to the
glory of the Exarchate. Rome followed with her square campaniles, whose
arcaded chambers looked down on a hundred cloisters. Then there were
La Ghirlandina at Modena, Il Torazzo at Cremona, Torre della Mangia at
Siena, the Garisenda at Bologna, the Leaning Tower at Pisa. Everywhere
they sought the skies with emulous heights, and ere long they arose in
such number as to give a distinctive aspect to the Christian city, and
to warn the traveller from afar that he approached walls within which
religion was a pride and a power. Who has not admired the Giotto
Campanile, called "the Beautiful," at Florence? And who has not wondered
at the splendor of her citizens, whose command was, "to construct an
edifice whose magnificence should be beyond the conception even of
the _cognoscenti_, and whose height and quality of workmanship should
surpass all that has been built in any style, in Greece or Rome, even at
the most florid period of their power!"

But the spiritualization and glory of the tower are yet wanting. There
is a very human expression about it, as it stands in the midst of
those glimmering lands, with its haughty summit commanding far-distant
plains,--

"Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky
Dips down to sea and sands,"--

a very human expression of scornful pride and imperious dominion. We
shall see how it outgrew its mere humanities and became an expression
of immortal aspirations, a symbol of our relationship with ethereal
existences.

These Italian campaniles had either flat summits, or were crowned with a
low, unimportant roof. But as they approached the North of Lombardy, and
found their way into Germany, France, and Britain, these roofs, through
the necessities of climate, became steeper and sharper. Many of the
little gray mountain-chapels in the South of Switzerland still lift up
these pointed towers amid the hamlets of the valley, having gathered
in the hardy flocks at eventide for seven or eight centuries. The same
early modifications may yet be seen on the banks of the Rhine, where the
conical, stork-haunted caps of the round towers are so picturesquely
associated with that legendary scenery. Those dear, time-worn, rugged,
red-tiled roofs, with their peaks coming in just where they are
needed,--what could the artist do without them? Then the same
necessities made the early French and Norman builders push up into the
air those gaunt, quaint old camelbacks, with spindles or pinnacles
as