oquently wrote
in after years, and here, to this day, in the grand old halls whence the
Riario sent so many victims to their deaths below, a learned and
literary society holds its meetings. Of all palaces in Rome in which she
might have lived, fate chose this one for Queen Christina, as if its
destiny of contrasts past and future could best match her own.

Much more could be told of Trastevere and much has been told already;
how Beatrice Cenci lies in San Pietro in Montorio, how the lovely
Farnesina, with all its treasures, was bought by force by the Farnese
for ten thousand and five hundred scudi,--two thousand and one hundred
pounds,--how the Region was swept and pillaged again and again by
Emperors and nobles, and people and Popes, without end.

But he who should wander through the Regions in their order, knowing
that the greatest is last, would tire of lingering in the long Lungara
and by the Gate of the Holy Spirit, while on the other side lies the
great Castle of Sant' Angelo, and beyond that the Vatican, and Saint
Peter's church; and for that matter, a great part of what has not been
told here may be found in precise order and ready to hand in all those
modern guide books which are the traveller's first leading-strings as he
learns to walk in Rome.

* * * * *

Yet here, on the threshold of that Region which contains many of the
world's most marvellous treasures of art--at the Gate of the Holy
Spirit, through which Raphael so often passed between love and work--I
shall say a few words about that development in which Italy led the
world, and something of the men who were leaders in the Renascence.

Art is not dependent on the creations of genius alone. It is also the
result of developing manual skill to the highest degree. Without genius,
works of art might as well be turned out by machinery; without manual
skill, genius could have no means of expression. As a matter of fact, in
our own time, it is the presence of genius, without manual skill, or
foolishly despising it, that has produced a sort of school called the
impressionist.

To go back to first principles, the word Art, as every child knows, is
taken directly from the Latin ars, artis, which the best Latin
dictionary translates or defines: 'The faculty of joining anything
corporeal or spiritual properly or skilfully,' and therefore: 'skill,
dexterity, art, ability,' and then: 'skill or faculty of the mind or
body that sho