The Lancaster gazette. [volume] (Lancaster, Ohio) 1863-1886, 1864-07-21

sage let me call him-turned the
sheetiron cylinder in which it was
roasting over an open. fire after the
picturesque fashion of roasting coffee
in Venice. Now that the night had
fallen. and the stars shone down upon
him, and the red of the flame luridly
Illuminated him, he showed more
grand and venerable that ever. Sim
pie abstract humanity, wholly unrela-
ted to individuality, has its own gran
dcur in Italy so that it is not hard
here for the artist to find the print
tive types with which genius loves
best TO deal. As for this cid man, he
had the beard Of saint, and the dignity
Of n senator, harmonzed with tho
squalor Of a beggar, superior to which
shone his abstract, unconscious gran.
deur of humanity. A vast and calm
melancholy, which had nothing to do
with burning coffee, dwelt in his as,
pect and attitude, end if he had been
some supernatural agency, turning the
wheel OF fortune and doing men, in
stead Of coffee, brown, he could not
have looked rpore simply and weirdly
impressive. When presently, he rose
from his seat and lifted the cylinder
from its pace and the clinging flames
lcapcd after it, and he shook it, and
volume ofluminous smoke enveloped
and gioritied him-then l shy with
secret anguish that he, too, was be-
yond art, and turned sadly from the
spectacle Of that sublime and hapless
magniticcncc.
".
At other times. 1 was trr99uBlsd by
the csthetic perfection Of a certain
rufiian boy, who sold cakes of baked
p0!enta to the soldiers in the military
station near the piazza and whom |
often noted from the windows of tho
caGs there, where you get an excel
lent cafe Lldnc6, for ten soldi and one
to the waiter. / have reason to fear
that this boy dealt over shrewdly with
the Austrians, for a pitiless war ragged
between him and one of the scrgeants.
His bair was dark, his check was of
weather. beaten brch&e, better than
olive; and he wore a brave cap of red
flannel drawn down to the eyes OF
lustrous black. For the rest, he gave
unity and Conference to q jacket and
panta,oons OF Heterogeneous clements,
and such was the elasticity Of his
spirit. lightness and buoyant grace
to feet cnca4cd in wooden shoes
IIabitully came a barrel Organist, and
ground before the barracks, and "took
the soul Of that waste" youth "with
Joy. so that always when the organ
ist came to certain lively waltz, and
threw his whole soul as it were, into
the crank OF his instrument, my be-
loved ragamufiin failed not to seize
another polenta boy in hi= arms, and,
thus embraced, to whirl through q
wild inspiration of figures, in which
there was something of grotesquely
-flhmic, something Of indescribable
magniicencc, spiritnaliSed into a grace
ofmovement superior to the energy OF
the North and the extravagant tervor
of the East. 1t was coffee and not
wine that l drank, but 1 fable all the
same, that saw reflected in this su-
pcrb and artistic superation Of the
intrinsic difficulties Of dancing in that
unfrieudly chauSsqre, some OF tho
same genii!s that combatted and
vanqushcd the elements to build
its home upon washed sands in
marble structures of airy and stately
splcndor, and gave to architecture
new glorcs full of eternal surprise,