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When the keystone goes from the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surely the youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed, but there came an hour when conscience first drove Tito into the Arno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him into the deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and God cannot afford to permit sin to prosper.
Above all this scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold; beyond dome and bell-tower the slopes of mighty hills, hoary with olive; far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into amber sky; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles; and over all these, ever present, near or far seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight, that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world; a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God.
Fair and beauteous art thou, O City of Flowers! with thy domes and spires, and turrets overlooking the Arno's silver stream, and crowding together in that river's classic pale; surrounded, too, by oak-covered hills, and cypress groves, and gardens of olives and evergreens, and presenting to the view of the spectator who stands on the lofty summit of Monte Senario, so vast an assemblage of palaces as to justify the saying of Ariosto, that it seemed as if the very soil produced them!
"Va, Nello," growled Piero, "thy tongue runs on as usual, like a mill when the Arno's full whether there's grist or not." "Excellent grist, I tell thee. For it would be as reasonable to expect a grizzled painter like thee to be fond of getting a javelin inside thee as to expect a man whose wits have been sharpened on the classics to like having his handsome face clawed by a wild beast."
In the midst of this lovely place, a queen over all around, lay Florence, the dearest and most charming city of the south-Florence, whose past glows with the brilliancy of splendid achievements in arms, arts and song, whose present state captivates the soul of every traveller, and binds around him a potent spell, making him linger long in dreamy pleasure by the gentle flow of the Arno's waters.
The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood were pouring, When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love deploring: So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and eerie, I longed to hear a simpler strain, the wood-notes of the veery.
"It's pleasant by the lake, I suppose." "It's lovely by the lake!" cried the child. "Oh, do go, mamma! I could get a boat and learn to row. Here you can't row, the Arno's so swift." "The air would bring you up," said Colville to Mrs. Bowen. "Switzerland's the only country where you're perfectly sure of waking new every morning." This idea interested the child. "Waking new!" she repeated.
Mean time here we are however in Arno's Vale; the full moon shining over Fiesole, which I see from my windows. Milton's verses every moment in one's mouth, and Galileo's house twenty yards from one's door, Whence her bright orb the Tuscan artist view'd, At evening from the top of Fesole; Or in Val d'Arno to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains on her spotty globe.
Waterfalls and cascades are not uncommon, as may be supposed in a country of so uneven a surface as that of the western coast. A remarkable one descends from the north side of Mount Pugong. The largest I have seen was brought from Tappanuli by Mr. James Moore of Arno's Vale in the north of Ireland. It is 3 feet 3 1/2 inches in its longest diameter, and 2 feet 1 1/4 inches across.
Muller a perpetual warning, leading him to pray that he might never thus depart from the Lord in his old age. After prayer by Mr. J. L. Stanley, Col. Molesworth gave out the hymn, "'Tis sweet to think of those at rest." And after another prayer by Mr. Stanley Arnot, the body was borne to its resting-place in Arno's Vale Cemetery, and buried beside the bodies of Mr.
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