pace. The purple clover runs
riot among the grass. There is humming of bees about the golden
lily-hearts, and a red butterfly loses its way now and then among the
graves.

There is the rustle of ghostly garments in the silent air--the fall of
shadowy feet upon the grave-lined pavements. A white-robed, shining
multitude of philosophers and sages is for ever pacing up and down the
sunny gallery discoursing of great and high things, like the blessed in
the _Paradise_ of Dante. A goodly company were they who walked there of
old. Here came Giotto, pale-browed and thoughtful, discoursing with his
friend, old Pietro di Abano, wizard, astrologer and learned physician,
of the designs he was to give him for the frescoing of the new Palace of
Reason that the city was erecting. With them, perchance, walked the
great Tuscan, for he knew and loved them both, and all three, the seer,
the poet and the painter, brooded over the inner forces of Nature and
bared their souls to revelation. Hither came Petrarch, worn with the
pomp of courts, yet flushed with modest pride at the new clerical
dignity conferred upon him by his friend the Carrara, looking back upon
his past life with philosophic calm, bidding no man judge the day till
the evening be past, yet now and again feeling the old waves of passion
surge through his heart, breathing a prayer for the repose of his dead
love and a sigh for those sweet, far-off days of his youth. Here Tasso,
the beautiful young dreamer, escaping from the dull round of the
university, threw himself down in the clover beside the angels of the
well, and saw fair white women with golden hair wreathing their arms
about him, while the bees and the butterflies laughed aloud and cried,
"Poor fool! he does not know they are only lilies." And Galileo,
teaching the while the dull youth of the school, came to gather strength
in the thought of the great finality that was to lay him low beyond the
reach of the Inquisition, and yet lift him far above all human grandeur
to mate with the stars that had been his comfort through long years of
pain. Great Paolo Sarpi, when he came down from Venice in his monk's
dress to discourse with the learned men of Padua, wandered here with his
mind intent on the mighty problems of the universe, all unthinking of
the assassin's knife that was to ease the jealousy of the Roman
cardinals. Here wandered the apprentice-boy Mantegna, poor and humble,
stealing timidly in behind the furred gowns