sculptor blessed the
medieval time, and its gorgeous contrivances of splendor; for surely the
skill of man has never accomplished, nor his mind imagined, any other
beauty or glory worthy to be compared with these.

It is the special excellence of pictured glass, that the light, which
falls merely on the outside of other pictures, is here interfused
throughout the work; it illuminates the design, and invests it with
a living radiance; and in requital the unfading colors transmute the
common daylight into a miracle of richness and glory in its passage
through the heavenly substance of the blessed and angelic shapes which
throng the high-arched window.

"It is a woeful thing," cried Kenyon, while one of these frail yet
enduring and fadeless pictures threw its hues on his face, and on the
pavement of the church around him,--"a sad necessity that any Christian
soul should pass from earth without once seeing an antique painted
window, with the bright Italian sunshine glowing through it! There is
no other such true symbol of the glories of the better world, where
a celestial radiance will be inherent in all things and persons, and
render each continually transparent to the sight of all."

"But what a horror it would be," said Donatello sadly, "if there were a
soul among them through which the light could not be transfused!"

"Yes; and perhaps this is to be the punishment of sin," replied the
sculptor; "not that it shall be made evident to the universe, which can
profit nothing by such knowledge, but that it shall insulate the sinner
from all sweet society by rendering him impermeable to light, and,
therefore, unrecognizable in the abode of heavenly simplicity and truth.
Then, what remains for him, but the dreariness of infinite and eternal
solitude?"

"That would be a horrible destiny, indeed!" said Donatello.

His voice as he spoke the words had a hollow and dreary cadence, as if
he anticipated some such frozen solitude for himself. A figure in a dark
robe was lurking in the obscurity of a side chapel close by, and made an
impulsive movement forward, but hesitated as Donatello spoke again.

"But there might be a more miserable torture than to be solitary
forever," said he. "Think of having a single companion in eternity, and
instead of finding any consolation, or at all events variety of torture,
to see your own weary, weary sin repeated in that inseparable soul."

"I think, my dear Count, you have never read Dante,"