Giorgio Vasari, and you come to me At an untimely hour. GIORGIO. The Pope hath sent me. His Holiness desires to see again The drawing you once showed him of MICHAEL ANGELO, letting fall the lamp. Life hath become to me An empty theatre, its lights extin the dome Of the Basilica. MICHAEL ANGELO. We will look for it. GIORGIO. What is the marble group that glimmers there Behind you? MICHAEL ANGELO. Nothing, and yet everything,As one may take it. It is my own tomb, That I am building. guished, The music silent, and the actors gone; Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down, And my last spark of life will be extinguished. Ah me! ah me! what darkness of de NOTES. Page 11. Coplas de Manrique. This poem of Manrique is a great favorite in Spain. No less than four poetic Glosses, or running commentaries, upon it have been published, no one of which, however, possesses great poetic merit. That of the Carthusian monk, Rodrigo de Valdepeñas, is the best. It is known as the Glosa del Cartujo. There is also a prose Commentary by Luis de Aranda. The following stanzas of the poem were found in the author's pocket, after his death on the field of battle. Page 25. The Skeleton in Armor. This Ballad was suggested to me while riding on the sea-shore at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armor; and the idea occurred to me of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their early ancestors. Professor Rafn, in the Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord, for 1838-1839, says: "There is no mistaking in this instance the style in which the more ancient stone edifices of the North were constructed, the style which belongs to the Roman or Ante-Gothic architecture, and which, especially after the time of Charlemagne, diffused itself from Italy over the whole of the West and North of Europe, where it continued to predominate until the close of the twelfth century, that style which some authors have, from one of its most striking characteristics, called the round arch style, the same which in England is denominated Saxon and sometimes Norman architecture. "On the ancient structure in Newport there are no ornaments remaining, which might possibly have served to guide us in assigning the probable date of its erection. That no vestige whatever is found of the pointed arch, nor any approximation to it, is indicative of an earlier rather than of a later period. From such characteristics as remain, however, we can scarcely form any other inference than one, in which I am persuaded that all who are familiar with Old-Northern architecture will concur, THAT THIS BUILDING WAS ERECTED AT A PERIOD DECIDEDLY NOT LATER THAN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. This remark applies, of course, to the original building only, and not to the alterations that it subsequently received; for there are several such alterations in the upper part of the |