Morning journal and courier., 1890-05-31

back to their dogs life and the ships; meg.
sengsrs with the nights collection of tele-
grams; bakers in white linen caps and shirts,
with boat loads of black, brown and white
fagons Of drinking water; butchers, icemen,
grocerymen, ell in boats making their FIRST
morning rounds; and all OF them down there
upon the water in the shadows seeming like
some weird end silent maskers in dream.
Titan gives his "Bella, }" in the Pitt gall
lery, that light, feecy and almost transpa-
rent golden red hair commonly known as
Venetian. This is another of those pretty
Venetian mysticisms which 1t ia unpleasant
to dissipate. have seen perhaps ten thou
sand women in Venice. Among all these no
Venetian woman was crowned with hair of
any such color. Out Of Difference to late
freak on the part of Patti, there were Eng
lish, French and American danes whose
heads were glowing beaoons of the Titan
style. The women of Venice have square
heads with wide foreheads, deeply sunken
and lustrous eyes, with wide, arohing brows
which meet, tiny ears, and hair the texture,
color and quality of farm horses black
tail whose outer and exposed hlaments have
become rusty. dusty and gray in fly and
ploughing time. There are three classes
from which to choose your types of Vene-
tian women, and from none of these will
you find the ideal faces and forms OF po-
etio painting or the artists pencil. The
first comprise the women of the sristocra
cy; thin tall, plain, patient, grave. listless,
ambitionless, vacuous, silent. They remind
guild manner, but possess none OF their
lustrous, almost pathetic beauty. They
seem to exist as merely passive beings in q
hateful present, dolefulIy regarding the dead
glories Of vanished past. In the second
class are chiefly the brusque, strapping,
square bodied wives and daughters of the
small dealers, relic showmen and petty poli-
ticians of modern Venice. They are loud
vetoed, wide jawed, brazen faced; regard the
social revolution which has put them at the
front of the deoayed. aristocrscy as a glad
some, heaven sent dispensatien; and mimic
the last years Paris and London fashions
with an affiuenca and enthusiasm worthy of
their extraordinary vigor and assurance.
The third class is of course ths lowly. Its
women are bare headed, bare legged, bare
breasted creatures with pudgy little faces,
tiny noses and eyes, tiny mouths with puck.
cred, protruding lips, neeks with tendency
to goitre, and with no more perfection of
symmetry about their bunchy, squaw like
forms than you will and in the humpy,
head protruding peasant women from Bulga-
ria and lower Hungary who are weekly land
cd at Castle Garden in New York. These
glory in immense fat, crescent shaped ear
hugo strings of gsudy Venetian beads, garlic
and babies. This Is Eoh pleasant picture,
but it is @ true one. All thess faces have
more or less of plaintive look about the
eyes and drawn pathetic expression about the
mouth. This, the subtle essence of go uni
versal poetic sdulation, is ascribsd by the
more realistic physicians of Venice to ca
tarrh. have their word for it that it is an
universal ailment in water logged Venice.
L. otv - k1n
have seen in all Italy, though myself an un-
blushipg tramp and likely to meet the broth
erhood if it enlisted hsre, was on the way
from Campi Veteres to Potsnza. We met at
a wayside shrine. After succeeding in con-
vineing him that there was a natural affinity
existing between US I shared the contents of
my lunch wallet with him. I then made
him partially understand the luxuriousness,
versatility and numerousness of the Ameri-
can tramp, and. on our way into the old
earthquake shaken city, he explained with
the excellent analysis and unerring logic
with which all tramps discuss sociology, why
our kind were quite unknown in Italy. The
reasons he gave were, brisAy, that ho who
had no work to do, or he who preferred not
to engage in toll, in his country from choice
and custom instantly became q beggar or
bandit He could adopt neither profession,
because bandit required certain amount
successful beggar made malformatio or un-
pleasant distortion and posing, necessary.
Another important reason for ths non exist
enca of tramps, he thought, was q certain
sharp spur of necessity which goaded men
OF desustude to at lesss movement In rigor-
GUS northern climes. In such lands as Italy
sunshine and sleep were good part OF food
itself; little actual nourishment was rsqul-
site whsre there was little waste from exer-
l-yN I~N
nearly all the year round; wine was cheaper
than good water; practically no clothing was
reaaired and, altogether, sentimental tour
lists provided handsomely for all. For him-
self he had a soul above begging, bslow the
bandisti, and so loved all his Gdored Italy
that he aspired to know 1t from the true
travellers standpoint. To further this aspi.
ration he repaired pedal indurations by day
and imprcvised pastoral epics by night
science and poesy, as it were, wandering
hand in hand through the sunny ways of It.
ally.
Millions of men and women reading Mil
toms lines,
sThck as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where tn Etrurian shades
High overarch'd embower-"
have seen the vision that came In a swift
longing to him to again dwell among the
Franciscan monks in the monastery near the
top Of the mountain above Florence, and
yearned, as he yearned, for the cool depths
of it's restful shade. 1t is the ons place in
all Italy, save beautiful Palermo, which full
fills preconceivsd notions. Your journey is
eighteen miles from Florence, up the lovely
valley of the Arno, whers are smbowered in
vine and flowers hundreds of villas occupied
by the italian aristoeracy and nobility. A
broad carriage road leads all the way. Halt
ing at the little village of Tosi, from which
one was formerly conveyed to the mountain
retreat by aledge drawn by oxen, an houl
ia passed at refreshments and in enchanting
views of the cities, valleys, plains and rivers
below, when the journey ia resumed up the
Pratomagno mountain, through groves of the
most magnificent beech and chestnut trees in
the world. The songs of birds. the Eolian
music of forest breezas, and endless melodies
of falling waters, so bewltch one all the way
from Tosi, that suddenly and without warn
ing you are at the enchanting mountain eerie.
It comprises but few acres Of level mead
ow through which runs a long avenue of ma
iestio trees, and at the end of this stands the
lichened and gray old mass of buildings,
more famous from three lines by Milton than
any other similar spot in the world. The
order Of Vallombrosans, founded in the ear
ly part of the eleventh century by Gualber-
to, of Florence-who, prevented by pious
impulse from Staying the murderer of his
DrOtner, bQCuSu St us -AcICy, Au eAhuhAuA-
ness to God became religious devotee, and
eventually the founder of great order-be-
came one of the richest and most powerful
in Italy; and this one old monastery held
their chief treasure. For this order Oh.
ambue painted his priceless Madonn; PERU
gino, his marvellous Assumption. But the
French revolution almost ruined the order.
When Napoleon's council debated whether
they should spare the Vallombrosans, be-
cause they kept tie wolves thinned in the
mountains, it was asked, "Shall We have
monks or wolvesl' ''Wolvesl" was the an
swer; and Victor Emanuel in 1860, at the
italian disestablishmens, completed their ex-
tinction here. The place is now used as a
government agricultural school, with corps
Of resident professors; and just above the
monastery is an observatory, one of the Ital-
ian signal and weather stations of to day.
A glorious torrent leaps past the edge of the
meadow: the forests in which the sweet old
uest is embedded were nearly all set out by
the monks; over forty Thousand beech tree.
are now standing, all Of which were planted
by these vigorous reeluses; and though Val
lombrosa is three thousand feet above th,
sea, the mountain behind rises one Thousand
feet higher, covered densely with as grand