he wind that plays with the olives was his
friend. He has loved all that is delicate and lovely, the wings of
angels, the hands of children, the long blown hair of St. John in his
Death of the Virgin, the eyelids that have fallen over the eyes. He is
full of grace, and his virtues seem to me to be just those which Lucca
herself possesses. Hidden away between the mountains, between the plains
and the sea, she achieved nothing, or almost nothing. Castracani for a
moment forced her into the pell-mell of awakened Italy, but with his
death, and certainly with the fall of the House of Guinigi, she returned
to herself, to her own quiet heart, which was enough for her. This one
sculptor is almost her sole contribution to Italian art, but she was
content that his works should scatter her ways, and that hidden away in
her churches his shy flowers should blossom. Civitali and S. Zita, they
are the two typical Lucchesi; they sum up a city composed of such as
Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife, whom Van Eyck painted, that great
bourgeoisie which made Italy without knowing it, and, unconcerned while
the great men and the rabble fought in the wars or lost their lives in a
petty revolution, were eager only to be let alone, that they might
continue their labour and gather in wealth. And of them history is
silent, for they made her.

FOOTNOTES:

[144] See p. 94 et seq.

[145] This coining of money was as much as to prove that he had a sort
of sovereign right over their territory.

XXX. OVER THE GARFAGNANA

So in the long August days, that are so fierce in the city, I sought
once more the hills, the hills that are full of songs, those songs which
in Italy have grown with the flowers and are full of just their wistful
beauty, their expectancy and sweetness.

"Fiorin di grano,
Lasciatemi cantar, che allegra sono,
Ho rifatto la pace col mio damo."

There in the Garfagnana, as I wandered up past Castelnuovo to the little
village of Piazza al Serchio, and then through the hills to Fivizanno,
that wonderful old town in a cup of the mountains, I heard the whole
drama of love sung by the "vaghe montanine pastorelle" in the chestnut
woods or on the high lawns where summer is an eternal spring.

"O rosa! O rosa! O rosa gentillina!
Quanto bella t'ha fatta la tua mamma!
T'ha fatto bella, poi t'ha messo un fiore;
T'ha messo alla finestra a far l'amore.
T'ha fatto bella e t'ha messo una rosa:
T'ha m