344 MORE POT-POURRI 



municipal shortcomings. May the Italians respect their 

 lovely buUdings ! — and I believe they will — better than 

 we do. They certainly restore — with apparently only 

 the wish to copy and maintain — a great deal better than 

 any other European nation I know. I cannot make up 

 my mind that in this they are wrong, in spite of the con- 

 stant protests of the Anti- Restoration Society, with 

 whose work I have been in much sympathy all my life. 

 It seems hard to say that the beautiful buildings of the 

 Middle Ages ought to be allowed to fall into ruins, and 

 the effort to preserve what we admire wUl, I think, earn 

 the gratitude of the ages to come. In the eighteenth 

 century, ruins, as such, were admired even to the extent 

 of making artificial ones, and the landscape painters not 

 only steeped all nature's bright colours in black and 

 brown, but painted the ruined columns under thunder- 

 clouds, with Roman soldiers in togas walking about. And 

 our grandfathers bought and admired their pictures ! 



June 6th. — When I was young, in Florence, a great 

 mystery hung over the convent of San Marco, as women 

 were not allowed to visit it, and we young ones thought 

 of it principally in connection with its perfumery shop, 

 where the Iris -root powder and pale pink lip -salve were 

 better than anywhere else. It was with a real feeling of 

 curiosity that I saw the interior and the famous frescoes 

 that have survived so many centuries. I found them 

 very sweet and child -like — these decorations of the little 

 cells by the humble Christian monk ; but I suppose I 

 had expected too much, for, as works of art, they disap- 

 pointed me. In the little square surrounded by the 

 cloister of San Marco, where Fra Girolamo sat sotto un 

 rosajo di rose DamascMne preaching to his contempora- 

 ries, the monks — or rather, I suppose, some unimagi- 

 native ofELcial who has charge of the public buildings in 

 Florence, has planted, instead of the gentle damask Rose 



