Soon, countless gay and fairy forms Was pictur'd on the air; And peopled every scene, That flowers might only fill the space A thousand joys between. But, as life's river nears its goal, And glittering bubbles break, To snatch one faded wreath of hope Like his, who on the isthmus stands, From fate's advancing surge, And sees upon its rocky strand Pale memory's leaflets start And binds them with a trembling hand, The balm-drops of his heart. THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. BY M. W. L'AMOUREUX. Milan is an exceedingly pleasant town-it looks so neat and prosperous. When you enter it, after a long sojourn in the older cities of the south, those grey, crumbling tomb-stones of the buried past, you seem to have been strolling through a grave-yard, and to have just reached again the fresh, glad world. The houses have a certain air of pride, not the imposing, gloomy reserve of an antique Florentine or Venitian edifice, that like the portrait of an old doge seems to frown on you for presuming to scan it, but a true, substantial, democratic self-complacency, just such as the face of a good burgher radiates with, as he stands in his ware-house door, tossing his heavy gold watch-seals upon his fat thumb, and chuckling at having so fairly outdone his rival over the way. Many of the streets are quite straight and wide; there are several spacious squares and gardens, and on the boulevards are magnifi cent promenades. The pavement is of large pebbles, like that of our own cities, but it is inlaid in every street with lines of flagging upon which the coach wheels roll. In some avenues, there are double and triple ranges of stone, to accommodate the thronging equipages. Very many of the streets are supplied with broad side walks, and kept constantly cool and clean by means of numerous water-carts. Palaces are by no means rare, and some among them are exceedingly noble and imposing. The greater number, however, are of quite recent date and display no transcendant architectural qualities. They seem rather the residences of rich, retired merchants. The title of palace is perhaps a little too ambitious. But I was about to give you a description of the great Cathedral of Milan-il Duomo, as the Italians call the principal church of a large town. Its fame is universal, and verily, that Milanese enthusiasm was pardonable which named it the eighth wonder of the world. It is the embodiment of an architectural conception, perfectly unique in character and execution. It is a conception treated after the German, elaborated to the last degree, exhibited in a thousand different shapes, turned and re-turned, and like a crystal revolving in the sunlight, still brilliant and beautiful. What an overwhelming profusion of decoration everywhere meets the eye! What amazing patience was that which traced all those slender lines and fretted each canopy and pinnacle! How almost painfully delicate is the carving about yon central tower! It reminds you of one of those Chinese curiosities in ivory-as if some artist-giant had sought to while away an idle day in cutting it out with his pen-knife. There is hardly a space of ten square feet in the immense extent of front and sides, whose original smoothness has not been broken by the skilful chisel into some decorative form. Panels or roses or small blind arcades fill up every vacancy. Here looks out upon you a human face, there recline in various postures, colossal human forms. Near the base, is a line of rich bas-reliefs, extending across the entire façade of the edifice. Immediately above it, is a row of large statues, at proportionate distances from each other and interrupted, like the series of designs below, only by the high door-ways and windows. One of these statues is represented as covered with a thin, flowing veil. The work is admirable, second perhaps only to the recumbent statue of the same design, which is seen in the Neapolitan church of Santa Maria della Pietá. The delicate outlines of the countenance are all visible, but with just that provoking indistinctness which a coquettish school-girl aims at when you are half tempted to throw up the green barège and ksee, I mean, what lies beneath. But let us walk slowly round the edifice, and study well the designs upon the buttresses, the windows and the broad spaces above and below. In the window frames are inserted niches covered with canopies of delicate work, and occupied by large marble stat ues, four or six perhaps within the same compartment. The water spouts projecting from the tops of the buttresses are carved in most grotesque forms. Here stares out a monster with a physiognomy like a sick dog's, and a long, scaly tail, coiled tightly around his deformed carcass. There again a crooked little imp grins down upon you so maliciously that if you were n't on the opposite side-walk, you might certainly expect a sudden cataract upon your upturned face. From every angle and recess, some queer old figure peeps out at you-another freak of that restless and Tudesque imagination around which seemed to throng monstrous images, as in old pictures, you see the embodied temptations circling in ghastly dance about a half-crazed monk. The edifice was commenced at a very early day, and its lower half has been completely blackened by exposure and time. But the façade and the flying-buttresses and pinnacles and turrets that adorn the superstructure, are yet fresh and white as from the hand of the artist. Let us withdraw a little distance to secure a better view of this portion of the temple. It is nearly noon and the bright sunbeams are glancing aslant upon the immense marble roof and tower. The soft Italian sky seems like a vast curtain dropped down purposely behind the structure, to relieve more skilfully the artist's work; for the roof and tower are his masterpieces. Here it is that architectural embellishment has been lavished with the most frightful recklessness of labor and expense. A thousand pinnacles, all delicately fretted from needle-point to base, shoot up like the radiations from a sheet of crystal. The ornaments of the flying buttresses and the balustrades are white and numberless as the lilies of a field. White columns surround the central tower, and losing themselves in slender pinnacles, seem at length to dissolve in air. From within this colonnade towers another light structure, and from this another still, till, on the loftiest elevation, the apex to this glittering pyramid of stone, stands a tall, colossal image of the Holy Virgin. The image is richly gilt from head to foot, and as we view it now, floating in floods of sunshine, "Dark with excessive bright," we might fancy it a glorious Assumption, such as Murillo loved to paint and only Milton or Dante might dare describe. But the great peculiarity of this