considered to be thereby discharged and canceled. I may mention that this curious anecdote, together with a variety of other interesting matter respecting Perugino and the other artists of the Umbrian school, will be found in a volume by Professor Adamo Rossi, to be published in 1876 under the auspices of the Italian government commission for the preservation and publication of historical documents regarding Tuscany and Umbria.

It will be admitted that the professor's documentary evidence throws a very singular and instructive light on the speculations of the transcendental rhapsodists who are never weary of going into ecstasies over the profound and touching piety of the works inspired by the vivid and simple belief of the "ages of faith."

"But there _is_," I ventured to object, after having heard the professor's anecdotes, "an unmistakable expression of devout feeling to be seen in many of Perugino's faces."

"Therein," replied the professor, "you have a measure of the power of the man's imagination. If he felt no devotion himself, he was able to conceive the frame of mind, and consequent expression of face and feature, in those who did."

Perugino was therefore giving us _not_ the outcome of his own heart and emotions, as Beato Angelico did, but only his imagination of what would be under certain given circumstances the outcome of another man's heart and emotions. Now, may not the same exercise of the imagination account for those special mannerisms which have been noticed as observable in Perugino's figures? The great Umbrian painter was not a man who lived in the companionship and intimacy of the great and noble, as several of his successors of a generation or two later did. He was the son of a _piccolo possidente_ (a small landowner), doubtless cultivating his own fields, and in all respects little removed from the condition of a _contadine_, or peasant. Look at the speaking portrait of the artist by his own hand which hangs on the wall of the Collegio dell' arti del Cambio in Perugia, the walls of which are covered with immortal frescoes by him. It is a broad, bluff, open face, with abundance of brain-development, with plenty of shrewd intelligence, and not a little of strong volition--the presentation of a strong, highly-gifted and thoroughly self-radiant character, but the last face in the world to have belonged to a man accustomed to sacrifice much to the graces or elegancies of life. Yet this is the man who may be accused, not without some show of reason, of having deemed it desirable to array saints and martyrs in the attitudinizing airs of dancing-masters. Is not the explanation of the inconsistency to be found in the fact that here also the artist was representing not what he felt and was conscious of himself, but what his imagination told him was likely to be the expression of the feelings and consciousness of others?

Much as Signor Moretti has of Peruginesque in the treatment of his art, his figures, especially his male figures, are free from the faults that have been signalized. There is a robust simplicity about them that is far removed from affectation of any kind. In a small darkened room opening off his studio he showed us some portions of his restoration of a painted window belonging to the east end of the church of the Dominicans in Perugia, on which he has been, and will for the next two years be engaged, for the municipality of the city. The window is, as regards dimensions, the finest in all Italy--a noble work of the later but still brilliant period of the art. The state of dilapidation into which it had been allowed to fall was such that, coming restored as it will from Signor Moretti's workshop, it will in many parts be almost equivalent to a new work. The five or six full-sized figures which we saw restored are very grand. I do not know who the original artist may have been--I think that it is not known--but, whoever he was, the design of the figures is as simply grand and as free from affectation as could be wished. And whether the restorer found the remains of the almost destroyed work sufficient to guide him satisfactorily in this respect, or whether their excellence as now seen be due to his own conception, it is clear that the principles of taste on which he has formed his style are free from faults which might have resulted from a servile following of the manner of his great townsman.