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Title: Hospital Sketches

Author: Robert Swain Peabody

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOSPITAL SKETCHES ***

HOSPITAL SKETCHES

1916

HOSPITAL SKETCHES

BY

ROBERT SWAIN PEABODY

BOSTON & NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1916

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY ROBERT SWAIN PEABODY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published December 1916

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light;

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

W. B. YEATS.

NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are made to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for permission to use a passage from Edith Wharton's Fighting France and to The Macmillan Company for the use of the poem "Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," by W. B. Yeats.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ix

VIEW FROM THE HOSPITAL TERRACE

1

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

I.

The Minster and the Meadows

3

II.

The Church Yard

7

III.

The Village

11

IV.

The Hall

15

V.

Trong's Almshouses

19

RANCONEZZO

VI.

The Town and the Lake

23

VII.

Piazza Garibaldi

27

VIII.

Piazza Cavour

31

IX.

North Door of the Duomo

35

X.

Interior of the Duomo

39

XI.

The Villa of the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti

43

XII.

Santa Prassede, the Cardinal's Church

47

XIII.

The Cloisters of Sta Prassede

51

XIV.

The Tomb of the Cardinal in Sta Prassede

55

ROCHER-ST.-POL

XV.

The Town and the River Merle

59

XVI.

La Grande Rue and La Place de la République

63

XVII.

L'escalier de Jacob

67

XVIII.

Le Parvis de Ste Frédigonde

71

XIX.

Interior of the Church of Ste Frédigonde

75

XX.

Sacristy Steps in the Church of Ste Frédigonde

79

XXI.

The Château Beaumesnil

83

XXII.

La Tour de la Dame Blanche

87

AEGINASSOS

XXIII.

The Temple and the Forum

91

XXIV.

The Temple and the Forum

95

INTRODUCTION

JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL,

B  ALTIMORE, MARYLAND,

December, 1915.

ONE of my good friends, a stanch upholder of what to him is "The Catholic Church," looks back to the thirteenth century as marking the highest tide of Christian civilization. He longs for a restoration (but under other rule) of that monastic life which then gave shelter to Art, Science, Learning, and Religion. It does not appear that this longing is coupled with any regret for the exceptionally happy domestic life with which he personally has been blessed. Probably his hopes are that even if he establishes, others will maintain, that monastic life and discipline which, duly purified from Ultramontane tendencies, he thinks would be so uplifting and beneficial to our times.

However that may be, if he is ever immured for many weeks in a great hospital, he will be surprised to find how many are the similarities between its life, its discipline and its atmosphere, and those of the great monasteries. I mean those mediæval houses which spread from the parent at Monte Cassino to Citeaux and Cluny and Vezelay and thence to far-away parts of Europe, and which were even more abundant in England where the ruins of the Yorkshire Abbeys still attest to their former power. When the time is ripe for the change longed for by our friend he will find that very slight additions to a modern hospital will give him what he wants in great perfection.

Grateful though I am to them—deeply grateful—yet I know little of the personal history of the founder of this great hospital which now shelters me, or of that "Diamond Jim Brady" who built and endowed this noble wing. Still, I feel sure that in many ways these benefactors to their race made their gifts under much the same conditions as those barons and nobles of old who, led by some deep feeling, devoted their wealth to the saving, not only of their own souls, but of the souls and bodies of their fellow men.

Moreover, if the benefactors who founded and endowed this hospital resembled the men and women who made possible the powerful monasteries of the Middle Ages, there is also a resemblance to be found between the service that the monks rendered in their day to humanity and knowledge and that devotion which to-day inspires the staff of a great modern hospital. In this very building are housed and in constant attendance a large number of doctors, surgeons and orderlies. Their quarters, though in many ways like those in a modern club, are almost equally like the cells of a great monastery. There probably is not one of the staff who was not turned to his profession in some degree by the thought that it would make him of service to mankind. In another wing live several hundred nurses. The strength and health and happiness which appear in the faces of these young women attest to the good effect for women as well as for men of discipline and regular attention to duty. What a shining example is theirs of faithful and altruistic service to suffering humanity! Indeed a generous, helpful and encouraging spirit pervades all the men and women who form the staff of the hospital. Theirs is a single-minded and unwearying attention which no monks could have excelled, nor could the monasteries ever have offered a wider charity than that which makes white and colored, Hebrew and Gentile, poor and rich all objects of the kindly help of a skilful and devoted company.

I know that the kernel and very centre of the monastery was the lighted altar in the chapel where daily the sacred mysteries were enacted. That is what our friend will need to add to his perfected institution;—and yet—and yet—I doubt if the atmosphere will be very different when that is done. Although this place is world-famous as a centre of scientific research and of applied science,—though, in general, religion here is worked out in terms of service,—yet there are signs that the spirit has recognition as well as the physical body. To-day, in the great entrance rotunda stands a colossal and impressive statue of Christ, his hands outstretched welcoming the weary and the heavy-laden. The several hundred nurses have daily prayers together before they begin their unselfish work. At the dawn of Christmas morning, the doctors, nurses and orderlies make the halls resound with the carols suited to the day; and we hear how one convalescent who was praising his doctor's power over his ailments was surprised by the reply, "It was another power than mine that did it!" Perhaps he meant that miraculous servant Radium; perhaps he meant Nature herself; perhaps he meant something beyond these. He did not explain.

