the hillside, or a fossilized town; so ancient and strange it looks,
without enough of life and juiciness in it to be any longer susceptible
of decay. An earthquake would afford it the only chance of being ruined,
beyond its present ruin.

Yet, though dead to all the purposes for which we live to-day, the place
has its glorious recollections, and not merely rude and warlike ones,
but those of brighter and milder triumphs, the fruits of which we still
enjoy. Italy can count several of these lifeless towns which, four or
five hundred years ago, were each the birthplace of its own school of
art; nor have they yet forgotten to be proud of the dark old pictures,
and the faded frescos, the pristine beauty of which was a light and
gladness to the world. But now, unless one happens to be a painter,
these famous works make us miserably desperate. They are poor, dim
ghosts of what, when Giotto or Cimabue first created them, threw a
splendor along the stately aisles; so far gone towards nothingness,
in our day, that scarcely a hint of design or expression can glimmer
through the dusk. Those early artists did well to paint their frescos.
Glowing on the church-walls, they might be looked upon as symbols of the
living spirit that made Catholicism a true religion, and that glorified
it as long as it retained a genuine life; they filled the transepts with
a radiant throng of saints and angels, and threw around the high altar
a faint reflection--as much as mortals could see, or bear--of a Diviner
Presence. But now that the colors are so wretchedly bedimmed,--now that
blotches of plastered wall dot the frescos all over, like a mean reality
thrusting itself through life's brightest illusions,--the next best
artist to Cimabue or Giotto or Ghirlandaio or Pinturicchio will be he
that shall reverently cover their ruined masterpieces with whitewash!

Kenyon, however, being an earnest student and critic of Art, lingered
long before these pathetic relics; and Donatello, in his present phase
of penitence, thought no time spent amiss while he could be kneeling
before an altar. Whenever they found a cathedral, therefore, or a Gothic
church, the two travellers were of one mind to enter it. In some of
these holy edifices they saw pictures that time had not dimmed nor
injured in the least, though they perhaps belonged to as old a school
of Art as any that were perishing around them. These were the painted
windows; and as often as he gazed at them the