more permissible harmony with the place than the ordinary populace of a
fashionable promenade would be, with its cigars, spitting, and harlot-
planned fineries: but the omnibus place of call being in front of the
door of the tower, renders it impossible to stand for a moment near it,
to look at the sculptures either of the eastern or southern side; while
the north side is enclosed with an iron railing, and usually encumbered
with lumber as well: not a soul in Florence ever caring now for sight
of any piece of its old artists' work; and the mass of strangers being
on the whole intent on nothing but getting the omnibus to go by steam;
and so seeing the cathedral in one swift circuit, by glimpses between
the puffs of it.

The front of Notre Dame of Paris was similarly turned into a coach-office
when I last saw it--1872. [Footnote: See Fors Clavigera in that year.]
Within fifty yards of me as I write, the Oratory of the Holy Ghost is used
for a tobacco-store, and in fine, over all Europe, mere Caliban bestiality
and Satyric ravage staggering, drunk and desperate, into every once
enchanted cell where the prosperity of kingdoms ruled and the miraculous-
ness of beauty was shrined in peace.

Deluge of profanity, drowning dome and tower in Stygian pool of vilest
thought,--nothing now left sacred, in the places where once--nothing
was profane.

For _that_ is indeed the teaching, if you could receive it, of the
Tower of Giotto; as of all Christian art in its day. Next to declaration of
the facts of the Gospel, its purpose, (often in actual work the eagerest,)
was to show the _power_ of the Gospel. History of Christ in due place;
yes, history of all He did, and how He died: but then, and often, as I say,
with more animated imagination, the showing of His risen presence in