This devotion with which the staff is consecrated to altruistic labor is met by a spirit of buoyant gratitude from those on whom they minister. Our ward is vibrant with it. Perhaps this is not true at the very first. The patient arrives in misery. For a few days he is perhaps made even more miserable. But during this time he is in seclusion and not visible to his comrades. Soon he rallies. In bed or wheel chair he joins other convalescents on the roof terrace. They compare notes over their operations. They settle among themselves all those great pending questions which have been engrossing the active outside world and, looking forward to returning health and strength, a very joyous spirit pervades the group. These not too inviting surroundings abound, therefore, in a hearty thankfulness—a thankfulness abundant and sincere, and not unlike what it would be if it were offered amid solemn rites and with majestic music before the glowing altar of a monastery.

But in these early days of seclusion the lonely patient has opportunity for much thinking. Lying in bed in a room which, as a recent writer described it, is richly decorated with a white ceiling, four white walls, a door, a window and a floor, he has indeed time for thought and for thought without distraction.

Surrounded as he is by the sick and the maimed, perhaps one of the first subjects on which he is led to ponder is the mystery of Pain. What does it all mean that a God otherwise beneficent should impose on the creatures he has brought into the world illness and suffering? Even Prince Siddartha wondered at it:

"Since if, all powerful, he leaves it so,

He is not good; and if not powerful,

He is not God?"

In better mood the patient may wonder whether his personal share of pain is in any sense a penance or atonement for his own past sins. This is a thought which is natural and acceptable perhaps to most minds. But the Saints and Martyrs testifying to their faith went farther and not only submitted to but gladly sought pain and suffering. Now pain and agony well endured undoubtedly strengthen character. Have we not a vivid example of this before us in the catastrophe of the European war; a war which is saved from being wholly evil and dreadful because out of it has come the spiritual regeneration of the allied nations who are engulfed in it? Still it can hardly be expected that ordinary flesh and blood should in this world, so full of love and beauty, invite and seek out suffering and disaster even in order to bear them bravely. Enough for most of us that if doomed to walk with them we

"Turn the necessity to glorious gain."

But all the same it must be a happy thing for a sufferer if he can hope with the Martyrs that pain borne with fortitude may be offered as a sacrifice and atonement.

In these dull and lonely moments also one inevitably asks whether it is true that people exist who are stolid to pain? One may consecrate it before it comes and after it goes, but to most of us feeble folk pain when present occupies the whole limelight and leaves the rest of the stage in darkness! The only inmate of the hospital who stirred my temper was a patient who on making a rapid recovery from what he described as a very severe operation said he had refused ether and did not mind pain. I regained my equanimity when an orderly confided to me that the operation had been slight!

In health one is apt to think that Love is the great motive power of humanity. In illness and suffering Pain seems the great and pressing problem. They often go hand in hand and perhaps it is true that without them both life has not rendered its full wealth or its perfect discipline. "The ennobling depths of pain" need also "the purifying fire of love" to round out a perfect character.

"Incomprehensibly Love's will doth move

Through this blind world in ways we cannot see,

Death giving birth to life. So does deep sorrow

Give birth to rarer joy on some glad morrow."

These and many such questions can be as solemn, as perplexing and as engrossing as any that exercised the inmates of the Monastery to which we here find so much resemblance. As a contrast to such heart-searching thoughts the patient can wonder at the properties of that radium by which he may have been treated. How astonishing is it that this atom of matter should constantly emit rays which search out and destroy evil tissues and leave unharmed the good; and that they do this without any perceptible diminution of energy! How contrary this is to all we have hitherto known of the conservation of energy and of the impossibility of obtaining perpetual motion or continued power! What is so contrary to our preconceived ideas proves itself, however, by experience efficient in an almost supernatural or miraculous manner. Perhaps fatigued by these thoughts the patient can turn from them and closing his eyes begin to count "The flock of sheep that leisurely pass by one after one" and by happy chance submit himself to sleep.

The roof terrace has a wide view over the City of Baltimore, as well as of the heavens which encompass it. We sit there in our wheel chairs or lie tucked up in our rolling beds and talk flows freely. We watch the flocks of pigeons making endless circles in the upper air; the black and solemn buzzards hanging above us unmoved though the gale blow ever so fiercely; the cloud shadows moving over the panorama; the haze of mist and steam and smoke floating over the City; the ever-changing pageant of fleeting clouds and blue sky and blazing sunsets. At one time—

"And when the wind from place to place

Doth the unmoored cloud galleons chase"—

we follow the white fleets as they sail away towards the south, ever replaced by new armadas surging up and over the northern horizon. At another time in range beyond range of snowy clouds, we see rise before us the Delectable Mountains beyond which is the Land of Beulah where the shining ones go to and fro as messengers to the Celestial City.

It is said that an eye unused to the telescope cannot see the canals on the planet Mars, but that through the same instrument they are plainly visible to an eye trained to such observation. Sometimes, when the clouds have hung in white masses over the city, I have been eager to see what was hidden by those luminous walls, but my untrained eyes could not pierce them. Day after day, however, I became more familiar with them. Others before now, without journeying like Columbus to prove the truth of his visions, have, even by their own firesides, enjoyed Castles in the Air and Châteaux and great possessions in Spain. In like manner as the breeze moved the silver edges of the clouds, I had unexpectedly through the rifts views of strange lands and fair cities which I had never before seen or heard of. As they were indeed lovely, in all haste I tried to make rapid notes of them to prove the truth of my strange experience.

