ing girl, who has surely called
the very loves from Paradise or from the apple-trees covered with
blossom, where they make their temporary abode. What love song were they
singing, ere the music was frozen on their lips by a falling leaf or
chance flutter of bird life calling them to turn, and lo, Death is here?

It is in such a place as this that any meditation upon death loses both
its sentimental and its ascetic aspect, and becomes wholly aesthetic, so
that it can never be before this fresco that such a contemplation should
be, as it were, "a lifelong following of one's own funeral." And indeed,
it is not any gross fear of death that comes to one at all here in the
mysterious sunshine, but a new delight in life. Those joyful pleasant
paintings of Benozzo Gozzoli, a third-rate master, but one who is always
full of joy and sunshine, with a certain understanding and love, too, of
the hills and the trees, seem to confirm us in our delight at the sun
and the sea wind, here in Italy, in Italy at last. For, indeed, in what
other land than this could a cemetery be so beautiful, and where else in
the world do frescoes like these stain the walls out of doors amid a
litter of antique statues, graves, and flowers over the heroic or holy
dead? Here you may see life at its sanest and most splendid moments. In
the long hot days of the vintage, for instance, when the young men tread
the wine-press, the girls bear the grapes in great baskets, and boy and
girl together pluck the purple fruit. Call it, if you will, the
Drunkenness of Noah, you will forget the subject altogether in your
delight in the sun and the joy of the vintage itself, where the girls
dance among the vines under the burden of the grapes, and the little
children play with the dogs, and the goodman tastes the wine. Or again,
in the fresco of the Tower of Babel: think if you can of all the mere
horror of the confusion, and the terror of death, but in a moment you
will forget it, remembering only that heroic Republic which amid her
enemies built her splendid city, her beautiful Duomo, her Tower like the
horn of an unicorn, and this Campo Santo too, where the hours pass so
softly, and the hottest days are cool and full of delight. The Victory
of Abraham is a battle gay with the banners of Pisa, when the Gonfalons
of Florence lay low in the dust. The Curse of Ham, with its multitude of
children, is just the departure of some prodigal for the Sardinian wars
on a summer eveni