The Arkansaw traveler. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1882-1???, 1889-02-02

1
the receding tide of vanished time. One stands
at first bewildered, distraught, dumb, in the very
presence Of the Immortals 1t is the pavement of
Dante that you tread. 1t is the cloister of Fra
Angelica. 1t il the Piazza where Savonarola tri-
umphed. II Is the touch and Tower of Calico.
In those gardens walked Michael Angelo In this
twilight chapel Raphael studied the free rescoes of
Masaccio and MasacciO gathered the wise ways of
nature from Gilbert, is Gates the open high
way, and Ghberti sat at the feet of Giotto's new
found truth, whom Cimabue comes out of the
centuried dusk to summer from his bright noun
tain side. They all here-the great ones,
Majores and Minores-eager to be entreated,
friendly TO the feeblest If sincere search-and the
summer crowds are not here. No tourist jostles
between you and the light. You have Florence to
yourself and the long, sweet solitary hours of
promise with the Immortals.
And alas alas! you are mortal-and therefore
you are cold.
The deadly rigor of those stone floors, those
unsunned corridors, those unwarmed halls, no
blood can brave. 1t comes up from the tiles and
down from the ceilings and in from the walls
through furs and aannels and the frmest will,
piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit and joint and marrow. A little umbrella
stand of brass cylinder three quarters full of
warm ashes, in the middle of an acre of enclosed
spaces is all the concession Florence will make
TO art and humanity The uniformed politician
janitor, keeper, stands it shivering, but
politely wIthdraws when, altogether benumbed
the despairing American would press the profile
of an instep against the faint warlnth of its
polished circumference to restore stagnant
circulation
The churches have not even so much as this
There are not even the ashes of unwonted fires
Only the eternal stone cold, death damp You
resolve, you resist, you fight against it, but you
succumb You stamp up and down awhile bnt
presently you stamp out. The paintings that
might linn even TO ignorant eyes the history OF
art from its Byzantine dawn through its Mcclellan
noOn-I dare not name its evening red-the
shrines that love and gratitnde-and superstition
if you wil-have reared with all that wealth
could summon of skill and splendor moulding
and carving, all cunning tracery of stone and
twisted marble and statued bronze, the glory and
story of stained glass more beautiful than gems
it is maddening to think what lies there open to
the soul yet barred to the body by the steady in
surmountable cold If the soul could but slip into
one of these bronze bodies for awhile and mind
the cold no more than they
And If King Humbert would dismiss a few of
the regiments that are perpetually marching and
counter marching across the bridges, drilling on
the suburban fields and parading through the
narrow streets and would appropriate the money
so saved to warming his galleries and his churches
he might make the unity and preservation of
Italy the ahectionate and reverent care of Chris
tendon.
Let no say that it is difference of consti-
tuition, that it is more healthy, that the Italians
like it, that they would perish in our warmth.
| a consciously colder, a more
uncomfortable looking population, than the
Milanese Marion's nose was always red and raw.
The ruddiness of complexion was the raw beet
steak ruddiness of perpetual cold, on the
faces of those who were we'll wrapped. The
peasant Italian woman went out shielded as 10
her shoulders with fimsy three cornered necker-
chief and with her hands folded away as far as
might be from the cold under a cotton apron
They did not enjoy the cold. They did mind it.
They shivered and shook. They stood bent and
with chattering teeth against it, Every look and
gesture and attitude betokened a hand to- hand
fight with it. A thousand deformities and
distortions betrayed some great physical antagon-
ism. They never would have borne it if they had
known there a more excellent way-the
American way. From November to May there
is Just much need of fire. do not say need of