Prince George has undergone, as well | ents contemplated that he would ulti-
as by natural inclination and disposi- mately become heir to the crown. In
tion, his powers of observation and of the majority of cases, when a man is
memory are strong and well-disciplined. thirty years of age his character is
He not only hears and listens, but also pretty well developed and is not likely
reads and thinks for himself. Pos- to exhibit any startling aberrations from
sessed naturally of business-like apti- what it has been up to then. In all
tudes, he is stated to display in the things Prince George is thoroughly
management of his affairs a steady con- English, in disposition, in tempera-
centration of effort and a quick appre-ment, and ways; an early riser and of
ciation of the question submitted to active habits; punctual, methodical,
him in all its several bearings. Simple rarely leaving a letter unanswered for a
in his personal tastes, he has no ten- day, though naturally he has a very large
dency or temptation to extravagance; correspondence; full of humane sensi-
though he has ever shown himself to be tiveness to the sufferings of others, and
warm-hearted, open-handed, and gen- therefore likely ever to sympathize with,
erous to others when the case demands and respond to, the needs of the masses
it. He never forgets a friend, or the of his fellow-countrymen.
If we may
face and name of one with whom he judge by the few speeches which he
has been brought into contact. His has yet made in public we may expect
memory, like that of most of his family, that as he gains self-confidence by op-
is singularly receptive and retentive. portunity and practice he will achieve
It is related of him and his late brother no small success in that line. The
in their youth that they were both very direction in which his choice of causes
fond of the study of English history, that he will endeavor to advance will lie
and that more especially the dramatic is pretty clearly shown by his selection
incidents of the period covered by the of the Society for the Prevention of
Wars of the Roses appealed to their Cruelty to Children as the occasion
boyish imaginations. As the elder for his first appearance as chairman.
might in due course expect as Sov- Endowed with qualities that will excite
ereign some day to become Duke of the enthusiasm of the bulk of his fel-
Lancaster, the younger determined that low subjects, his personal weakness at
if ever he had to choose a dukedom it present would appear to be self-distrust
should be that of York. When the and diffidence of his own powers at one
time came for the choice to be made moment, and at another a too rapid
last year, though many other titular generalization which sometimes tends
combinations were suggested and to exaggeration of statement; but both
pressed upon him, yet he steadfastly are probably only temporary and will be
adhered to this. His subsequent adop- outgrown as his judgment becomes
tion of the White Rose of Edward IV., better balanced and more equable. For
as one of his favorite badges, is also he ever shows himself ready to learn
interesting, as being illustrative of this and welcomes nothing more than per-
persistency of purpose.
fect sincerity and the candid expression
of opinion from others, though this
may chance to be contrary to his own.
The chief danger (incidental to all in a
similar position) is that he may be ex-
posed to the plausible arts of scheming
mediocrities on whose interested opin-
ions he may too readily rely. But
knowledge comes with time; and he
has those about him whose older and
maturer judgment may
safely be
trusted.

Of course we should all like to be able to form some estimate of the part which the Duke of York is likely to play in the future. For that we have nothing to guide us beyond what his career has been in the past. The masculine upbringing which he has enjoyed is in some respects an ideal one for the post he will in all human probability some day fill; and the fact is all the more impressive inasmuch as when he entered upon it neither he nor his par

Any officer in the navy on attaining

bowers and her loggias in this springtime festooned with countless garlands of the maize-colored banksia rose, and the pale amethyst clusters of drooping, sweet-scented glycone; her happy slopes and busy plain enclosed high up in the sky-distance by brilliant snow-lit Apennines and shining Carrara peaks

died at the age of fifteen; neverthe- and golden, through the sunshine, her less, six hundred years after her death, the story is still told of her helpfulness and charity to the poor and needy, and of the beautiful example she gave of resignation and courage. "Her chapel exists," as Mrs. Jameson says, as the glorification of feminine patience, fortitude, and charity;" and a pilgrimage to it is, in every way, one of the most interesting that can be made, either from Florence or from Siena.

