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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



which have been impressed by the agency not of 

 Nature but of man. It is a study of the utter- 

 ance, in things which can be seen and handled, 

 of the thoughts, the imagination, and the senti- 

 ments of our fellow-creatures. Just as a geolo- 

 gist will take up a mineral, and read in its sub- 

 stance and structure the history of a thousand 

 cosmic forces — histories of frost, of fire, of 

 drifting down the channel of some vanished 

 glacier, or rolling in the waves of some ocean 

 that has ceased to flow — so we may take up the 

 first fragment of carving or painting, and read in 

 its lineaments a record more moving yet, for the 

 forces that have moulded or tinted it are the 

 forces of the unsearchable spirit — the furnace at 

 which it has been forged is the furnace of the 

 heart of man. And as I suppose the fairest 

 agate is not always that about which geology 

 finds most to tell, so it is not always the most 

 finished work of the mature periods of art that 

 contains the most of imaginative, of human, of 

 civic interest. Among the beautiful and accom- 

 plished products of mature Italian art in the 

 sixteenth century, I know of none which ex- 

 presses the collective mind and history of a com- 

 munity as pregnantly as these simple carvings, 

 at the beginning of the fourteenth, expressed the 

 mind and history of Florence. 



The previous century, the thirteenth, had 

 witnessed two great revolutions in Italy. The 

 first of these was a spiritual and religious revo- 

 lution, the second a social and political revolu- 

 tion. By the spiritual revolution, all the labor- 

 ing and suffering populations in Europe, and most 

 of all in Italy, had been brought into hearty and 

 loyal allegiance to the Church at a moment when 

 they had seemed most to threaten disaffection. 

 Schism and heresy had been rife in every town 

 and in many remote districts of the country, 

 when the influence of two men went suddenly 

 abroad, and recalled to the fold the flocks that 

 were about to wander. These two great and 

 efficacious missionaries were St. Dominic and St. 

 Francis of Assisi. In Italy it was above all the 

 passionate, practical humanity of St. Francis that 

 won the hearts of the people, and filled all men 

 with a new enthusiasm for the faith of which he 

 was the inspired preacher. Hence it came about 

 that the life of the Italian people, in the age fol- 

 lowing the ministrations of St. Francis, was a life 

 of convinced and solemn piety in all private 

 thoughts and public acts — that it was an age of 



fervent and renovated Christian devotion. This 

 Catholic revival, this religious revolution, was 

 completed befcre the middle of the century. 

 The political and social revolution in Italy ef- 

 fected itself afterward, between 1250 and 1300. 

 It consisted in the emancipation of the cities 

 from feudal government, the assertion of their 

 republican independence, and the organization 

 of their civic authority in the hands of the trad- 

 ing and industrial classes. In both these great 

 movements Florence was foremost. Florence 

 was the most pious of Italian cities ; Florence 

 was the most free and democratic. She won her 

 liberties, and settled— so far as she ever really 

 settled — her government after many struggles, 

 and at the cost of much bloodshed and much 

 anarchy. But no bloodshed and no anarchy 

 availed to abate the love of every Florentine for 

 Florence, the pride of every citizen in his city. 

 The sense of great destinies was upon the peo- 

 ple ; there was a greatness — so, with a grave con- 

 sciousness, says a chronicler of the time — in 

 their thoughts, their enterprises, their words, 

 their bearing. 



Of all enterprises into which an Italian peo- 

 ple could throw its heart, the raising of great 

 public monuments to the honor at once of their 

 city and their God was the enterprise into which 

 they threw it with most unanimity. It was at 

 the close of the thirteenth century that the peo- 

 ple of Florence determined to make the church 

 of Sta. Reparata, the mother-church of their 

 city, worthy of their new greatness. The work 

 was begun by Arnolfo, in the style of building 

 which is peculiar to Tuscany in this age. Two 

 centuries before there had been a great outbreak 

 .of building activity in Tuscany. The builders 

 worked in that style which is called Romanesque, 

 having been developed in the early middle age 

 from the Roman style proper. Its main char- 

 acteristics are a love of clear, well-lighted inter- 

 nal spaces without complication or mystery, the 

 use of the round of arch, of roofs nearly flat, and 

 the«horizontal division of height by strong bands 

 and cornices. For external enrichment, this 

 style employed one of two different systems, or 

 sometimes a mixture of the two, viz., the sys- 

 tem of inlay or incrustation, with white, black, 

 and colored marbles, and the system of arcading 

 with horizontal tiers, one above another, of lit- 

 tle columns and arches in projection. This mode 

 of building prevailed in Italy for a long while 

 after the Gothic, the pointed style, had spread 

 from France to all the countries north of the 

 Alps. Presently, the taste for the pointed style 



