Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/52

30 like a glance into one of those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wanderer in classical lands has sometimes stumbled, with the old disused ornaments and furniture of a world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them. That whole conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls and a material firmament; it is like a painted toy, like that map or system of the world held as a great target or shield in the hands of the grey-headed father of all things, in one of the earlier frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa. How different from this childish dream is our own conception of nature, with its unlimited space, its innumerable suns, and the earth but a mote in the beam; how different the strange new awe and superstition with which it fills our minds! 'The silence of those infinite spaces,' says Pascal, contemplating a star-light night, 'the silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.' Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie.

He was already almost wearied out when he came to Florence. He had loved much and been beloved by women, 'wandering over the crooked hills of delicious pleasure'; but their reign over him was over, and long before Savonarola's famous 'bonfire of vanities,' he had destroyed those love-songs in