rit, but
certainly his--which is now at Munich. For the most part, he was calm
and regular in his manner of study; though often he would remain at
work through the whole of the day, not resting once so long as the
light lasted; flushed, and with the hair from his face. Or, at times,
when he could not paint, he would sit for hours in thought of all the
greatness the world had known from of old; until he was weak with
yearning, like one who gazes upon a path of stars.

He continued in this patient endeavour for about three years, at the
end of which his name was spoken throughout all Tuscany. As his fame
waxed, he began to be employed, besides easel-pictures, upon
paintings in fresco: but I believe that no traces remain to us of any
of these latter. He is said to have painted in the Duomo: and
D'Agincourt mentions having seen some portions of a fresco by him
which originally had its place above the high altar in the Church of
the Certosa; but which, at the time he saw it, being very
dilapidated, had been hewn out of the wall, and was preserved in the
stores of the convent. Before the period of Dr. Aemmster's
researches, however, it had been entirely destroyed.

Chiaro was now famous. It was for the race of fame that he had girded
up his loins; and he had not paused until fame was reached: yet now,
in taking breath, he found that the weight was still at his heart.
The years of his labor had fallen from him, and his life was still in
its first painful desire.

With all that Chiaro had done during these three years, and even
before, with the studies of his early youth, there had always been a
feeling of worship and service. It was the peace-offering that he
made to God and to his own soul for the eager selfishness of his aim.
There was earth, indeed, upon the hem of his raiment; but _this_ was
of the heaven, heavenly. He had seasons when he could endure to think
of no other feature of his hope than this: and sometimes, in the
ecstacy of prayer, it had even seemed to him to behold that day when
his mistress--his mystical lady (now hardly in her ninth year, but
whose solemn smile at meeting had already lighted on his soul like
the dove of the Trinity)--even she, his own gracious and holy Italian
art--with her virginal bosom, and her unfathomable eyes, and the
thread of sunlight round her brows--should pass, through the sun that
never sets, into the circle of the shadow of the tree of life, and be
seen of God, and found goo