66

coming with all this fresh in the eye, the country you drive through between Siena and San Gimigniano is of strikingly grave and serious aspect, almost solemn in its sense of solitude, its depth of color, its grandeur of outline. All the most fiery siennas, all the full

What Rothenburg is in Bavaria, San Gimigniano is in Tuscany, both typical, unspoilt, mediæval, strongly fortressed towns, too much out of the line of the ordinary nineteenth-century-world est red and purple madders of the artraffic to have been yet converted by tist's color-box could not exaggerate modern civilization to its special wants; the fervent, warm tones of the soil, both, however, containing treasures for blue-grey rocks peeping out here and the artist, and every year becoming bet- there, and clusters of the pale sadter known to those who deplore most green bells of the hellebore increasing the disfigurements which modern life by contrast the full richness of its color. entails on the beautiful work of the The country seems very scantily popupast. A railway now goes to Rothen- lated; you drive many miles and see burg, and the many thousand pilgrims but very few domiciles of any kind; who visit the "Bavarian Mecca,' 99 as and very few peasants are to be met Bayreuth has been called, find it little with on the road. Labor is cheap in out of their way to stop there. There Tuscany. One woman was to be seen is no railway to San Gimigniano; but whose work that day was apparently to the fact that, though it is far and rather take charge of three sheep; and further difficult of access for one day's excur- on, a man's sole duty seemed to be to sion, the Queen of England made an preside over the well-being of two pigs. expedition to it from Florence this Whether the pig was cold or the man year, will probably be a sufficient in- was hot was undetermined; but one of citement to lead many to make a simi- the pigs was carrying the man's coat lar effort. The queen went by special about the road like a saddle, the arms train from Florence to Poggi Bonsi, hanging down on each side as stirrups. the nearest station to San Gimiguiano Now and then on the hillside is massed on the line to Siena, and drove the six a group of ilex-trees and stone pines, miles up to the town. But a more in- the white corner of a villa peeping out teresting way of reaching it, is to drive from among them, supported by a deepby road the whole way from Siena. shadowed archway below. Further on, This is a drive of twenty-three miles a solemn avenue of cypresses creeps up through a country which, though a con- the edge of a hill, each tree rising trast to the gay and sunny Italy the black, like a finger of death pointing traveller leaves as he diverges south- upwards, and leading to the wall of a wards from the junction at Empoli, is convent or monastery perched on the most impressive and interesting. It is summit of the hill. Pine-trees cover not exactly a sad-looking country, but it some of the higher ranges, and the road is for the most part grave and serious. at times passes through woods of decidComing straight from Florence radi-uous trees. Strange to say, these are as ant, joyous Florence, lying like a beau- bare of leaf at the end of April as our tiful shell in the lap of her Val d'Arno, English trees would be in January, her marbles gleaming opal-like, pink though further on you come upon

hundred and seventy-five feet, and the most noticeable the twin towers, Torri degli Ardinghelli, built in the thirteenth century by the Ardinghelli family. The walls inside the churches are covered with frescoes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the Church of St. Augustin is a series covering the high walls of the choir, by Benozzo Gozzoli, a series only second in interest and beauty to those of the Ricardi Palace in Florence. They depict the life and doings of St. Augustin; and the commission to paint them was given to Benozzo Gozzoli by one Maestro Parigina Domenico Strambi, who had travelled to Paris, and was incited by what he had seen to beautify his native town by this art. In the same church is a most beautiful example of the work of Benedetto da Majano in an altar and tomb. He it was who also sculptured the shrine in which rest the bones of Santa Fina and the beautiful altar in her chapel. These face you as you enter it from the aisle of the Collegiate. It is needless to add that the work of this shrine and altar is lovely and refined, showing the peculiar qualities of restrained beauty which belonged to the best period of Italian sculpture, for when did the work by the hand of Majano show other than all this? The two walls at right angles to the altar are painted in fresco by the great Domenico Ghirlandaio, Michael Angelo's master, and are, if not quite the finest, certainly among the finest, of his works. Here, indeed, is realistic art of the right kind,

hedges fragrant with flowering honey- ture. There is much to be seen. The suckle and weighed down with white famous towers, now only thirteen in hawthorn blossom, and corn risen two number, seen as you stand close under feet from the ground,contemporaries their squared walls, rise with impresin England of full foliage on our forest- sive strength up into the sky, the tallest trees. After eight or ten miles' jour- being the Torre del Commune, one neying, the foreground of the views you see as you drive along dons a gayer, more cultivated aspect. The rugged sternness of its wild ranges falls back and retires into the middle distance, allowing a brighter, more prosperouslooking foreground to border the road. The nearer slopes become lightened by the greeny-grey foliage of the olivetrees which drapes round their dark, twisted branches and stems like a silvery gauze, hanging misty, like clouds, above the verdant vividness of the bright young corn, splashed here and there by the scarlet flame of a poppy. A field of sainfoin, another of Russian clover, pink and carmine, and patches of the bright-blue salvia, fill the roadside with bright color. Further on, a light azure veil, lying in the fold of the hill, attracts our eye and puzzles us. It is bluer than any shadow, yet it is so light, it seems to float on the earth like a bit of the bluest sky come down from above to soften the strong, rough vigor of the earth. Presently it is explained by the appearance of a field of flax by the side of the road, a sheet of fairylike little delicate blue blossoms, a fitting emblem of the sweet girl-saint whose spirit still reigns as the presiding angel among the rugged fortresses and medieval towers of stern San Gimigni&no. These said towers are to be seen long before they are reached, high up against the sky, looking mysterious and remote like a giant's dwelling in a fairytale. Then they are lost again, and you drive on and up round the hills, the ascent getting steeper and steeper till so like nature that even the miracles you find you are creeping up the side of it depicts look quite natural; neverthethe fortressed hill itself, under the walls less pervaded by an atmosphere of and piles of high towers, till you mount beauty, of serenity, by a dignity, a disto gates of the town, twelve hundred tinction, which makes such art a truly and sixty feet above the sea, and pass fitting language in which to describe through a deep archway into the streets. what happened to so rare a maiden. These are narrow, and paved with large, One of these designs represents Santa flat stones, the houses on either side Fina lying on a low bed in her simple full of incidents of interesting architec-room, a nurse sitting on either side of

