neighbors is dead or alive; and I thought I'd come here first, for, as I told 'em, Celia would most likely be over there to Mis' Cary's, takin' care of him, and you'd know just what Hiram's chances was. 'Twas an awful stroke, though, wasn't it? And how do they think he is?"

Mrs. Perkins waited for a reply, though the listener overhead had started up in distressful eagerness. Mrs. Ludlow was loath to own her ignorance, and she made answer cautiously.

"I hain't been round much myself for quite a spell. I s'pose there is considerable sickness of one kind and another this damp spell. Lasts a good while, too," and then, - seeing that Mrs. Perkins was still waiting to be answered: "I saw Grandsir Cary out this morning. He did look kind of feeble. But I've seen him puttering round most every day, doing the chores and such."

But Mrs. Perkins could be silent no longer. "I didn't say Grandsir Cary," she exploded. "I said Hiram Cary," -this with emphatic plainness. "And all Gilead knows, if the Hill folks — or at least his own kin, such as it is, don't know it, that he came home on a Friday week, - and was brought up on a stretcher. He got into the machinery someways, and it's a wonder he got out whole. 'Twas some contrivance of his own they said he was tryin'. And he's had a fever since. It's a mercy it didn't cost him his life,

and it may yet. I s'posed likely Cely'd be there." And Mrs. Perkins, in some disdain, picked up her bundle of yarn and went her way, leaving Mrs. Ludlow, for once, silenced. She had no time for reflection, however, for, on the instant, Celia, with white face and burning eyes, stood before her.

"You'll have to look out for Johnnie for a while, Mother. I'm going to take care of Hiram." And with a kiss for the little one, she had crossed the road before the Perkins wagon was out of sight, and in a moment had

entered the kitchen where Mrs. Cary, with an anxious face, was carefully stirring gruel. What was said there, or in the sick-room beyond, to which she was at once admitted, was never told. But two days later, Job Stevens, making an errand to the door for a gimlet, and lingering at the angle where the light on the bedroom window was clearest, — the curtains were, for the first time, drawn wide apart, and he had seen it-reported presently at the corner store.

"Hiram appears to be picking up quite fast," he remarked; and the circle of loungers drew nearer together to listen. "Yes, I should say he was rallyin', sure. They've got him into the rocking-chair, and Cely's feeding him. It appeared to be chicken broth, and it seemed to do one of 'em about as much good as the other. Old man Cary, he's putterin' round, pleased as can be; says the doctor thinks Hi will get along now, certain. And they say that invention Hiram was bothering with when he got hurt is a pretty good thing. The boss there has taken it up, and Hi is likely to make something out of it before long. Well, some folks are bound to have good luck, and enough of it, and some of us ain't. But we don't none of us grudge it to Hi Cary." To which rude praise a murmur of assent went up from all the eager listeners around the smoking stove.

The Carys had received Celia as simply and cordially as if she had been with them from the first, and to her confused and rather shamefaced explanations kind Mother Cary made only the gentlest of rejoinders. "You'll both be wiser after now," she said. "I wouldn't let myself worry about it, either way. 'Tain't best to fault your own folks. And now you must both pick up as fast as you can. I expect Hiram'll be in a hurry to get back again, he sets great store by his own home, I could always see that, though he ain't one that ever says much. But you mustn't think of going till after Thanksgiving, — you

can both of you make up your minds to that. Afterwards, I do' know as we can say anything. Oh, your mother was in a while ago, the middle of the forenoon, -'twas while Hiram was havin' his nap, and you was settin' with him, and she said her brother was over from Gilead, and wanted she should go back with him. I guess they've started before this. I expect she gets pretty lonesome sometimes. I can't help thinkin' about her when me and father's settin' here together winter evenin's."

Celia's eyes overflowed. "Yes," she said, simply, "I expect my mother has a good many lonesome times."

But there were no tears in her eyes when she went to carry Hiram his dinner a quarter of an hour later, and Mother Cary heard their low laughter and then their quieter talk in pleasant murmurs all through the noontime.

It was on Thanksgiving night that Celia, looking out wistfully, spied a light in the little corner kitchen of the house across the road, and, leaving little John in his father's arms, slipped out softly and ran over. Mrs. Ludlow had just come home, and she was alone; but a newly lighted fire crackled in the stove, the teakettle was singing over it, the room was tidy, and the black cat purred at her knee.

