r the brighter and newer chapels of the fashionable
churches in Ravenna. So the old monk is left alone to sweep the marsh
water from his church floor, and to keep the green moss from growing
too thickly on its monuments. A clammy conferva covers everything
except the mosaics upon tribune, roof, and clerestory, which defy the
course of age. Christ on His throne _sedet aternumque sedebit_: the
saints around him glitter with their pitiless uncompromising eyes and
wooden gestures, as if twelve centuries had not passed over them, and
they were nightmares only dreamed last night, and rooted in a sick
man's memory. For those gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of
life or end of days. No fever touches them; no dampness of the wind
and rain loosens their firm cement. They stare with senseless faces in
bitter mockery of men who live and die and moulder away beneath. Their
poor old guardian told us it was a weary life. He has had the fever
three times, and does not hope to survive many more Septembers. The
very water that he drinks is brought him from Ravenna; for the vast
fen, though it pours its overflow upon the church floor, and spreads
like a lake around, is death to drink. The monk had a gentle woman's
voice and mild brown eyes. What terrible crime had consigned him to
this living tomb? For what past sorrow is he weary of his life? What
anguish of remorse has driven him to such a solitude? Yet he looked
simple and placid; his melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life
were over for him, and he were waiting for death to come with a
friend's greeting upon noiseless wings some summer night across the
fen-lands in a cloud of soft destructive fever-mist.

Another monument upon the plain is worthy of a visit. It is the
so-called Colonna dei Francesi, a _cinquecento_ pillar of Ionic
design, erected on the spot where Gaston de Foix expired victorious
after one of the bloodiest battles ever fought. The Ronco, a straight
sluggish stream, flows by the lonely spot; mason bees have covered
with laborious stucco-work the scrolls and leafage of its ornaments,
confounding epitaphs and trophies under their mud houses. A few
cypress-trees stand round it, and the dogs and chickens of a
neighbouring farmyard make it their rendezvous. Those mason bees are
like posterity, which settles down upon the ruins of a Baalbec or a
Luxor, setting up its tents, and filling the fair spaces of Hellenic
or Egyptian temples with clay hovels. Nothing dif