Far to the north over Homewood, a pile of mountainous clouds was rent for a short space by the breeze, and disclosed a Minster in a meadow land. Its name seemed to be Upthorpe-cum-Regis. Its tower rose before me over the busy life of the town and looked down on the mansion of the Squire and the house of the Dean. Close around the walls of the Minster, indeed within sound of its prayers and anthems, were clustered the graves of the dead,—the former generations who had made the life of the town and who built the church and worshipped at its altar. It was a town in which the characters described by Trollope or George Eliot or Jane Austen would have felt themselves at home.

Again when a sunset was filling the western sky with "the incomparable pomp of eve," a break in the clouds above the gilded towers of Cardinal Gibbons's Cathedral disclosed an Italian town on a lovely lake shore. Boats with colored sails lined the Riva of Ranconezzo. Two piazzas teeming with life surrounded the Duomo or Cathedral and from them there were wide views over lake and mountain scenery. It appears that in the long ago, the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti was the benefactor of this town, and there on the hillside, tree embowered, was his villa with its little port for the lake boats. His tomb I also saw, not in the Duomo, but in the Bramantesque Church of Santa Prassede, a building resembling the many small churches in northern Italy due to the refined influence of Bramante. In my dreaming I entered the church, and found that the great Cardinal lies beneath a tomb carved by Mino da Fiesole on the north side of Santa Prassede.

Then on a cool and crisp day when clouds were scudding through the sky, between them there was revealed to me a French town that seemed to bear the name of Rocher-St.-Pol. There was the river Merle winding its way through meadow and woodland. A range of hills bounded the horizon and from the plain rose the Rock. Not far away the ruined castle of "La Dame Blanche" crowned a steep hill, and close to the town was the Château Beaumesnil, beetling over the wooded hillside and bristling with conical towers and burnished girouettes. The Grande Rue of Rocher-St.-Pol I saw winding between gabled and half-timbered houses towards the church on the summit, and finally a long flight of stairs called by the people Jacob's ladder brings the pilgrim to the terrace in front of the church door. The interior of Ste. Frédigonde showed me the same period of French Gothic which marks the cathedrals of Notre Dame at Paris and Rheims. Coming out from Jacob's ladder upon the Parvis, there was a wide view over the meadows and the river. At the moment when the cathedral door was disclosed to me, a procession of clergy bearing sacred relics emerged from the church. It passed between the ranks of prophets and martyrs whose effigies flank the portal, and vanished with its banners and vestments down the long incline of Jacob's ladder towards the old town.

And finally came a dismal day, at the end of which the west was lined with long streaks of red, and, just before sunset, through a lengthened break in the gray, I seemed to see an Island in the far Ægean. I think it must have been somewhere between the Ægina that looks across the waters to the Athenian Acropolis and the Assos which my friends in their youth dug from its grave. Let us call it Æginassos. Its buildings as I dimly saw them are in a remarkable condition of preservation. The white temple stood out on a promontory over the sea, and brought back to memory the temple-crowned headland at Sunium. Higher on the mountain-side was the Forum with its terraces and long colonnades. Steep and winding paths descended to the ancient port, and far across the water rose the heights of the Isles of Greece.

Here are the records of what I was privileged to see from the roof terrace of the Hospital. Made in bed or wheel chair and depending on the passing imagination of an invalid, the sketches are of necessity crude. Would that instead they were like the work of Claude or Turner, who were the great experts at seeing visions in the clouds and in transferring them to their paper! These drawings will, however, be a reminder that idle hours can be passed happily even during a long captivity! Opposite each drawing I have placed some quotations from various writers. Although these do not describe with exactness the places which no eye but mine has seen, yet they do picture others very like those which I saw from the hospital terrace.

A day at last arrived when the patient was suddenly released. After being the object of tender care for many weeks the outer world seemed very large and very hustling. It was with a certain timidity and almost with reluctance that facing it all he left the peaceful quiet of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

THE RIVER

IT was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would be always like the holiday; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming—the great chestnut tree under which they played at house—their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing water-rats while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds which she forgot, and dropped afterwards—above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man—these things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived in any other spot of the globe; and Maggie when she read about Christiana passing "the river over which there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.

GEORGE ELIOT.

I

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

The Minster and the Meadows

THE MINSTER

STRONG as time, and as faith sublime,—clothed round with shadows of hopes and fears,

Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of prayers and tears,—

Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and waning years.

Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that blooms and glows,

Wall and roof of it tempest proof, and equal even to suns and snows,

Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows.

A. SWINBURNE.

ELEGY

NOW fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

Beneath these rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

GRAY.

THE CHURCHYARD

IT was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks who had built their nest among the branches of some tall old trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the air. First one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder than before; then another spoke and then another; and each time the first, aggravated by contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher up and midway, and to the right and left, and from the tree-tops; and others arriving hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry window, joined the clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and dropped again, and still went on; and all this noisy contention amidst a skimming to and fro, and lighting on fresh branches, and frequent changes of place, which satirized the old restlessness of those who lay so still beneath the moss and turf below, and the useless strife in which they had worn away their lives.

CHARLES DICKENS.

II

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

The Church Yard

THE PARSON

AS I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned? and without staying for my answer told me, that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table; for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the university to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. "My friend," says Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not show it. I have given him the parsonage of the parish; and because I know his value, have settled on him a good annuity for life....

At his first settling with me, I made him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly he has digested them into such a series, that they follow one another naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity.

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking of came up to us, and upon the Knight's asking him who preached to-morrow, for it was Saturday night, told us, the bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure, Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with several living authors who have published discourses of practical divinity.

ADDISON.

