rackets they ramp in all
the lean ferocity of feudal heraldry, and from their claws hang down
the chains wrested in old warfare from some barricaded gateway of
Siena. Below is the fountain, on the many-sided curves of which
Giovanni Pisano sculptured, in quaint statuettes and basreliefs, all
the learning of the middle ages, from the Bible history down to
fables of AEsop and allegories of the several months. Facing the same
piazza is the Sala del Cambio, a mediaeval Bourse, with its tribunal
for the settlement of mercantile disputes, and its exquisite carved
woodwork and frescoes, the masterpiece of Perugino's school. Hard by
is the University, once crowded with native and foreign students,
where the eloquence of Greek Demetrius in the first dawn of the
Renaissance withdrew the gallants of Perugia--those slim youths with
shocks of nut-brown hair beneath their tiny red caps, whose comely
legs, encased in tight-fitting hose of two different colours, looked
so strange to modern eyes upon the canvas of Signorelli--from their
dice and wine-cups, and amours and daggers, to grave studies in the
lore of Greece and Rome.

This piazza, the scene of all the bloodiest tragedies in Perugian
annals, is closed at the north end by the Cathedral, with the open
pulpit in its wall from which S. Bernardino of Siena preached peace
in vain. The citizens wept to hear his words: a bonfire of vanities
was lighted on the flags beside Pisano's fountain: foe kissed foe:
and the same cowl of S. Francis was set in token of repentance on
heads that long had schemed destruction, each for each. But a few
days passed, and the penitents returned to cut each other's throat.
Often and often have those steps of the Duomo run with blood of
Baglioni, Oddi, Arcipreti, and La Staffa. Once the whole church had
to be washed with wine and blessed anew before the rites of
Christianity could be resumed in its desecrated aisles. It was here
that within the space of two days, in 1500, the catafalque was
raised for the murdered Astorre, and for his traitorous cousin
Grifonetto Baglioni. Here, too, if more ancient tradition does not
err, were stretched the corpses of twenty-seven members of the same
great house at the end of one of their grim combats.

No Italian city illustrates more forcibly than Perugia the violent
contrasts of the earlier Renaissance. This is perhaps its most
essential characteristic--that which constitutes its chief aesthetic
interest. To many tr