Her eyes, too, were less weary and restless than Celia could remember to have seen them since her childhood. She would have her daughter sit down with her for a cup of the tea she was brewing and for a moment's talk. And Celia, in her crimson wrapper, with a ribbon knotted girlishly around her trim waist and with some drops from the maple boughs glistening in her hair, sat down, not unwillingly, and stayed till the clock was striking nine. Then she rose to go, but lingered a little.

"Can't you go back with us, Mother?" she asked. "We're going Monday, you know; and I can't bear to think of you here by yourself all winter. Hiram told me to ask you. You'd better come. I can't leave you all alone, dear."

But Mrs. Ludlow gave one keen, satisfied look into her daughter's face, and shook her head.

T is an old statement, long familiar to all that have in any way interested themselves in art, that art should be the handmaid of religion. It is a newer statement, bitterly inveighed against by critics of the old school, that art should exist for art's sake. I call the attention of my readers to a later theory still, which claims that the function of art is to cement the social structure. The theory stated, I immediately withdraw from its discussion. My object is merely to show that during the period of the Renaissance in Italy it was accepted without even the preliminary of exposition, and acted upon, by those interested in good government.

in

It is a poor rule that works only one way. At the same period another set of men, equally unquestioning, equally also interested bad government, accepted the theory and acted upon its converse. The Italian tyrants, from the Aragonians at Naples to the Visconti at Milan, by the same impulse constantly kept artists in their employ. Can Grande della Scala entertained Dante at

of the pensioned poet. The Estensi at Ferrara supported Ariosto and Tasso for the same reason. But with a more immediate and practical object the tyrants as one man secured in their train architects, sculptors and painters, with the direct intention of making their people, by the splendor of their surroundings, content with subjugation.

Without doubt the Medici offer the most striking example of this policy. By a curious reflex, originating in the fact that they were patrons of art, they have come to be credited with its early nourishment. To this credit they are in no wise entitled. The remarkable intellectual activity of Florence appears as early as the time of Dante, who with Giotto and Arnolfo founded the fame in art of the city of the Arno. Even the Humanistic movement is seen in Boccaccio, and the whole mental impulse was well under way before the appearance on the scene of Cosimo de Medici. But Cosimo and his grandson Lorenzo, supreme opportunists, possessed the ability to identify themselves with the movements of the time and to assume their guidance. There can be

Verona not from any sense of pity or personal affection, but for the glory that might come to him from the verses

no question that the Medici spent great sums on the fine arts. The palace by Michelozzo, the numerous statues by Donatello, the generous support of Botticelli, the youthful education of Michelangelo, - these and many other services to art spring directly from the Medici control of the public purse-strings. The people were constantly having their eyes directed to some new example of Medicean liberality. art alone, but the other tendencies of the age-the love of letters, the delight in pageants were turned to good account by the wily citizen-princes. The Medici planted in their people the desire for pleasure, and fostered it until the pursuit of sensuality in every form was a

Not

controlling impulse of the age. Against this tendency, grow ing in every Italian city, the clergy raised a warning finger. Not alone in pictures of saints and an

PALAZZO PUBBLICO, SIENA.

PALAZZO DEL COMMUNE, PISTOIA.

But

gels, but in more direct representations, did they advise the preservation of the simple virtues which the princes of the peninsula were fast corrupting. It was perhaps a feeble admonition, for they themselves eventually went the way of flesh and yielded to the luxury introduced by secular tempters. the allegories of the virtues, set up in many Italian churches, remain to-day to remind us of the earlier integrity of the church. There are no more powerful contrasts, visible warnings, than Giotto's frescoes of Charity and Envy, Justice and Injustice, Temperance and Anger, in the Chapel of the Arena at Padua.

These two examples, of the despots and of the church, may have suggested to the republics their use of art. It is of course far more probable that the Italian instinct naturally chose this mode of expression; but the logical sequence, supposing it to have been used, is perfectly plain. On the one hand, tyranny found in the pernicious influence of luxury a sufficient reason for the employment of artists; the other hand, the church required the help of pictorial representations in