r than those of most minds; and the artifice of it,
in which it must clothe itself to get understood by the people.

It is this latter which must be learnt; it is the leathern harness in
which the horses of the sun must run when they come down to race upon
earth.

* * *

For in Italy life is all contrast, and there is no laugh and love-song
without a sigh beside them; there is no velvet mask of mirth and passion
without the marble mask of art and death near to it. For everywhere the
wild tulip burns red upon a ruined altar, and everywhere the blue borage
rolls its azure waves through the silent temples of forgotten gods.

* * *

To enter Bologna at midnight is to plunge into the depths of the middle
ages.

Those desolate sombre streets, those immense dark arches, dark as
Tartarus, those endless arcades where scarce a footfall breaks the
stillness, that labyrinth of marble, of stone, of antiquity; the past
alone broods over them all.

As you go it seems to you that you see the gleam of a snowy plume and
the shine of a straight rapier striking home through cuirass and
doublet, whilst on the stones the dead body falls, and high above over
the lamp-iron, where the torch is flaring, a casement uncloses, and a
woman's voice murmurs, with a cruel little laugh, "Cosa fatta capo ha!"

There is nothing to break the spell of that old-world enchantment.

Nothing to recall to you that the ages of Bentivoglio and of Visconti
have fled for ever.

The mighty Academy of Luvena Juris is so old, so old, so old!--the folly
and frippery of modern life cannot dwell in it a moment; it is as that
enchanted throne which turned into stone like itself whosoever dared to
seat himself upon its majestic heights.

For fifteen centuries Bologna has grimly watched and seen the mad life
of the world go by; it sits amidst the plains as the Sphynx amidst her
deserts.

* * *

It is women's way. They always love colour better than form, rhetoric
better than logic, priestcraft better than philosophy, and flourishes
better than fugues. It has been said scores of times before I said it.

Nay, he pursued, thinking he had pained me, you have a bright wit
enough, and a beautiful voice, though you sing without knowing very well
what you do sing. But genius you have not, look you; say your
thanksgiving to the Madonna at the next shrine we come to; genius you
have not.

What is it?

Well,