THE SWAN INN

LAST night I lay at the Swan Inn in Lathbury town. A sad night I had of it! My chamber was warmed fair enough by a fire of sea coal. There was a sweet smell of lavender in the sheets which a hot warming pan had also made comfortable. All this promised well, but Polly had forgot to put my silk night cap into my saddlebags! That vexed me sore! All night I felt I was taking a rheum. Some clodhoppers roystering in the tap room forbade sleep at first and as I am not wont to hear the quarters stricken the Abbey bells roused me at frequent intervals and made me swear roundly. About midnight the Royal Mail rolled over the bridge with a noise fit to wake the Seven Sleepers! The hoof beats of its cattle echoed on the stone walls of the houses like a salute by His Majesty's Footguards! How I ached for my quiet chambers in the Temple. At length I fell to sleep and so sound that when I waked the sun had long been shining through my lattice. I was late in meeting the Squire and the Vicar, and that too after making express this arduous ride. Indeed I was vexed—and I showed it.

SWAIN'S Old Salop.

THE Swan is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself lazily with outspread arms; one of those inns (long may they be preserved from the rebuilders!) on which one stumbles up or down into every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make them a more desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlor is wainscotted with the votive paintings—a village Diploma Gallery—of artists who have made the Swan their home.

E. V. LUCAS.

III

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

The Village

ONE almost expects to see a fine green moss all over an inhabitant of Steyning. One day as I passed through the town I saw a man painting a new sign over a shop, a proceeding that so aroused my curiosity that I stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter filled in one letter, gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three times as if he had lost something, and finally descended from his perch and disappeared. Five weeks later I passed that way again, and it is a fact that the same man was at work on the same sign. Perhaps when the reader takes the walk I am about to recommend to his attention—a walk which comprises some of the finest scenery in Sussex—that sign will be finished, and the accomplished artist will have begun another; but I doubt it. There is plenty of time for everything in Steyning.

LOUIS JENNINGS.

THE OLD COUNTRY HOUSE

IF our old English folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved to have it pointed, with polished timber beams on which the eye rested as on looking upwards through a tree. Their rooms they liked of many shapes, and not at right angles on the corners, nor all on the same dead level of flooring. You had to go up a step into one, and down a step into another, and along a winding passage into a third, so that each part of the house had its individuality. To these houses life fitted itself and grew to them; they were not mere walls, but became part of existence. A man's house was not only his castle, a man's house was himself. He could not tear himself away from his house, it was like tearing up the shrieking mandrake by the root, almost death itself.... Dark beams inlaid in the walls support the gables; the slight curve of the great beam adds, I think, to the interest of the old place, for it is a curve that has grown and was not premeditated; it has grown like the bough of a tree, not from any set human design. This too is the character of the house. It is not large, not overburdened with gables, not ornamented, not what is called striking, in any way, but simply an old English house, genuine and true. The warm sunlight falls on the old red tiles, the dark beams look the darker for the glow of light, the shapely cone of the hop-oust rises at the end; there are swallows and flowers and ricks and horses, and so it is beautiful because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so touching, like the words of an old ballad ... why even a tall chanticleer makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall proud chanticleer strutting in the yard and barely giving way as I advance, almost ready to do battle with a stranger like a mastiff.

JEFFRIES, Buckhurst Park.

IV

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

The Hall

THE BEDESMEN

THERE he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination Day.... Yonder sit some threescore old gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight,—the old reverend blackgowns.... How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place where in childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful, and decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The service for Founder's Day is a special one; one of the psalms selected being the thirty-seventh and we hear—

23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way—

24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.

25. I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.

W. M. THACKERAY.

HIRAM'S HOSPITAL

HIRAM'S HOSPITAL, as the retreat is called, is a picturesque building enough, and shows the correct taste with which the ecclesiastical architects of those days were imbued. It stands on the banks of the little river, which flows nearly round the cathedral close, being on the side furthest from the town. The London road crosses the river by a pretty one-arched bridge, and looking from this bridge, the stranger will see the windows of the old men's rooms, each pair of windows separated by a small buttress. A broad gravel walk runs between the building and the river, which is always trim and cared for; and at the end of the walk, under the parapet of the approach to the bridge, is a large and well-worn seat, on which, in mild weather three or four of Hiram's bedesmen are sure to be seen seated. Beyond this row of buttresses, and further from the bridge and also further from the water which here suddenly bends, are the pretty oriel windows of Mr. Harding's house, and his well mown lawn. The entrance to the hospital is from the London road and is made through a ponderous gateway under a heavy stone arch, unnecessary, one would suppose, at any time, for the protection of twelve old men, but greatly conducive to the good appearance of Hiram's charity. On passing through this portal, never closed to any one from six A.M. till ten P.M., and never open afterwards, except on application to a huge, intricately hung mediæval bell, the handle of which no un-initiated intruder can possibly find, the six doors of the old men's abodes are seen, and beyond them is a slight iron screen, through which the more happy portion of the Barchester élite pass into the Elysium of Mr. Harding's dwelling.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE, The Warden.

V

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

Trong's Almshouses

RANCONEZZO

SIRMIONE

ROW us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!

So they row'd, and there we landed—"O venusta Sirmio!"

