E. V. Lucas

“ At any rate when, here in England, I think of Florence, as so often I do, I find myself visiting in imagination the Bargello before the Uffizi. Pictures in any number can bewilder and dazzle as much as they delight. The eye tires. And so, it is true, can a multiplicity of antique statuary such as one finds at the Vatican or at the Louvre; but a small collection of Renaissance work, so soft and human, as at the Bargello, is not only joy-giving but refreshing too. ”

“ Here again perfection is the only word. And more than perfection, for perfection is cold. This picture is warm. Its serenity is absolute; its charm is complete. You stand before it satisfied—except for that heightened emotion, that choking feeling and smarting eyes, which perfection compels. The picture is still the last word in the painting of a town. Not all the efforts of artists since have improved upon it; not one has done anything so beautiful. It is indeed because he painted these two pictures that I have for Jan Vermeer of Delft such a feeling of gratitude and enthusiasm. ”

“ The floor is very beautiful, and there is a faded series of saints by one of the Vivarini of Murano, behind the altar, on which the eye rests very comfortably—chiefly perhaps on the panels which are only painted curtains; but the most memorable feature of the cathedral is the ancient Byzantine mosaic of the Madonna—a Greek Madonna—in the hollow of the apse: a long slender figure in blue against a gold background who holds her hands rather in protest than welcome, and is fascinating rather for the piety which set her there with such care and thought to her glory than for her beauty. ”

“ It would seem that the morning had struck him on the forehead and thus made it white, for which reason he took his revenge by wading into the entrails of the morning, and thus whitening his legs. He paces slowly, yet one of his names is Lightning; he wears a veil, having his face covered with white, as if to conceal it, and yet beauty itself would be his only rival. Had the sun and the moon a portion only of his ardour, it would be impossible to withstand their heat. The eye cannot follow his movements, unless you rein him in and restrain his impetuosity. ”

“ His step is light and airy, his robe is of many colours, roses adorn his flowing ringlets, health and pleasure float on the freshening gale, exercise and mirth gambol before him, age forgets his troubles, quits his arm-chair, and welcomes his approach. The maids of the hamlet assemble and dance round the pole, decked with many a flower and many a streaming pendant. The village lovers loiter at the stile, or wander down the retired lane, where the hedges are covered with their white blossoms, and the modest wild rose, emblem of the blushing maid, peeps from the sheltering thorn. ”

“ Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must have brought into the life of the Sussex peasant—a terror which utterly changed the Downs from ramparts of peace into coigns of minatory advantage, and transformed the gaze of security, with which their grassy contours had once been contemplated, into anxious glances of dismay and trepidation—one never so realises this terror as when one descends Ditchling Beacon by the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the Weald below. ”

“ Its curve is so gentle and soft, and its three arches so light and graceful, that I wonder that whenever new bridges are necessary the authorities do not insist upon the Trinità being copied. The Ponte Vecchio, of course, has a separate interest of its own, and stands apart, like the Rialto. It is a bridge by chance, one might almost say. But the Trinità is a bridge in intent and supreme at that, the most perfect union of two river banks imaginable. It shows to what depths modern Florence can fall—how little she esteems her past—that the iron bridge by the Cascine should ever have been built. ”

“ The sun was golden through cracks in the heavy clouds, and the deer’s soft dapplings shone in its light, while when they moved in any number they twinkled, glittered, almost smouldered.
Now and then an old stag, with antlers so broad and branching that they seemed not his at all, but a borrowed head-dress assumed almost as if for a charade, would pass with dignity and extreme deliberation from one group to another; now and then a fawn would trot up to its mother on legs of such slender delicacy that their serviceableness for anything but the most exquisite decoration seemed impossible ”

“ Dumas never wore his historical, botanical, geographical and ethnographical knowledge more like a flower than in this brave but breathless story. In Boxtel’s envy we may perhaps believe; in Gryphon’s savagery; and in the craft and duplicity of the Stadtholder; but if ever a French philosopher and a French grisette masqueraded as a Dutch horticulturist and a Frisian waiting-maid they are Cornelius van Baerle and his Rosa; and if ever a tulip grew by magic rather than by the laws of nature it was the tulipe noire. No matter; there is but one Dumas. ”

“ Has it ever occurred to you that in the life of every policeman there is one day when he wears his majestic uniform in public for the first time? It must, of course, be so. No matter how many times he may have put it on at home privately, to get used to it, the day must at last come when he has to walk forth into the streets, and in the eyes of those who have known him ever since he was a boy, or even a baby, changed from a man like themselves to an important and rather dreadful guardian of the peace. ”

“ For a quarter of a mile the road is straight and narrow; then it broadens into an open space and Castel Franco appears. It is a castle indeed. All the old town is within vast crumbling red walls built on a mound with a moat around them. Civic zeal has trimmed the mound into public "grounds," and the moat is lively with ornamental ducks; while a hundred yards farther rises the white statue of Castel Franco's greatest son, no other than Giorgione himself, a dashing cavalier-like gentleman with a brush instead of a rapier. ”

“ Agra seemed to me to be the most widespreading city of all; but very likely it is not. In itself it is far from being the most interesting, but it has one building of great beauty—the Pearl Mosque in the Fort—and one building of such consummate beauty as to make it a place of pilgrimage that no traveller would dare to avoid—the Taj Mahal. Whether or not the Taj Mahal is the most enchanting work of architecture in the world I leave it to more extensive travellers to say. To my eyes it has an unearthly loveliness which I make no effort to pass on to others. ”

“ Why should I live all my days in one spot? It is true that I was devoted to it; but ought one to be so local, so parochial? It was a not too admirable line of least resistance. Here was the great world open to me, and I had cowered all my days in one corner. Mrs. O’Gorman had twitted me about it; and she was a wise woman. How helpful she would be to-day! I had a few years left, I hoped—why should I not move to London or—or anywhere? Then Rose and I could be happy together, once more, and the other Rose could have a room always ready for her. How gay we might all yet be! ”