Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/130

108 and the people, at public cost, built him a tomb of marble, "higher than any other" in the church of Santa Reparata, engraving on it these verses, which I leave you to construe, for I cannot:—

Only I suppose the pretty word 'amoenus' may be taken as marking the delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men's love, more, even, than their gratitude.

130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind. For when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again their own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three years, they beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged it—by such tenure as it might still possess—through the city, and threw the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to the treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed it seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man, that his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have spent his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity which can so be gratified; and