upon his grave. Yet his
monument teaches in short compass a deep lesson; and his epitaph sums up
the dream which lured the men of Italy in the Renaissance to their doom.
We see before us sculptured in this marble the ideal of the humanistic
poet-scholar's life: Love, Grace, the Muse, and Nakedness, and Glory.
There is not a single intrusive thought derived from Christianity. The
end for which the man lived was pagan. His hope was earthly fame. Yet
his name survives, if this indeed be a survival, not in those winged
verses which were to carry him abroad across the earth, but in the
marble of a cunning craftsman, scanned now and then by a wandering
scholar's eye in the half-darkness of a vault.

THE MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX IN THE BRERA.

The hero of Ravenna lies stretched upon his back in the hollow of a bier
covered with laced drapery; and his head rests on richly ornamented
cushions. These decorative accessories, together with the minute work of
his scabbard, wrought in the fanciful mannerism of the _cinquecento_,
serve to enhance the statuesque simplicity of the young soldier's
effigy. The contrast between so much of richness in the merely
subordinate details and this sublime severity of treatment in the person
of the hero is truly and touchingly dramatic. There is a smile, as of
content in death, upon his face; and the features are exceedingly
beautiful--with the beauty of a boy, almost of a woman. The heavy hair
cut straight above the forehead and straight over the shoulders, falling
in massive clusters. A delicately sculptured laurel-branch is woven into
a victor's crown and laid lightly on the tresses it scarcely seems to
clasp. So fragile is this wreath that it does not break the pure outline
of the boy-conqueror's head. The armor is quite plain. So is the
surcoat. Upon the swelling bust, that seems fit harbor for a hero's
heart, there lies the collar of an order composed of cockle-shells; and
this is all the ornament given to the figure. The hands are clasped
across a sword laid flat upon the breast, and placed between the legs.
Upon the chin is a little tuft of hair, parted, and curling either way;
for the victor of Ravenna like the Hermes of Homer, was +proton
hypenetes+, "a youth of princely blood, whose beard hath just begun to
grow, for whom the season of bloom is in its prime of grace." The whole
statue is the idealization of _virtu_--that quality so highly prized by
the Italians and the ancients, so