ou feel an illogical satisfaction in thus
becoming a contribution to statistics.

We entered the Duomo in our new friend's custody, and we saw the things
which it was well to see. There was mass, or some other ceremony,
transacting, but, as usual, it was made as little obtrusive as possible,
and there was not much to weaken the sense of proprietorship with which
travellers view objects of interest. Then we ascended the Leaning Tower,
skilfully preserving its equilibrium, as we went, by an inclination of
our persons in a direction opposed to the tower's inclination, but
perhaps not receiving a full justification of the Campanile's appearance
in pictures till we stood again at its base, and saw its vast bulk and
height as it seemed to sway and threaten in the blue sky above our
heads. There the sensation was too terrible for endurance,--even the
architectural beauty of the tower could not save it from being monstrous
to us,--and we were glad to hurry away from it to the serenity and
solemn loveliness of the Campo Santo.

Here are the frescos painted five hundred years ago to be ruinous and
ready against the time of your arrival in 1864, and you feel that you
are the first to enjoy the joke of the Vergognosa,--that arch jade who
peers through her fingers at the shameful condition of deboshed Father
Noah, and seems to wink one eye of wicked amusement at you. Turning
afterward to any book written about Italy during the time specified, you
find your impression of exclusive property in the frescos erroneous, and
your Muse naturally despairs where so many muses have labored in vain to
give a just idea of the Campo Santo. Yet it is most worthy celebration.
Those exquisitely arched and traceried colonnades seem to grow like the
slim cypresses out of the sainted earth of Jerusalem; and those old
paintings enforce more effectively than their authors conceived the
lessons of life and death, for they are themselves becoming part of the
triumphant decay they represent. If it was awful once to look upon that
strange scene where the gay lords and ladies of the chase come suddenly
upon three dead men in their coffins, while the devoted hermits enjoy
the peace of a dismal righteousness on a hill in the background, it is
yet more tragic to behold it now, when the dead men are hardly
discernible in their coffins, and the hermits are but the vaguest
shadows of gloomy bliss. Alas! Death mocks even the homage done him by
our poor fears and ho