a plenitude of charms, investing even the most solemn subjects with
loveliness. Rembrandt and Albert Duerer depict the tragedies of the
Sacred History with a serious and awful reality: Italian painters,
with a few rare but illustrious exceptions, shrink from approaching
them from any point of view but that of harmonious melancholy. Even so
the English poets stir the soul to its very depths by their profound
and earnest delineations of the stern and bitter truths of the world:
Italian poets environ all things with the golden haze of an artistic
harmony; so that the soul is agitated by no pain at strife with the
persuasions of pure beauty.

* * * * *

_POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY_

It is a noticeable fact about the popular songs of Tuscany that they
are almost exclusively devoted to love. The Italians in general have
no ballad literature resembling that of our Border or that of Spain.
The tragic histories of their noble families, the great deeds of their
national heroes, and the sufferings of their country during centuries
of warfare, have left but few traces in their rustic poetry. It is
true that some districts are less utterly barren than others in these
records of the past. The Sicilian people's poetry, for example,
preserves a memory of the famous Vespers; and one or two terrible
stories of domestic tragedy, like the tale of Rosmunda in 'La Donna
Lombarda,' the romance of the Baronessa di Carini, and the so-called
Caso di Sciacca, may still be heard upon the lips of the people. But
these exceptions are insignificant in comparison with the vast mass of
songs which deal with love; and I cannot find that Tuscany, where the
language of this minstrelsy is purest, and where the artistic
instincts of the race are strongest, has anything at all approaching
to our ballads.[21] Though the Tuscan contadini are always singing, it
rarely happens that

The plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.

On the contrary, we may be sure, when we hear their voices ringing
through the olive-groves or macchi, that they are chanting

Some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day,--
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again;

or else, since their melodies are by no means uniformly sad, some
ditty of the joyousness of springtime or the ecstasy of love.

This defect of anything corresponding to our ballads of 'Che