D

스

and we have to relearn that intellect is but a half-way house in the steep ascent humanity has to make in order to reach the height its nature is capable of reaching. The genius of goodness is, after all, the force in human nature which has had the greatest power in influencing humanity; that faithfulness to the highest instincts given to poor mortals, which, in the spirit of the most distinguished and the finest-grained human beings, ever growing, ever radiating, becomes a passion of loving unselfishness which blossoms out for the good of all the world; and this passion it was that inspired Ghirlandaio's genius, when he painted so beautifully these records of Santa Fina.

her pillow, her hands together as in | Every touch seems to emanate from
devotion, her eyes raised to the vision devotional feeling. Modern art pros-
of St. Gregory surrounded by winged trates itself before its own cleverness,
cherub-heads, who is announcing to her
her approaching death. This vision
has passed into the little chamber by an
open door, through which, and likewise
through the window near her head,
comes a breath of sweet country air and
landscape. In the lunette above this
scene, two beautiful figures of flying
angels hold up on clouds a half-length
profile portrait of Santa Fina released
from her cross, standing upright with
folded hands, as if in presence of her
Lord. The design painted in fresco on
the opposite wall is even more beauti-
ful. It represents the moment when
Santa Fina, after death, is lying before
the altar, the bishop at her head read-
ing the burial service, a young acolyte
at her feet holding up a crucifix, a crowd
of men and acolytes surrounding them;
and when, as the old nurse, who tended
her through her sufferings, knelt down
beside her, she opened her eyes, raised
her head, and took one of her nurse's
hands between her own. In Ghirlan-blade-like iris leaves and tall spikes of
daio's picture, a sobbing child is press- their purple and lilac blossoms. You
ing one of her little feet, stiff with pass a well, alarming-looking from its
death, to his lips. Exquisitely beautiful depth and size, hung over by vines and
and full of nature and expression are apple-blossom, and mount a narrow
the faces and attitudes of the figures of staircase in the fortress wall which en-
those around, the girl-saint herself por- closes the garden, to the top of a guard-
trayed with pathetic simplicity and sense tower, whence you are shown the show
of reality. No realistic painting of to- view of San Gimigniano. And wonder-
day ever looked more real, however ful it certainly is, mountain-ranges
commonplace and flippant the subject. grand and grave encircle it in one vast
And yet, what is it that divides such art amphitheatre, gleams of sunshine flit
in all that touches the highest sensibili- across the valleys between; but the
ties, by an immeasurable distance from lines rising against the horizon are all
the modern school of realism? Were shadowed in solemn russet and purple.
people better in those days? Or are Even San Gimigniano, its fortressed
we less able to explain in art our better walls and its massive towers, look small
side? Why does goodness such as beside the great hills heaving around
Santa Fina's no longer appeal to our them and stretching away to the sky-
artists as the highest beauty? Good-line. Still, as we look round us -

Turning out of the church enriched by such treasures, and taking a pathway behind it, a podere of olive-trees and corn is reached, whence you are led through a doorway into a garden. Your path is edged by a thick border of

it

ness there is in abundance, but where miles and miles into the distance -
is the art that interprets it? We turn is the little girl-saint who dominates
from these great works of Ghirlandaio the scene in the imagination. Modern
with the conviction that he succeeded scepticism may suggest that perhaps
in creating a rare and holy impression she is altogether a myth, an invention,
by his work, because he placed his and that, at all events, it is certain that
genius in a devout spirit on the shrine the scenes from her life and death
of the saintly goodness of this child. painted by the great Ghirlandaio must,