ong, sir, but I have never known her so lovely as
tonight. It's as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in the empty
streets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a dream
made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in couples to pass
judgment on the last performance of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should
come in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what they say. The
plainest burgher of them, in his cap and gown, had a taste in the matter!
That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his
broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes
clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk,
carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom,
holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing
but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are
gone! But do you know I fancy--I fancy"--and he grew suddenly almost
familiar in this visionary fervour--"I fancy the light of that time rests
upon us here for an hour! I have never seen the David so grand, the
Perseus so fair! Even the inferior productions of John of Bologna and of
Baccio Bandinelli seem to realise the artist's dream. I feel as if the
moonlit air were charged with the secrets of the masters, and as if,
standing here in religious attention, we might--we might witness a
revelation!" Perceiving at this moment, I suppose, my halting
comprehension reflected in my puzzled face, this interesting rhapsodist
paused and blushed. Then with a melancholy smile, "You think me a
moonstruck charlatan, I suppose. It's not my habit to bang about the
piazza and pounce upon innocent tourists. But tonight, I confess, I am
under the charm. And then, somehow, I fancied you too were an artist!"

"I am not an artist, I am sorry to say, as you must understand the term.
But pray make no apologies. I am also under the charm; your eloquent
remarks have only deepened it."

"If you are not an artist you are worthy to be one!" he rejoined, with an
expressive smile. "A young man who arrives at Florence late in the
evening, and, instead of going prosaically to bed, or hanging over the
traveller's book at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to pay
his devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my own heart!"

The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was an American! He must have
been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously