go directly onwards, would be from
seventy to eighty miles an hour, during which transit he would find
far more attractive food, pleasanter places wherein to buzz about,
and more beautiful views than he meets with in this humble room of
mine, wherein I, from hour to hour, do with a towel rise and slay his
kind. Oh, reader! how many men there are who, to soaring far and
wide in life amid honeyed flowers and pleasant places, prefer to buzz
about in short flights in little rooms where they can tease some one,
and defile all they touch as domestic gossips do--but, 'tis enough!
_Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur_!"

THE ROMAN VASE
A LEGEND OF BELLOSGUARDO

"From Tuscan Bellosguardo
Where Galileo stood at nights to take
The vision of the stars, we have found it hard,
Gazing upon the earth and heavens, to make
A choice of beauty."--ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Bellosguardo is an eminence on a height, crowned with an ancient,
castle-like monastery, from which there is a magnificent view of
Florence. It is a haunted legendary spot; _fate_ and witches sweep round
its walls by night, while the cry of the _civetta_ makes music for their
aerial dance, and in the depths of the hill lie buried mystic treasures,
or the relics of mysterious beings of the olden time, and the gnome of
the rocks there has his dwelling in subterranean caves. Of this place I
have the following legend from Maddalena:

IL VASO ROMANO.

"There was, long ago, in the time of Duke Lorenzo di Medici, a young
gardener, who was handsome, clever, and learned beyond the other men of
his kind, a man given somewhat to witchcraft and mysteries of ancient
days, for he had learned Latin of the monks and read books of history.

"And one day when he was working with his companions in the garden of
Bellosguardo, taking out stones, they came to an old Roman vase, which
the rest would fain have broken to pieces as a heathenish and foul thing,
because there was carved on it the figure of a beautiful Pagan goddess,
and it was full of the ashes of some dead person. But the young man
suddenly felt a great passion, a desire to possess it, and it seemed as
if something said to him, '_Con questo vaso cie un mistero_.'

"'Mine own in truth that vase shall ever be,
For there is in it some strange mystery.'

"So he begged for it, and it was readily granted to him. And loo