n American education. The thought was often in his
mind; and he perhaps cherished some hope of returning thither later
in life, and letting old age steal gently upon him and his wife in
the delicious city. But the Celestial City was nearer to him than he
suspected.

There was a magical old man in Florence named Kirkup, an Englishman,
though he had dwelt abroad so many years that he seemed more Florentine
than the Florentines themselves. He had known, in his youth, Byron,
Shelley, Hunt, and Edward Trelawney. After that famous group was
disparted, Kirkup, having an income sufficient for his needs, came to
Florence and settled there. He took to antiquarianism, which is a sort
of philtre, driving its votaries mildly insane, and filling them
with emotions which, on the whole, are probably more often happy than
grievous. But Kirkup, in the course of his researches into the past,
came upon the books of the necromancers, and bought and studied them,
and began to practise their spells and conjurations; and by-and-by,
being a great admirer and student of Dante, that poet manifested himself
to him in his lonely vigils and told him many unknown facts about his
career on earth, and incidentally revealed to him the whereabouts of the
now-familiar fresco of Dante on the wall of the Bargello Chapel, where
it had been hidden for ages beneath a coat of whitewash. In these occult
researches, Kirkup, of course, had need of a medium, and he found among
the Florentine peasants a young girl, radiantly beautiful, who possessed
an extraordinary susceptibility to spiritual influences. Through her
means he conversed with the renowned dead men of the past times. But one
day Regina (such was the girl's name), much to the old man's surprise,
gave birth to a child. She herself died, in Kirkup's house, soon after,
and on her death-bed she swore a solemn oath on the crucifix that the
baby's father was none other than Kirkup himself. The poor old gentleman
had grown so accustomed to believing in miracles that he made little ado
about accepting this one also; he received the child as his daughter,
and made provision for her in his will. No one had the heart or thought
it worth while to enlighten him as to certain facts which might have
altered his attitude; but it was well known that Regina had a lover, a
handsome young Italian peasant, much more capable of begetting children
than of taking care of them afterwards.

These interesting circumstances I did