iculating, and there
were the fishes in rows--the little fishes first, and then the
middle-sized, and last of all the great big fishes almost out at sea,
with their heads above the water and their mouths wide open, just as
the _Fioretti di San Francesco_ describes them. After this
came some original drawings of doubtful interest, and then a case of
fifty-two _nielli_. These were of unquestionable value; for has
not Cicognara engraved them on a page of his classic monograph?
The thin silver plates, over which once passed the burin of Maso
Finiguerra, cutting lines finer than hairs, and setting here a shadow
in dull acid-eaten grey, and there a high light of exquisite polish,
were far more delicate than any proofs impressed from them. These
frail masterpieces of Florentine art--the first beginnings of line
engraving--we held in our hands while Signor Folcioni read out
Cicognara's commentary in a slow impressive voice, breaking off now
and then to point at the originals before us.

The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, when he laid his book
down, and said: 'I have not much left to show--yet stay! Here are
still some little things of interest.' He then opened the door
into his bedroom, and took down from a nail above his bed a
wooden Crucifix. Few things have fascinated me more than this
Crucifix--produced without parade, half negligently, from the dregs of
his collection by a dealer in old curiosities at Crema. The cross was,
or is--for it is lying on the table now before me--twenty-one inches
in length, made of strong wood, covered with coarse yellow parchment,
and shod at the four ends with brass. The Christ is roughly hewn in
reddish wood, coloured scarlet, where the blood streams from the five
wounds. Over the head an oval medallion, nailed into the cross, serves
as framework to a miniature of the Madonna, softly smiling with a
Correggiesque simper. The whole Crucifix is not a work of art, but
such as may be found in every convent. Its date cannot be earlier than
the beginning of the eighteenth century. As I held it in my hand, I
thought--perhaps this has been carried to the bedside of the sick
and dying; preachers have brandished it from the pulpit over
conscience-stricken congregations; monks have knelt before it on the
brick floor of their cells, and novices have kissed it in the vain
desire to drown their yearnings after the relinquished world; perhaps
it has attended criminals to the scaffold, and heard