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Updated: July 25, 2025
I should not admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid; but by the Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life, we need not fear being led astray: the visions of a distempered fancy are not indeed permitted to replace the truth, or set aside the laws of science: but the imagination which is thoroughly under the command of the intelligent will, has a dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by law; and we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons in the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry an excuse for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to be called upon, in other cases, to admire a systemless architecture, because it may happen to have sprung from an irrational religion.
One has on its rim, in Lombardic capitals, the inscription, Benedicamus Patrem et Filium cum Sancto Spiritu, and the other, the same except for the curious contraction, Sper., for the last word. There is also a cover of silver gilt, which was made at London in 1532-33. Its button handle has four supports, moulded like cords, and it is itself decorated in repoussé.
Here is a rare rogue for you, said Eusthenes; here is a pure rogue, a rogue in grain, a rogue enough, a rogue and a half. He is resolved to make good the Lombardic proverb, Passato el pericolo, gabbato el santo. The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be; The devil was well, the devil a monk was he. How, after the storm, Pantagruel went on shore in the islands of the Macreons.
The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick, and was curiously illustrated in 1848 by the ramparts of these same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona.
It follows from the first condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary æsthetic requirements, that we shall have continual variation in the arrangements of the stories, and the larger number of apertures towards the top, a condition exquisitely carried out in the old Lombardic towers, in which, however small they may be, the number of apertures is always regularly increased towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six; often, also, one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing, not at present to our purpose.
An arm reliquary bears the inscription in raised Lombardic letters: "Ego Chacia usor Dimitrii feci fieri hoc opus." It is of plain metal enriched with filigree, and set with stones and patterned cloisonné enamels, and stands upon a triangular cast base with three feet; on each side is a winged figure with sceptre and orb amid twelfth-century scroll-work.
Some of the Priory still remains, and I have found a Latin inscription in Lombardic characters which, being interpreted, reads Mathew O'Dughagan built this, Bartholomew O'Flauragan being Prior, A.D. 1449. There is a graveyard next the ruins, and a restored Round Tower, eighty-five feet high, not far away, the door of which is ten feet from the ground.
The form at b is rarely found in the north: its perfection is in the Lombardic Gothic; and branches of it, good and bad according to their use, occur in Saracenic work. § VIII. The true and perfect cusp is single only. III., p. 85 et seq. It is degraded in dignity, and loses its usefulness, exactly in proportion to its multiplication on the arch.
One wished to ask them if they did not know that this echo was sacred, and that their challenges of it were a species of sacrilege. But doubtless that would not have availed to silence them. By-and-by they went away, and then we were aware of an interesting group of people by the font near the lovely Lombardic pulpit of Nicola Pisano.
The figures are fifteenth-century in character, and on the bases are the names of the artist and of the overseer on that of the Virgin, "Mavrvs me fecit"; on the angels', "Bitalis qda Martini oprarii," in Lombardic letters. The "operarii" were generally nobles, and had control of the church works. A gilded inscription on the front of the architrave gives the angelic greeting.
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