esempio, il campanile."

"Thou of Mugello, born in Italy,
Happy Giotto, gav'st to Vespignan
Great pictures which on every front we see
At Brescia, Rome, in Florence and Milan,
In stone, in marble, and in poetry,
And architecture, all Italian.
Nothing surpassed thy wondrous art and power,
Take for example, then, our great bell-tower."

The fact that this is taken from a very popular halfpenny work indicates
the remarkable familiarity with such a name as that of Giotto among the
people.

THE GOBLIN OF THE TOWER BELLA TRINITA, OR THE PORTA SAN NICCOLO

"They do not speak as mortals speak,
Nor sing as others sing;
Their words are gleams of starry light,
Their songs the glow of sunset light,
Or meteors on the wing."

I once begun a book--the ending and publishing of it are in the dim and
remote future, and perhaps in the limbo of all things unfinished. It was
or is "The Experiences of Flaxius the Immortal," a sage who dwells for
ever in the world, chiefly to observe the evolution of all things absurd,
grotesque, quaint, illogical--in short, of all that is strictly human.
And on him I bestowed a Florentine legend which is perhaps of great
antiquity, since there is a hint in it of an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi
ben Mozeltoff or the learned Gedauler Chamar--I forget which--besides
being found in poetic form in my own great work on Confucius.

That money is the life of man, and that treasure buried in the earth is a
sin to its possessor, forms the subject of one of Christ's parables. The
same is true of all talent unemployed, badly directed, or not developed
at all. The turning-point of evolution and of progressive civilisation
will be when public opinion and state interests require that every man
shall employ what talent he has, and every mere idler be treated as a
defaulter or criminal. From this truly Christian point of view the many
tales of ghosts who walk in agony because of buried gold are strangely
instructive.

FLAXIUS AND THE ROSE.

"Midnight was ringing from the cloister of San Miniato in Florence on the
hill above, and Flaxius sat by the Arno down below, on the bank by the
square grey tower of other days, known as the Niccolo, or _Torre delta
Trinita_, because there are in it three arches. . . .

"It was midnight in mid-winter, and a full moon poured forth all its
light over Florence as if it would fain preserve