There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow,

There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,

Came that "Ave atque Vale" of the Poet's hopeless woe,

Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,

"Frater Ave atque Vale"—as we wandered to and fro

Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda lake below

Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive silvery Sirmio.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

VI

RANCONEZZO

The Town and the Lake

THE ITALIAN LAKES

HE who loves immense space, cloud shadows sailing over purple slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped mountains, breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the divine rivals, when he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from Villa Serbelloni;—the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque through depth; the millefleurs roses clambering into cypresses by Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts of Sasso Rancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the wild white limestone crags of San Martino, which he has climbed to feast his eyes with the perspective, magical, serene, Leonardesquely perfect, of the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris is yet doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of sterner solitary Lake Iseo—the Pallas of the three. She offers her own attractions. The sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and all the lowland like Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the plain of common life, has charms to tempt heroic lovers.

SYMONDS, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.

PIAZZA GARIBALDI

THE painter may transfer its campanile, glittering like dragon's scales, to his canvas. The lover of the picturesque will wander through its aisle at mass-time, watching the sunlight play upon those upturned Southern faces with their ardent eyes; and happy is he who sees young men and maidens on Whit Sunday crowding round the chancel rails, to catch the marigolds and gillyflowers scattered from baskets which the priest has blessed.

SYMONDS, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.

DOWN IN THE CITY

IS it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!

In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash

Round the lady atop in the conch—fifty gazers do not abash,

Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of a sash!

Ere opening your eyes in the city the blessed church-bells begin:

No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in:

You get the picks of the news, and it costs you never a pin.

By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;

Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.

At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot!

And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! Our lady borne smiling and smart

With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!

Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum; tootle-te-tootle the fife;

Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

ROBERT BROWNING.

VII

RANCONEZZO

Piazza Garibaldi

PIAZZA CAVOUR

THE changes of scene upon this tiny square are so frequent as to remind one of a theatre. Looking down from the inn-balcony, between the glazy green pots gay with scarlet amaryllis-bloom, we are inclined to fancy that the whole has been prepared for our amusement. In the morning the cover for the macaroni-flour, after being washed, is spread out on the bricks to dry. In the afternoon the fishermen bring their nets for the same purpose. In the evening the city magnates promenade and whisper. Dark-eyed women, with orange or crimson kerchiefs for headgear, cross and re-cross, bearing baskets on their shoulders. Great lazy large limbed fellows, girt with scarlet sashes and finished off with dark blue night-caps (for a contrast to their saffron-colored shirts, white breeches and sunburnt calves), slouch about or sleep face downwards on the parapets.

SYMONDS, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.

VIII

RANCONEZZO

Piazza Cavour

A ROMANESQUE DOORWAY

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

HOW the hand of Time has mellowed the ruddy brick and the marble's whiteness until ivory and rose blend and are in harmony with those stained and faded frescoes which still remain in the panels of the upper walls. Columns of veined marble stand in ranks on either side of the entrance. They are mounted on the backs of stiff-maned lions. Fit supporters are these for the arches of the Sanctuary as, at its very door, with claw and tooth they tear to pieces the bestial forms of vice and ignorance. Above rise the moulded archivolts, tier on tier, clothed with vine and tendril and peopled with bird and beast. These may be uncouth in form, but the rude hands that fashioned them learned their lesson at the feet of Nature. What there is of convention in arrangement or in pattern has flowed hither through the East from the original fountains of Greece and Rome but now at last all moves in freedom and without restraint. As in the short nights of the North sunrise follows fast upon the setting of the sun, so here though we see in this work the sunset of the Antique yet it is already aglow with light from the coming dawn of Mediæval Art.

ROBERTS, Italian Sketches.

IX

RANCONEZZO

North Door of Duomo

LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL

FLORENCE is more noisy; indeed, I think it the noisiest town I was ever in. What with the continual jangling of its bells, the rattle of Austrian drums, and the street cries, Ancora mi raccapriccio. The Italians are a vociferous people, and most so among them the Florentines. Walking through a back street one day, I saw an old woman higgling with a peripatetic dealer, who, at every interval afforded him by the remarks of his veteran antagonist, would tip his head on one side, and shout, with a kind of wondering enthusiasm, as if he could hardly trust the evidence of his own senses to such loveliness, O, che bellezza! che belle-e-ezza! The two had been contending as obstinately as the Greeks and Trojans over the body of Patroclus, and I was curious to know what was the object of so much desire on the one side and admiration on the other. It was a half dozen of weazeny baked pears, beggarly remnant of the day's traffic.... It never struck me before what a quiet people Americans are.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

WITHIN THE DUOMO

THE semi-dome of the eastern apse above the high altar is entirely filled with a gigantic half-length figure of Christ. He raises His right hand to bless and with His left holds an open book on which is written in Greek and Latin, "I am the Light of the world." ... Below him on a smaller scale are ranged the archangels and the mother of the Lord, who holds the child upon her knees. Thus Christ appears twice upon this wall, once as the Omnipotent Wisdom, the Word by whom all things were made, and once as God deigning to assume a shape of flesh and dwell with men. The magnificent image of supreme Deity seems to fill with a single influence and to dominate the whole building. The house with all its glory is his. He dwells there like Pallas in her Parthenon or Zeus in his Olympian temple. To left and right over every square inch of the cathedral blaze mosaics, which portray the story of God's dealings with the human race from the Creation downwards, together with those angelic beings and saints who symbolize each in his own degree some special virtue granted to mankind. The walls of the fane are therefore an open book of history, theology and ethics for all men to read.

SYMONDS, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.

