gold, and, last and most wonderful, a vase, beautifully engraved and adorned, out of which springs a golden vine, with leaves of Persian selenite and grapes of Oriental amethyst; and about all are groups of attendant nymphs, fauns, satyrs, mænads, and lovely women, crowned with flowers, with instruments of music in their hands, chanting the praise of Valor and of Pleasure; again, he lingers among ancient ruins and remembers their perished glory, and falls into reflection, like that of the traveller whom he describes, “among those venerable monuments which still make Rome the queen of cities; where he sees,” thinks Poliphilo, “the hand of Time, which punishes the excess of pride; and, seeking then on the steps of the amphitheatre the heads of the legions and that conquering eagle, that Senate whose decrees made and unmade the kings of the world, those profound historians, those eloquent orators, he finds there only a rabble of beggars, to whom an ignorant and ofttimes lying hermit preaches, only altars without honor and saints without a believer; the artist reigns alone in that vast enclosure; pencil in hand, rich with memories, he sees the whole of Rome, her pomp and her glory, in one mutilated block which a fragment of bass-relief adorns.” Inspired by these thoughts, Poliphilo delays among like relics of the past, and reads on shattered tombs the brief inscriptions which tell the history of the lost lovers who lie beneath, while the pagan burden of their sorrow, and the pagan calm of the “adieu” with which each inscription ends, fill him with tender sentiment. So his dream drifts on through ever-shifting scenes of beauty and ever-dying moments of delight to the hour of awakening. These scenes and these moments, which Francesco Columna called out of his imagination, are pictured in the one hundred and ninety-two designs (Figs. 27, 28, 29, 30) which adorn his book; here in simple outline are the gardens, groves, and streams, the noble buildings, the bath, the palace and the temple, the feast, the allegory of life, the thronging triumphs, the sacrifices, the ruins, the tombs, the lover and his beloved, the priestess and the goddess, cupids, bacchanals, and nymphs--a profusion of loveliness, joy, and revel; here, too, among the others, are some dramatic scenes: the lion and the lovers, Poliphilo fainting before Polia, and his revival at the touch of her lips; altogether, they are a precious memorial of the Renaissance spirit, reflecting alike its passion for the new learning, passing into useless and pedantic knowledge, and its ecstacy of the senses passing into voluptuous delight. [Illustration: FIG. 24.--The Peace of God. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.” Ferrara, 1497.] [Illustration: FIG. 25.--Mary and the Risen Lord. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.” Ferrara, 1497.] [Illustration: FIG. 26.--St. Baruch. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.]