of the Campanile, which will vindicate Giotto and Florence together,
and crown the restoration of freedom to the city, and its liberation
from the hated Austrian rule.

Mrs. Browning's `Casa Guidi Windows' should be read in connection with
this monologue. The strong sympathy which is expressed
in the last few stanzas of the monologue, with Italian liberty,
is expressed in `Casa Guidi Windows' at a white heat.

"We find," says Professor Dowden, "a full confession
of Mr. Browning's creed with respect to art in the poem entitled
`Old Pictures in Florence'. He sees the ghosts of the early
Christian masters, whose work has never been duly appreciated,
standing sadly by each mouldering Italian Fresco; and when
an imagined interlocutor inquires what is admirable in such work
as this, the poet answers that the glory of Christian art lies
in its rejecting a limited perfection, such as that of the art
of ancient Greece, the subject of which was finite, and the lesson
taught by which was submission, and in its daring to be incomplete,
and faulty, faulty because its subject was great with infinite fears
and hopes, and because it must needs teach man not to submit
but to aspire."




Pictor Ignotus.

[Florence, 15--.]