edifice, the point in which it seems utterly unique, is the astonishing amount of statuary employed in its decoration. It appears almost incredible, yet the fact is thus, that within and upon this building, there are no less than three thousand different representations in marble of the human form! Several lines of statues extend around the outside, at various heights from the ground, some supported on small projecting pedestals, others placed in niches. But it is on the broad roof that this conception, this monomania of the architect has found full space for developement. All the buttresses, of course, terminate on high, in large pinnacles. Now, each one of these pinnacles, as well as of the hundreds that tower up in every direction around, is adorned with nine statues or statuettes. Eight of them are disposed in niches in the sides, and the ninth is placed on the summit. They are in various attitudes; some, as monks, devoutly chanting their mass, some, like pilgrims from the Holy Shrine, bearing palms in their hands, and others, with the cross or rack on which they breathed out in agony their blessed souls. When you look up from certain points of view, your entire perspective is crowded with these graceful figures. Their effect, like that of the stars when viewed in one general glance, is overwhelming from their apparently immense number. The illusion is of course dispelled when you ascend the roof itself and stand among them. I often used to stroll by star-light along the cathedral walls, and the sight of those innumerable marble forms, all congregated in the upper air, produced invariably a most solemn impression. It reminded me of that awful vision of the transported seer, described with such grand simplicity-"I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God." For there they all stood, the great army, shrouded in white, and with rank swelling upon rank, till lost in undistinguishable gloom. Apostles, prophets, martyrs were among them, in "glorious company." They were all very silent, too, up there; but they seemed only to pause as in suspense, awaiting the signal when their marble lips should thunder forth one grand hosannah to their Lord. I used to gaze upon them in the dim light, till their forms waved and flickered like pale, silvery oriflammes, and seemed preparing for a general flight-one living resurrection, like their holy prototypes, with long drapery floating on the star-lit air, as white swans' wings beneath the glancing moon. My weary soul would fain have cried to them like the young Tishbite to the ascending prophet, but they heeded no longer the voices of this world. Rise, then, venerable band! victorious vanquished in the battle-field of life! self-immolated hecatomb to Heaven! Assume your station in yon splendid throng, while other spirits here on earth tread tearfully your painful track, and soon shall reach your beatific rest! And all this while, the blessed stars were looking down into their eyes, like the angels in Angelo's Last Judgment, who stand beckoning the redeemed to their own blissful home. The interior of the building presents a most imposing perspective. In the nave, you remark a very great simplicity; the transept and choir, however, are enriched with lofty cenotaphs and tombs. The pavement is of marble, inlaid with various figures, but the walls for some distance from the entrance, are destitute of all ornament. But see how those enormous columns shoot up and spread their limbs upon the roof, interlacing them like a grove of gigantic palms! How infantile seem the men that lean against their base! And then that stupendous oriel in the choir-how soft and life-like its colors glow and faint, as sunshine falls upon them, or the shadow of a passing cloud! The great windows of the dome, too, are pouring their quiet, golden streams of light upon the rich architrave, and the contrasted darkness gives a loftier, sublimer aspect to the swelling curve above. There is something awfully majestic in a cathedral dome, when the twilight gloom is deepening all around, and the altar-lamp, ever-burning like a seraph before the throne, seems a mere silvery fleck upon the darkness. Those massive props grow smaller and smaller as they rise, till they lean seemingly against the palpable obscurity itself. The heavy leathern curtain suspended at the door, drops to as some one enters, and its echoes repeat in the vast concave above your head. You think them the glad clapping of a young seraph's hands, or perhaps-if such dwell here, as they dwell in the holiest heart of man-the gibbering laugh of some dark "spirit of the air." At such an hour and spot, I never like to look upwards-there is something so painfully, oppressively mysterious in the sight; as when in moments of the soul's despondency, we seek to peer into the dark hereafter, and no voice nor vision comes to cheer our doubtful hope. You should choose a bright morning to ascend the central tower, for the landscape which stretches in every direction from Milan is of surpassing beauty and extent. Far away to the south, sweep the plains of the "wandering Po," as Goldsmith has it, and near the horizon, rise the towering structure of the monks of Pavia and the town itself. Farther yet, in a distance misty during the clearest day, lies the hithermost range of the Apennines, like the low bank of clouds that sometimes stretch along the horizon at sea, and deceive the landsman with the image of the long-wished shore. Toward the north, the hills rise gradually into Alpine heights, covered with eternal snow. Near at hand sleep Lake Como and Lake Maggiore, and nearer still lies the little town of Monza, where you see the Iron crown worn by Charlemagne and Napoleon. The peaks of Saint Gothard, Mount Rosa and the other Valais Alps are all soaring as proudly up to heaven as when you left them, the preceding summer, and you greet them again as the forms of old, venerated friends. The broad, white turnpikes eradiate to every point of the horizon-those feelers which the greedy cities throw out to gather all passing objects into their own huge maw. Innumerable sinall canals glide along the rice fields and meadows, and long rows of pollards, like colonnades, festooned with the graceful Italian vine, line their margin and the public road. The gay villas of wealthy citizens stud the plain like pearls thrown carelessly upon a robe of velvet green; their garden walks are often adorned with statuary, which at this distance seems but as a labyrinthine line of white dots; and then close at your feet lies the town itself, begirt with walls that furnish a delightful promenade beneath their lofty trees. Yonder is the Piazza d'Armi—the parade ground of the Austrian troops quartered in that vast, frowning castle near at hand. Just beyond, rises the |