hedral,
who would fix no price for the pleasure he was born to do us, yet still
consented to take more than twice that he ought to have had at parting.
But he was worth the money; he was worth quite two francs, and, though
he was not without the fault of his calling and would have cumbered us
with instruction, I will not blame him, for after a moment I perceived
that his intelligence was such that I might safely put my hands in my
pocket on my shut guide-book and follow him from point to point without
fear of missing anything worth noting. Among the things worthiest
noting, I saw, as if I had never seen them before, the unforgettable,
forgotten Andrea del Sartos, especially the St. Agnes, in whose face you
recognize the well-known features of the painter's wife, but with a
gentler look than they usually wore in his Madonnas, perhaps because he
happened to study these from that difficult lady when she was in her
least celestial moods. Besides the masterpieces of other masters, there
is a most noble Sodoma, which the great Napoleon carried away to Paris
and which the greater French people afterward restored. At every step in
the beautiful temple you may well pause, for it abounds in pictures and
sculptures, the least of which would enrich St. Peter's at Rome beyond
the proudest effect of its poverty-stricken grandeur. Ghirlandajo,
Michelangelo, Gaddo Gaddi, John of Bologna--the names came back to me
out of a past of my own almost as remote as theirs, while our guide
repeated them, in their relation to the sculptures or pictures or
architecture, with those of lesser lights of art, and that school of
Giotto, of all whose frescos once covering its walls the fire of three
hundred years ago has left a few figures clinging to one of the pillars,
faint and uncertain as the memories of my own former visits to the
church. I did, indeed, remember me of an old bronze lamp, by Vincenzo
Possenti, hanging from the roof, which I now revered the third time, at
intervals of twenty years; from its oscillation Galileo is said to have
got the notion of the pendulum; but it is now tied back with a wire,
being no longer needed for such an inspiration. Mostly in this last
visit I took Pisa as lightly as at the first, when, as I have noted from
the printed witness, I was gayly indifferent to the claims of her
objects of interest. If they came in my way, I looked at them, but I did
not put myself much about for them. I rested mostly in the twiligh