A Great Lady [pp. 454-465]

458 A GREAT LADY. [Jul1-,
concentrated nmuch of the soft radiance which the evening in Italy
gathers to itself, diffusing it as some dreamy painter might let
drift the colors of his palette, the whole being full of that ineffable lingering charm which belongs only, it seems to me, to
the Italian atmosphere, the Italian sky, the Italian waters, let the
moment be of sunrise, of sunset, twilight, or the pale guardianship of the moon. Before us lay the town of Bologna, the gray
or brown tones of the houses, with the spots of orange color here
and there, gaining picturesqueness from this distant view, while
beyond the furthest outline of buildings the old city was compassed by a country rich in color and diversified by many undulations, white roadways winding like ribbons up and down, the
plains dotted here and there by churches whose spires were uplifted to the last rays of the sunlight, and the sound of whose
bells came to our ears as soft and soothing as the music of falling
water or the wind among pine-trees at evening. Away off the
thin line of water was touched into serenest blue, and the sky
held the fairest sapphire tints until, an hour later, the day faded
slowly on the western horizon in trails of primrose and palest
amber.
It seemed natural, sitting by Dante's descendant, and with so
much that was suggestive of Guelf and Ghibelline in the country
about us, to think of the poet and the people from whom these
Gozzadinis were descended, that family of Alighieris who early
in the thirteenth century established themselves in the neighborhood of San Martino's Church in Florence. The story of the
poet's life need not be given here. It is only of the period when
he made one of that large Alighieri circle, when he knew and
loved Beatrice, that I need speak, and, passing over the years of
his prime, come to the date of his death, and the facts connected
with his burial and sepulchre. Few people who read the Divine
Comedy seem to remember that the splendid Florence of to-day
was not the Florence of the poet. When the child destined to
make the name of Alighieri famous was baptized in the old baptistery, it was a building of flint, gray and dull to outward view.
The cathedral now dominating the square was not built. The
tall houses in the neighborhood where Dante's boyhood was
spent approached each - other closely across a threadway of
street, and as yet showed no touch of Tuscany in their architecture. Bargello and the Palazzo Vecchio were only in process
of erection. Santa Croce, Maria Novella, and the Campanile of
Giotto were beauties imprisoned in the inspiration of the future,
and Dante lifted his people to the skies from a Florence whose