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 which form so picturesque and characteristic a
feature of the Italian landscape. But before they reached this spot, the
simple, poetic, guileless monk, with his fresh artistic nature, had so
won upon his travelling companion that a most enthusiastic friendship
had sprung up between them, and Agostino could not find it in his heart
at once to separate from him. Tempest-tossed and homeless, burning with
a sense of wrong, alienated from the faith of his fathers through his
intellect and moral sense, yet clinging to it with his memory and
imagination, he found in the tender devotional fervor of the artist monk
a reconciling and healing power. He shared, too, in no small degree, the
feelings which now possessed the breast of his companion for the
great reformer whose purpose seemed to meditate nothing less than
the restoration of the Church of Italy to the primitive apostolic