them with sympathy and
carelessness as pleasant or instructive adjuncts to our actual life.
Artists, historians of art, and critics are forced to isolate
pictures; and it is of profit to their souls to do so. But simple
folk, who have no aesthetic vocation, whether creative or critical,
suffer more than is good for them by compliance with mere fashion.
Sooner or later we shall return to the spirit of the ages which
produced these pictures, and which regarded them with less of an
industrious bewilderment than they evoke at present.

I am far indeed from wishing to decry art, the study of art, or the
benefits to be derived from its intelligent enjoyment. I only mean to
suggest that we go the wrong way to work at present in this matter.
Picture and sculpture galleries accustom us to the separation of art
from life. Our methods of studying art, making a beginning of
art-study while traveling, tend to perpetuate this separation. It is
only on reflection, after long experience, that we come to perceive
that the most fruitful moments in our art education have been casual
and unsought, in quaint nooks and unexpected places, where nature,
art, and life are happily blent.

The Palace of the Commune at Cortona is interesting because of the
shields of Florentine governors, sculptured on blocks of grey stone,
and inserted in its outer walls--Peruzzi, Albizzi, Strozzi, Salviati,
among the more ancient--de' Medici at a later epoch. The revolutions
in the Republic of Florence may be read by a herald from these
coats-of-arms and the dates beneath them.

The landscape of this Tuscan highland satisfies me more and more with
sense of breadth and beauty. From S. Margherita above the town the
prospect is immense and wonderful and wild--up into those brown,
forbidding mountains; down to the vast plain; and over to the cities
of Chiusi, Montepulciano, and Foiano. The jewel of the view is
Trasimeno, a silvery shield encased with serried hills, and set upon
one corner of the scene, like a precious thing apart and meant for
separate contemplation. There is something in the singularity and
circumscribed completeness of the mountain-girded lake, diminished by
distance, which would have attracted Lionardo da Vinci's pencil, had
he seen it.

Cortona seems desperately poor, and the beggars are intolerable. One
little blind boy, led by his brother, both frightfully ugly and ragged
urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining 'Signore