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Small wonder that Benvenuto's necromancer could evoke his myriads of flitting ghosts in the midnight Colosseum; here too it needed but to stand for a few minutes in the dead stillness, and the air grew alive with mysterious presences, murmurous with awful whisperings. Mallard enjoyed it for awhile, but at length turned away abruptly, feeling as if a cold hand had touched him.

While those about him were condoling with him in his distress, a workman suddenly entered the room, lamenting that "Poor Benvenuto's work was irretrievably spoiled!" On hearing this, Cellini immediately sprang from his bed and rushed to the workshop, where he found the fire so much gone down that the metal had again become hard.

But there is another class of omissions and alterations which deprives the translation of value for the special student of the text of Dante, a class embracing many of Benvenuto's discussions of disputed readings and remarks upon verbal forms.

Nothing of all this is to be found in the Italian version. But it is not only in omission that the translator shows his devotion to the Church. He takes upon himself not infrequently to alter the character of Benvenuto's narratives by the insertion of phrases or the addition of clauses to which there is nothing corresponding in the original.

It is to be hoped, that, with the new freedom of Italian letters, an edition of the original text of Benvenuto's Comment will be issued under competent supervision. The old Commentator, the friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio, deserves this honor, and should have his fame protected against the assault made upon it by his unworthy compatriot. Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character.

He was buried with honour in the Church of S. Maria del Vado, and was celebrated in verse and prose by many choice spirits no less than his talents deserved. But it has not been possible to obtain Benvenuto's portrait, and therefore there has been placed at the head of these Lives of the Lombard painters that of Girolamo da Carpi, whose Life we are now about to write.

Meantime a great commotion arose in Rome, for the linen ropes dangling from the great tower had attracted notice, and all the town was running out to see the strange sight. At the Vatican Cardinal Cornaro met a friend, to whom he related all the details of Benvenuto's escape, and how he was at that very moment hidden in a secret chamber.

'And I, too, exclaimed the governor; 'I could do it too, but the Pope has ordered me to keep you like the apple of his eye, and as I strongly suspect you're a cunning fellow, I shall lock you well up and give you no chance of flying. Thereupon, and in spite of all Benvenuto's entreaties and protestations, the governor ordered him to be taken back to prison and more carefully guarded than ever.

A few days after, Cardinal Farnese was elected as Pope Paul III. The new pontiff inquired after me, and declared he would employ nobody else to stamp his coins, A gentleman said that I was obliged to abscond for having killed one Pompeo in a fray, to which the Pope made answer: "I never heard of the death of Pompeo, but I have often heard of Benvenuto's provocation; so let a safe-conduct be instantly made out, and that will secure him from all other manner of dangers."

This gewgaw business has been established on the Ponte Vecchio for centuries, although, long since, it was an art of far higher pretensions than now. Benvenuto Cellini had his workshop here, probably in one of these selfsame little nooks. It would have been a ticklish affair to be Benvenuto's fellow-workman within such narrow limits.