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most competent judges, desires that an edifice should be constructed so magnificent in its height and beauty that it shall surpass everything of the kind produced in the time of their greatest power by the Greeks and Romans."

In Mrs. Oliphant's book this decree is held to refer to the cathedral,— Sta. Reparata itself;-in fact, however, it refers to the Campanile, and must have been given some forty years after the decree addressed to Arnolfo.

Giotto had now (1334), as "Maestro del Opera," been put in charge of the works of the cathedral, doubtless then so well advanced towards completion that the construction of the bell tower, that indispensable adjunct to every Italian church, could safely be undertaken.*

In view of the recent completion (February, 1885) of the mighty shaft, erected to the memory of Washington, in the capital city of the United States, for which the greatest altitude of any structure on earth is claimed, and on which the cap stone was not laid till nearly forty years after the laying of the corner stone, we may surmise that this monument,― erected conjointly by individual citizens, and by the Congress of the United States, to the most eminent of the founders of the Great Republic, and purposely planned to o'ertop pyramids and cathedral spires, was designed in a similar spirit of emulation with the works of the elder nations, as expressed by the decree of the Signory, if not, in fact, inspired by some memory of that very decree.

This monument, by the magic of its completion marvellously transformed from the seemingly hopeless ugliness of its long unfinished state to a structure of majestic beauty; the truncated, meaningless pile, taking on at last, the harmonious lines of the obelisk; its magnitude lost in the grace of its proportion, stands in its completed perfection, pure, simple, sublime. First seen, far off, a line of light against the sky, it thrills and captivates the beholder, and, on a nearer view, effectually refutes, by its upspringing lightness and majestic grandeur, the stereotyped sophistical objection of complaining critics, that, since an obelisk was a monolith of moderate height, the project of constructing a gigantic monument in the form of an obelisk, was utterly inartistic and foredoomed to failure!

*I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Perkins for reference to the Italian originals of the extracts from the two decrees: Gualandi (Memoriæ Originale Italianae risguardante Le Belle Arti. Bologna, 1843), see page 102 of 4th series for the decree referring to Sta. Reparata, and, note 12 to same page, for the later decree about the Campanile. These decrees were first published in the latter part of the seventeenth century by Del Migliore in his Firenze Città Nobilissima.

Never had the sententious utterance of the Romans fuller justification; "finis coronat opus." As the statue of Washington, by Greenough, represents the apotheosis of the hero; so, this monument to Washing. ton, is the apotheosis of the obelisk ;- literally lifting the monolith to the skies.

Although but few weeks have elapsed since the placing of the cap stone, and workmen are still busy in completing the details, it is evident that an absolutely new and striking feature has been added to the hitherto familiar landscape. Midway, as it seems, between the imposing mass of the Capitol with its aspiring dome, and the lesser, but still noble façade of the mansion at Arlington with the massive columns of its lofty portico,- which, from beyond Potomac, flings back the early rays of the morning sun, or, later, sits in shadow, dark and cool, beneath its western screen of broad armed trees,-now rises the mighty shaft, dazzling in the sunlight, overtopping all lesser structures, subordinating even the great masses of stately and imposing government buildings, and linking these two, in a grander harmony than before!

So long as it was unfinished, this piled mass of stone remained but a blot in the picture, incongruous, intrusive. Art or Nature, would none of it! Year after year went by, and the unfinished pile, a melancholy instance of arrested development, but grew more and more intolerable; nor, when once again the work was undertaken, and month by month, the increasing altitude and whiter layers of the newly quarried marble, told of growth in place of stagnation, was there any gain of beauty, the ugly mass still seemed only to grow more obtrusive and inharmonious.

How, with its completion, all this has changed! Already become an essential feature of the landscape Nature seems at once to have "taken it to her heart," and as some great natural object, a mountain or a lake, it loyally responds to, and reflects, in turn, her various moods.

Sometimes the mighty mass, gradually enfolded by the rising mists, seems as unsubstantial as they; as, slowly melting into their embraces, it fades from sight! Again, in the early dawn,-where in the uncertain light the solitary shaft glimmers ghostly and gray, as if weary of the lonely watches of the slow passing night,- suddenly its uplifted summit catches the first rays of the eastern sun and flashes into life, heralding the "jocund day"! Through all the day alternate lights and shadows play upon its graceful shaft, till, at length, the slow descend ing sun floods with light its western side. Slowly rising higher and

higher towards the very summit, where "parting day loves to linger and play," creep the evening shadows; still high up in the heavens, long after the plain below is hid in darkness, the sloping western facet flashes like a new born star!

Swinging westward and eastward, as the day goes by, like some great "ship at anchor", moved only by the flowing and ebbing of the tide, the monitory shadow of the monument traces on the dial of the earth the passing of the hours! So, day by day, this enduring object grows familiar, suiting with its changing aspects the varying moods of Nature and of man, till, by the subtile charm of association, it links itself with the lives and the affections of men.

