ond one she lost by an excess of greed. She resolved
to make them useful by day, as well as by night, and put them to work at
the studios of individual artists. But as no one artist wanted three
models, the girls had to separate, and, out of the mother's vigilance,
the second one, Orsolo, went to the atelier of a wicked and handsome
fellow, and met with the usual romance of her class.

The oldest girl, Luigia, married a man-model, and their nuptials must
have been of a most prosaic character.

Among the many men who thus stood for the artists, was one old fellow,
tall, and bearded, and massively characterized, who used to remain
motionless for hours; until he seemed to be dead. He had been a model in
every stage of life, from childhood to the grave, and represented every
subject from Garibaldi to Moses.

The walks in and around Florence occupied all my Sabbaths. Stagg and I
used to stroll up to Fiesole, by the villa where Boccaccio's party of
story-tellers met, and look up old pictures in the village church; we
measured the proportions of the chapel on the hill of Saint Miniato, and
he endeavored in vain to imitate the hue of the light as it fell through
the veined marble of Serravezza; we spent contemplative afternoons in
the house of Michael Angelo, and went up to Vallambrosa, at the risk of
our necks, to look at a Giotto no bigger than a tea-plate. In Florence
there is enough out-of-door statuary to make one of the finest galleries
in the world. The majesty of Donatello's "Saint George" arises before me
when I would conceive of any noble humanity, and the sweep of Orgagna's
great arches give me an idea of vastness like the sea; in the Pitti
palace only giants should abide; the Campanile goes up to heaven as
beautiful as Jacob's ladder, and in the perpetual twilight of the Duomo
I was not of half the stature I believed when roaming under the loftier
sky.

I saw a jail in Florence, and it troubled me; who in that beautiful city
could do a crime? How should old age, or bad passions, or sickness, or
shame, exist in that limpid atmosphere, in the shadow of such
architecture, in the presence of those pictures?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A CORRESPONDENT ONCE MORE.

Again on the way to Washington! I have made the trip more than sixty
times. I saw the Gunpowder Bridge in flames when Baltimore was in arms
and the Capital cut off from the North. I saw from Perryville the State
flag of Maryland waving at Havre de Grace ac