--_e pur si muove_.

The Baptistery stands but a step away from the Campo Santo, and our
guide ushered us into it with the air of one who had till now held in
reserve his great stroke and was ready to deliver it. Yet I think he
waited till we had looked at some comparatively trifling sculptures
by Nicolo Pisano before he raised his voice, and uttered a melodious
species of howl. While we stood in some amazement at this, the
conscious structure of the dome caught the sound and prolonged it with
a variety and sweetness of which I could not have dreamed. The man
poured out in quick succession his musical wails, and then ceased,
and a choir of heavenly echoes burst forth in response. There was a
supernatural beauty in these harmonies of which I despair of giving
any true idea: they were of such tender and exalted rapture that
we might well have thought them the voices of young-eyed cherubim,
singing as they passed through Paradise over that spot of earth where
we stood. They seemed a celestial compassion that stooped and soothed,
and rose again in lofty and solemn acclaim, leaving us poor and
penitent and humbled.

We were long silent, and then broke forth with cries of admiration of
which the marvelous echo made eloquence.

"Did you ever," said the cicerone after we had left the building,
"hear such music as that?"

"The papal choir does not equal it," we answered with one voice.

The cicerone was not to be silenced even with such a tribute, and he
went on:

"Perhaps, as you are Americans, you know Moshu Feelmore, the
President? No? Ah, what a fine man! You saw that he had his heart
actually in his hand! Well, one day he said to me here, when I told
him of the Baptistery echo, 'We have the finest echo in the world in
the Hall of Congress.' I said nothing, but for answer I merely howled
a little,--thus! Moshu Feelmore was convinced. Said he, 'There is no
other echo in the world besides this. You are right.' I am unique,"
pursued the cicerone, "for making this echo. But," he added with
a sigh, "it has been my ruin. The English have put me in all the
guide-books, and sometimes I have to howl twenty times a day. When our
Victor Emanuel came here I showed him the church, the tower, and the
Campo Santo. Says the king, 'Pfui!'"--here the cicerone gave that
sweeping outward motion with both hands by which Italians dismiss a
trifling subject--"'make me the echo!' I was forced," concluded the
cicerone with a strong sense of