Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/25

Rh from the swinging of a lamp which hung from the roof.

The leaning tower—the Campanile for the bells of the cathedral—did not astonish me because it is out of the upright, but because it did not annoy me; as I had expected, in a work of art, which I consider to be a piece of architectural charlatanry, intended to exhibit—not the artist's sense of beauty—but his skill in trickery. To my astonishment, however, I received no unpleasant impression from this leaning tower, but a feeling of pleasure, of satisfaction, which I at first could not explain to myself, partly because my mind works slowly, and partly because the beggars, combined with the twilight, chased me from the Piazza del Duomo. But I returned hither early in the morning, before the beggars, and then the matter became clear to me.

This tower is not in a falling position; it leans, but as if in the act of raising itself. It slants most in its lower story, after which the tower sweeps upwards imperceptibly, and at the same time perceptibly, with the delicate colonnades of its light stories, so that the uppermost circle is almost horizontal. It is a form which erects or raises itself. Hence the agreeable rather than painful impression. One has not the slightest uneasiness lest the tower should fall, or any sense of a desire to have it propped up. One can see that it sustains itself, or rather is drawn upwards, as by some power above, and victory is already visible.

All the higher art of building is to me symbolical, and is interesting merely from the divine or human life which it represents. Thus the body of the