winning the admiration of the son of the Roman Praetor, who fell
sick--so says the legend--for the love of her.

Then there was the demand of her hand in marriage by the princely father
of the young man, and her calm rejection of the gorgeous gifts and
splendid gems which he had brought to purchase her consent.

Then followed in order her accusation before the tribunals as a
Christian, her trial, and the various scenes of her martyrdom.

Although the drawing of the figures and the treatment of the subjects
had the quaint stiffness of the thirteenth century, their general
effect, as seen from the shady bowers of the garden, was of a solemn
brightness, a strange and fanciful richness, which was poetical and
impressive.

In the centre of the garden was a fountain of white marble, which
evidently was the wreck of something that had belonged to the old Greek
temple. The statue of a nymph sat on a green mossy pedestal in the midst
of a sculptured basin, and from a partially reversed urn on which she
was leaning a clear stream of water dashed down from one mossy fragment
to another, till it lost itself in the placid pool.

The figure and face of this nymph, in their classic finish of outline,
formed a striking contract to the drawing of the Byzantine pairings
within the cloisters, and their juxtaposition in the same inclosure
seemed a presentation of the spirit of a past and present era: the past
so graceful in line, so perfect and airy in conception, so utterly
without spiritual aspiration or life; the present limited in artistic
power, but so earnest, so intense, seeming to struggle and burn, amid