X

RANCONEZZO

Interior of the Duomo

FROM "A LEGEND OF BRITTANY"

DEEPER and deeper shudders shook the air,

As the huge bass kept gathering heavily,

Like thunder when it rouses in its lair,

And with its hoarse growl shakes the low-hung sky,

It grew up like a darkness everywhere,

Filling the vast cathedral;—suddenly

From the dense mass a boy's clear treble broke

Like lightning, and the full-toned choir awoke.

Through gorgeous windows shone the sun aslant,

Brimming the church with gold and purple mist.

Meet atmosphere to bosom that rich chant,

Where fifty voices in one strand did twist

Their varicolored tones and left no want

To the delighted soul, which sank abyssed

In the warm music cloud, while, far below,

The organ heaved its surges to and fro.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

THE VILLA

OUR villa ...

... lies on the slope of the Alban hill;

Lifting its white face, sunny and still,

Out of the olives' pale gray green,

That, far away as the eye can go,

Stretch up behind it, row upon row.

There in the garden the cypresses, stirred

By the sifting winds, half musing talk,

And the cool, fresh, constant voice is heard

Of the fountain's spilling in every walk.

There stately the oleanders grow,

And one long gray wall is aglow

With golden oranges burning between

Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green.

And there are hedges all clipped and square,

As carven from blocks of malachite,

Where fountains keep spinning their threads of light

And statues whiten the shadow there.

And if the sun too fiercely shine,

And one would creep from its noonday glare,

There are galleries dark, where ilexes twine

Their branchy roofs above the head.

W. W. STORY.

XI

RANCONEZZO

The Villa of the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti

TRULY everything here has a dramatic character. The smallness and grace of this little church gleaming with colour, its chapels and grottoes like a spiritual vision, such as I have never found elsewhere in the whole field of religious conception. It is an illustrated picture-book of poetical legends, which are bloodless and painless, though fantastic, like the lives of pious anchorites in the wilderness, and amid the birds of the field. Here Religion treads on the borders of fairy-land, and brings an indescribable atmosphere away from thence.

GREGOROVIUS.

BRAMANTE

FEW words record Bramante's great command,

As from some mountain silence set apart,

He blazed a trail along the way of art,

Upheld the torch and led his little band.

He spoke alone to those who understand,

Not cheapening words within the public mart,

Living withdrawn, a high and humble heart,

Creating loveliness for his loved land.

Though he dwelt cloistered in his northern home,

When he strode forth it was with unveiled face,

To rear a fabric that may crumble never.

They called him "Master" when he wrought in Rome

And with earth's greatest ones shall labor ever

The hand that gave to Lombardy her grace.

MARION MONKS CHASE.

XII

RANCONEZZO

Santa Prassede, the Cardinal's Church

IL PENSEROSO

BUT let my due feet never fail

To walk the studious cloister's pale,

And love the high embowèd roof,

With antick pillars massy proof,

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow

To the full-voiced Quire below,

In service high and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,

Dissolve me into ecstacies,

And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.

MILTON.

XIII

RANCONEZZO

The Cloisters of Santa Prassede

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB IN SANTA PRASSEDE

YET still my niche is not so cramped but thence

One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side

And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,

And up into the aery dome, where live

The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk;

And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,

And neath my tabernacle take my rest,

With those nine columns round me, two and two,

The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands;

Peach blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe

As fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse.

Old Gandolph with his paltry onion-stone

Put me where I may look at him! True peach,

Rosy and faultless: ...

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black

'T was ever antique-black I meant! How else

Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?

The bas-relief in bronze you promised me,

Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance

Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,

The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,

Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan

Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,

And Moses with the tables,—but I know

Ye mark me not!

ROBERT BROWNING.

XIV

RANCONEZZO

The Tomb of Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti in Santa Prassede

ROCHER-ST.-POL

FRENCH TOWNS

IT is a drowsy little Burgundian town, very old and ripe, with crooked streets, vistas always oblique, and steep moss-covered roofs.... I carried away from Beaune the impression of something autumnal,—something rusty yet kindly, like the taste of a sweet russet pear.

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

At Le Mans as at Bourges, my first business was with the cathedral, to which I lost no time in directing my steps.... It stands on the edge of the eminence of the town, which falls straight away on two sides of it, and makes a striking mass, bristling behind, as you see it from below, with rather small but singularly numerous flying buttresses. On my way to it I happened to walk through the one street which contains a few ancient and curious houses,—a very crooked and untidy lane, of really mediæval aspect, honored with the denomination of the Grand Rue. Here is the house of Queen Berengaria.... The structure in question—very sketchable, if the sketcher could get far enough away from it—is an elaborate little dusky façade, overhanging the street, ornamented with panels of stone, which are covered with delicate Renaissance sculpture. A fat old woman, standing in the door of a small grocer's shop next to it,—a most gracious old woman, with a bristling moustache and a charming manner,—told me what the house was.

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

This admirable house, in the centre of the town, gabled, elaborately timbered, and much restored, is a really imposing monument. The basement is occupied by a linen-draper, who flourishes under the auspicious sign of the Mère de Famille; and above her shop the tall front rises in five overhanging stories. As the house occupies the angle of a little place, the front is double, and carved and interlaced, has a high picturesqueness. The Maison d'Adam is quite in the grand style, and I am sorry to say I failed to learn what history attaches to its name.

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

I remember going around to the church, after I had left the good sisters, and to a little quiet terrace, which stands in front of it, ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast high, over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the air, and all about the neighboring country. I remember saying to myself that this little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of taste keeps in his mind as a picture.

HENRY JAMES, A Little Tour in France.

