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At present the pilgrimages are again in full swing, and there is a prior on the island, a hospice for the reception of the visitors, and a chapel of S. Patrick and another of S. Mary. "Between the two churches the space is taken up with the Campanile and Penitential beds. There are five of these beds, and they are dedicated to SS. Dabeoc, Columba, Catherine, Brendan, and Bridget.
This was indeed a noble and Christian sentiment! It is in the Italian-Gothic style a great casket of black and white marble, beautified by many exquisite traceries and statues. The noble dome is finely proportioned, but looks almost small amidst the great pile of buildings around it, and by the graceful square Campanile rising proudly beside it.
In order to arrive at the raison d'être of Fiesole you must blot out mentally Arnolfo's vast pile, and Brunelleschi's dome, and Giotto's campanile, and Savonarola's monastery, and the tall and slender tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, rising like a shaft sheer into the air far, far below you must blot out, in short, all that makes the world now congregate at Florence, and all Florence itself into the bargain.
Daily, as the white cupolas rose like wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter Voice of Triumph, "Christ is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence of warning, "Christ shall come."
The strokes of eleven o'clock rang out from the village campanile; and amid the quiet of the now drizzling rain the echoes of the bell lingered on the ear. Last of all a woman's step passed the door stopped at the door of Kitty's room, as though some one listened, and then gently returned. "Fräulein Anna!" said Kitty "she's a good soul."
Near the Royal Palace, in the Via Toledo, is the Cathedral, a fine Gothic pile of very striking appearance, standing well back in the piazza, its rather quaint Campanile separated from it by a narrow street arched over. The principal porch is in the form of a very beautiful arch; the interior in the Corinthian style, and chiefly interesting for the beauty and richness of the high altar.
The waters are gayly colored, shadowed into exquisite greens by the plumy mountains above; and in a little valley lies the white town of Romblon with its squat municipal buildings, its gray old church, and a graceful campanile rising from a grassy plaza.
Those that live much by the heart in their youth have sharp foretastes of the issues imaged for the soul. St. Mark's was in a minute struck black for him. He neither felt the sunlight nor understood why column and campanile rose, nor why the islands basked, and boats and people moved. All were as remote little bits of mechanism.
Geof watched their laughing tormenter until he stopped for breath near the base of the campanile, and, in an instant, the pigeons were alighting on his arms and shoulders, and gathering in an eager, gurgling mass about his feet. The corn fell in a golden shower among them, and great was the jostling and gobbling and short was the duration of that golden shower.
Detached from the church is the Bell Tower, a circular campanile of a sort peculiar to Ravenna, which adds to the picturesqueness of the pile, and suggests the notion that it is a mast unshipped from its vessel, the church, which consequently stands there water-logged, with no power to catch any wind, of doctrine or other, and move. I forgot to say that the basilica was launched in the year 534.
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