Witnessing the wonderful transformation wrought, in this instance, simply by the completion of the design, one regrets more than ever that the later taste of the Florentines, long after the artist's death, should have rejected Giotto's plan of completing his tower by a symmetrical spire of graceful and exquisite proportions; for, since, in its truncated incompleteness, it has been for centuries held so beautiful, it is only reasonable to believe that the complete carrying out of the artist's design would have given to this wonder of the Occident, an added beauty of perfection and symmetry.

The limiting word 'occident' is used because the marvels of oriental construction still existing in India, far outrival, in wealth of material, in grandeur of proportion, in lavishness of expenditure, in grace of design, and in exquisite delicacy of ornament, the clumsier architecture of Europe. It needs but to name that world wonder, the Taj Mahal at Agra, with its marvellous dome and minarets of glistening marbles, wrought with profusion of carvings, in the erection of which, it is said, twenty thousand workmen toiled for more than twenty years; to realize that this is a greater wonder of architecture than is the beautiful and boasted tower of Florence. Between these triumphs of the Italian and the Indian builder, there is the same contrast as between the smooth, white surfaces of the simple shaft of stone in Washington, and the tinted marble mosaics of the great bell tower, with its solid lower stories enriched with rare sculptures, and the soaring upper stories pierced with high, upspringing pointed arches, with their slender, twisted shafts of stone, lending to the massive structure ærial lightness and grace. Of course there is no room for comparison between the two structures as works of art, Giotto's tower being the consummate flower, the fection of the art of architecture, unsurpassed and unequalled in Europe,

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during the five hundred years gone by since the great artist designed the exquisite structure; while the monument to Washington is simply an admirable example of the work of the engineer, the problem given being to copy, enlarging to scale, an Egyptian obelisk. There is in this no room for originality of design, or artistic invention; though in the safe uplifting of this mighty mass of stone, there were abundant opportunities for the exercise of all the resources of the scientific engineer and builder.

The fidelity of the leaders of contending parties in the state, during the existence of the Republic, to the interests of Florence as paramount to all else, shown, as already suggested in the immunity granted to the artists, long survived; and the later masters of the Tuscan state, no longer a Republic, likewise, in accordance with the wont of the earlier popular rulers of the commune, busied themselves with the cultivation of the arts and the adornment of the city.

Our present purpose is, however, by no means to trace the course of art in Florence further than to show that the true source of that glory of art, which gave to the City of the Lily so proud an eminence in history, and which makes the small Tuscan town still one of the notable cities of the world, was in the Republic,- in the People, who made and ruled that early commonwealth.

In like manner, whenever and wherever the common people have had the opportunity to see great works of art continually about them, there has been on their part no lack of love for, or knowledge of the arts.

The "Democracy of Art" springs from the Democracy of the People!

THE CHURCH AS PATRON OF ART.

The Church the guardian of learning through the chaotic centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Modern Europe-Church building in the Middle Ages-How the Church made use of Art and thus incidentally extended a knowledge and love of Art among the people- The proclamation by the Church of the value of each individual soul; sowed broadcast the fructifying seeds of democracy-The Crusades, and the building of Cathedrals, taught the people of all classes to work together for common ends, and the Modern Era had dawned-The rise of architecture in France-The modern governmental Art galleries a result of the changed relations between Church and State-That these galleries belong to the people, not to their temporary rulers, is generally recognized -The increase and more general diffusion of wealth in modern times, tends to the popularization of Art-Effect of this more general knowledge of Art on the development of artistic industries-Why the title of "The Democracy of Art" was chosen for these papersThe interests of Art, the proper concern of the people — A general diffusion of the knowledge and love of Art, desirable throughout the United States.

The service rendered to humanity, and to modern civilization, by the Church, through all the chaotic centuries subsequent to the successive irruptions of the northern barbarians, whose innumerable and savage hordes, falling like avalanches from the impending Alps upon the plains of Italy, overthrew the debased legionaries of the crumbling empire of Rome, and submerged, "in one red burial blent," the arts, the learning, and the civilization of antiquity, is a thrice-told tale. It has been incidentally so tersely and eloquently restated by a recent writer, himself a high authority upon all matters relating to the history of art, and the fact that the Church proclaimed and sustained the innate dignity and worth of every human soul, thus making democ racy a possibility, is so well brought out, that the following paragraphs are here quoted as germane to our topic; since, were there no democracy of the people it is evident there could be no "Democracy of Art." There is no question but that the doctrine of the equality of all men in the presence of the Church, the equal humbling of all men beneath the Papal authority,-as, in other words, it might perhaps with truth be stated,-which was constantly inculcated and enforced by the Church, was a potent force in the uplifting of the common people; until the S. Ex. 209-IV

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