XV

ROCHER-ST.-POL

The Town and the River Merle

A COUNTRY TOWN

THEY wake you early in this hilly town. It was hardly light this morning when up and down through all its highways went a vigorous drum beat. Reluctantly peeking from the window to see the troops enter our square I was disappointed to find that one regimental drummer, marching unaccompanied and lonely, had done all this mischief. What useful purpose did he serve? After a brief respite and repose the noise of another commotion came in with the morning air; a murmur which grew and became a chatter and at last a din! The next journey to the window showed that the morning market was in full swing. Piles of fresh greens and rich-colored vegetables were tended by gnarled old peasant women sitting under widespread umbrellas of faded colors. But what a pleasant air it was that came through the opened sash; a mountain air with just that faint flavor of garlic tinging it which presages something satisfying to be found later. Strengthened for a time by our coffee and rolls we wandered through these winding streets. We saw the weather-beaten, leaden flèche of the cathedral high on the hill, but for the time were satisfied to study the many ancient houses which still remain. Their fronts framed in dark oak with a filling of amber-colored plaster topple over the public ways until they almost meet. Here and there the oak beams are carved, and grinning man or snarling monster regards you from corbel or boss. In places too there are bits of old Gothic detail and one doorway of true Flamboyant work. There is the true poetry of architecture! In England the Decorated Period gives you what is handsome, the Perpendicular what is stately. In France the cathedrals of Paris and of Rheims are splendidly serious and correct; but if in Gothic work you seek imaginative, unrestrained, carelessly free poetry it is to be found in the flowing lines and exuberant fancy of the work of the Flamboyant period.

XVI

ROCHER-ST.-POL

La Grande Rue and La Place de la République

We found much needed restoration in the hors-d'œuvres, the omelette, the cutlet, the salads and the cheese of déjeuner,—and then followed coffee under the awning of the café. Here we looked out on the Grand Place which had now become sleepy, all signs of the market and its business having disappeared. On it front the Mairie, the Bureau des Postes, the Hôtel du Lion d'Or and various centres of local commerce. We watched our neighbors in the café; the colonel with clanking sword in vigorous discussion with a local magnate; the retired bourgeois who played a desultory game of billiards or a deeply thought out match at dominoes. A quiet square it was now, and, in the shade of its plane trees, comfortable and at peace with the world, we fell asleep and made up for the wakefulness of our earlier hours.

ROBERTS, Letters from France.

OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS

HIGH throned above th' encircling meadows fair

Our Lady of the Rocks holds queenly sway!

Bright kerchiefed peasants daily wend their way

With clattering sabots up the winding stair,

Pausing at each rude rock-hewn station, there

To bend the knee and many an Ave say.

Up, up they climb, their voices echoing gay

Till by the Virgin's shrine they kneel in prayer.

This is that "Jacob's Ladder" famed afar

To which the Kings of France made pilgrimage

Asking for favors both in Peace and War.

Well named!—for Heavenwards the way is tending,

And all these happy, pious folk presage

Angels of God ascending and descending.

H. L. P.

BUT, when so sad thou canst no sadder,

Cry, and upon thy so sore loss

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder

Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross.

So in the night my soul, my daughter,

Cry, clinging heaven by the hems,

And lo! Christ walking on the water

Not of Gennesaret but Thames.

FRANCIS THOMPSON.

XVII

ROCHER-ST.-POL

L'escalier de Jacob

OFT have I seen at some cathedral door

A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,

Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet

Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor

Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;

Far off the noises of the world retreat;

The loud vociferations of the street

Become an undistinguishable roar.

So as I enter here from day to day,

And leave my burden at this minster gate,

Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,

The tumult of the time disconsolate

To inarticulate murmurs dies away,

While the eternal ages watch and wait.

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!

This crowd of statues, on whose folded sleeves

Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves

Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers

And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!

But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves

Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,

And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!

Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,

What exultations trampling on despair,

What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,

What passionate outcry of the soul in pain

Uprose this poem of the earth and air,

This mediæval miracle of song!

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

XVIII

ROCHER-ST.-POL

Le Parvis de Ste Frédigonde

THE CATHEDRAL

LOOKING up suddenly, I found mine eyes

Confronted with the minster's vast repose.

Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff

Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat.

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

It rose before me, patiently remote

From the great tides of life it breasted once,

Hearing the noise of men as in a dream

I stood before the triple northern port,

Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings,

Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch,

Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say,

Ye come and go incessant; we remain

Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;

Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,

Of faith so nobly realized as this.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

CHARTRES

ALL day the sky had been banked with thunderclouds, but by the time we reached Chartres, toward four o'clock, they had rolled away under the horizon, and the town was so saturated with sunlight that to pass into the cathedral was like entering the dense obscurity of a church in Spain. At first all detail was imperceptible: we were in a hollow night. Then, as the shadows gradually thinned and gathered themselves up into pier and vault and ribbing, there burst out of them great sheets and showers of color. Framed by such depths of darkness, and steeped in a blaze of mid-summer sun, the familiar windows seemed singularly remote and yet overpoweringly vivid. Now they widened into dark-shored pools splashed with sunset, now glittered and menaced like the shields of fighting angels. Some were cataracts of sapphires, others roses dropped from a saint's tunic, others great carven platters strewn with heavenly regalia, others the sails of galleons bound for the Purple Islands; and in the western wall the scattered fires of the rose window hung like a constellation in an African night. When one dropped one's eyes from these ethereal harmonies, the dark masses of masonry below them, all veiled and muffled in a mist pricked by a few altar lights, seemed to symbolize the life on earth, with its shadows, its heavy distances and its little islands of illusions. All that a great cathedral can be, all the meanings it can express, all the tranquillizing power it can breathe upon the soul, all the richness of detail it can fuse into a large utterance of strength and beauty, the cathedral of Chartres gave us in that perfect hour.

