ce as the Milan Cathedral
didn't particularly recommend itself to me; but when we had arrived at a
curiosity shop, and been ushered into a huge inner room, I suddenly
changed my mind, for what I saw there was wonderful--as wonderful in its
way as the great Cathedral itself.

It was the father of the man who showed us the model, and owned the
shop, who had made the miniature _duomo_. His name was Giacomo
Mattarelli, and he was an extraordinary genius, worthy of a tomb in the
Cathedral to the worship of whose beauty he devoted twenty years of his
life and sacrificed those which remained.

The story of his self-appointed task struck me as being as marvellous as
the task's result, which stood there in the dim room, perfect in
proportion and delicately wrought as ivory carved by Chinese experts. I
don't know what the others thought, but the tale as told by the artist's
son was for me full of pathos and beautiful sentiment.

The man had been a cabinet-maker by trade, but he had money and could
gratify his craving for art. The glory of the Milan Cathedral, seen
once, became an obsession for him, and he went again and again. At last
the idea grew in his mind to express his homage in a perfect copy of the
great church which, as he said, "held his heart." There was no train
between Milan and Lecco in his day (1840), and he used to walk all those
miles to make drawings of the Cathedral. At first he meant to do the
work in iron, but iron was too heavy; then he began casting plates in
copper, but they were hollow behind, and he could not get the effect he
wanted, so after several wasted months he began again with olive wood.
Often he would work all night; and no trouble was too much for his
inexhaustible patience. Each statue, each gargoyle was copied, first in
a drawing, then with the carving tools, and no hand but that of the
artist ever touched the work. At the end of twenty-two years it was
completed; not a detail missing inside or out; and then when all was
done the modeller went blind.

Now his son had lighted up the model for us to see, and I was almost
aghast at the thought of the incredible labour it had meant--literally a
labour of love, for the artist had given his eyes and his best years to
his adoration of the beautiful. And the whole thing seemed the more of a
marvel when I remembered how Mr. Barrymore had called Milan Cathedral
the most highly ornamented building in the world. Nowhere else, he said,
existed a chur