As I stepped first into this open square with these exquisite jewels of cream-colored stone pulsating under the rays of an evening sun, it was a spectacle that evoked a rare thrill of emotion, such as great art must always evoke. There they stood--fretted, fluted, colonnaded, crowded with lovely traceries, studded with lovely marbles, and showing in every line and detail all that loving enthusiasm which is the first and greatest characteristic of artistic genius. I can see those noble old first citizens who wanted Pisa to be great, calling to their aid the genius of such men as Pisano and Bonannus of Pisa and William of Innsbruck and Diotisalvi and all the noble company of talent that followed to plan, to carve, to color and to decorate. To me it is a far more impressive and artistic thing than St. Peter’s in Rome. It has a reserve and an artistic subtlety which exceeds the finest Gothic cathedral in the world. Canterbury, Amiens and Rouen are bursts of imagination and emotion; but the collection of buildings at Pisa is the reserved, subtle, princely calculation of a great architect and a great artist. It does not matter if it represents the handiwork, the judgment and the taste of a hundred men of genius. It may be without the wildfire of a cathedral like that at Cologne, but it approximates the high classic reserve of a temple of Pallas Athene. It is Greek in its dignity and beauty, not Christian and Gothic in its fire and zeal. As I think of it, I would not give it for anything I have seen; I would not have missed it if I had been compelled to sacrifice almost everything else; and the Italian Government has done well to take it and all similar achievements under its protection and to declare that however religion may wax or wane this thing shall not be disturbed. It is a great, a noble, a beautiful thing; and as such should be preserved forever.