EDITH WHARTON, Fighting France.

XIX

ROCHER-ST.-POL

Interior of the Church of Ste Frédigonde

AT HIGH MASS

THOU Who hast made this world so wondrous fair;—

The pomp of clouds; the glory of the sea;

Music of water; songbirds' melody;

The organ of Thy thunder in the air;

Breath of the rose; and beauty everywhere—

Lord, take this stately service done to Thee,

The grave enactment of Thy Calvary

In jewelled pomp and splendor pictured there!

Lord, take the sounds and sights; the silk and gold;

The white and scarlet; take the reverent grace

Of ordered step; window and glowing wall—

Prophet and Prelate, holy men of old;

And teach us children of the Holy Place

Who love Thy Courts, to love Thee best of all.

ROBERT HUGH BENSON.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE

ALL else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away—all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for what they labored, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness—all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honors, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.

JOHN RUSKIN.

XX

ROCHER-ST.-POL

Sacristy Steps in the Church of Ste Frédigonde

HUNTING THE STAG

WE spent yesterday in the Forêt de C——. As the Emperor had guests we were not admitted at the Château, but we tramped for long through the woods. The grassy roads run beneath the embowering beeches straight from carrefour to carrefour. The gnarled and twisted trunks give to each tree a personal character and make it a master-piece of Nature. Of a sudden we came on the Imperial hunt winding in gay procession through the forest to its rendezvous. Hunting horns in triple rings of brass encircled the leading horsemen. From time to time we heard from them the familiar strains which echo through the Latin Quarter at Mi-Carême. Then followed in brilliant liveries a troop of lackeys, grooms, and other servants, and the pack of staghounds held in leash but sniffing and yelping. Next came the hunters themselves on high-bred mounts and in court costumes of ancient design. Lastly there were barouches and landaus carrying the ladies of the Court "en grande tenue." The sunlight flickering through the beech branches enlivened this brilliant train as it wound through the forest glades and disappeared down a green allée.

We had continued our walk for scarce a mile when, but a short distance from us, a stag crossed our path—stood startled—with head erect,—and then with confident leaps vanished in the forest just as the distant hounds became aware of him and joined in a wild chorus. In a few moments the pack came in a rush across our path. Up the different allées rode the horsemen in haste—asking of us news of the stag. We on foot joined in the pursuit,—but at last the forest swallowed one after the other, stag, and hounds, and hunters, and the sound of dog and horn.

XXI

ROCHER-ST.-POL

The Château Beaumesnil

On leaving the forest we passed the small Château. Its conical turret roofs and lofty chimneys, and its flashing finials and girouettes make a brave show above the forest trees. The terraces overlook wide meadow lands through which the river winds until it is lost in the hazy distance.

ROBERTS, Letters from France.

CLOTILDE

IN Geraudun were brothers three,

They had one sister dear;

The cruel Baron her lord must be,

And the fellest and fiercest knight is he

In the country far or near.

He beat that lovely lady sore

With a staff of the apple green,

Till her blood flowed down on the castle floor,

And from head to foot the crimson gore

On her milk-white robe was seen.

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

Her robe was stained with the ruby tide

Once pure as the fleece so white;

And she hied her to the river-side

To wash in the waters bright.

While there she stood three knights so gay

Came riding bold and free.

"Ho! tell us young serving maiden, pray

Where yon castle's lady may be?"

"Alas! no serving maid am I,

But the lady of yonder castle high!"

"O sister, sister, truly tell

Who did this wrong to thee?"

"Dear brothers it was the husband fell

To whom you married me."

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

The brothers spurred their steeds in haste

And the castle soon they gained.

From chamber to chamber they swiftly passed

Nor paused till they reached the tower at last

Where the felon knight remained:

They drew their swords so sharp and bright

They thought on their sister sweet;

They struck together the felon knight,

And his head rolled at their feet!

Translated by LOUIS S. COSTELLO.

XXII

ROCHER-ST.-POL

La Tour de la Dame Blanche

AEGINASSOS

THE ISLES OF GREECE

THE isles of Greece! The isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,—

Where grew the arts of war and peace,—

Where Delos rose and Phœbus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet

But all, except their sun, is set.

BYRON.

THE ODYSSEY

AS one that for a weary space has lain

Lull'd by the song of Circe and her wine

In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,

Where the Ægean isle forgets the main,

And only the low lutes of love complain,

And only shadows of wan lovers pine,—

As such an one were glad to know the brine

Salt on his lips, and the large air again,—

So gladly from the songs of modern speech

Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free

Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,

And through the music of the languid hours

They hear, like Ocean on a western beach,

The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

ANDREW LANG.

XXIII

Aeginassos

The Temple and the Forum

ULYSSES

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

THERE lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the paths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

XXIV

Aeginassos

The Temple and the Forum

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A

Transcriber's Notes:

Text uses both Aeginossis and Æginassos.

Some illustrations had to be relocated so that they did not interrupt paragraphs or stanzas of poetry. However, the table of contents links to the illustration.

The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will appear.

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Table of Contents

HOSPITAL SKETCHES

HOSPITAL SKETCHES

NOTE

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

RANCONEZZO

ROCHER-ST.-POL

AEGINASSOS

Transcriber's Notes:

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