were more favourable to colour than those manufactured to-day?" "Indeed, you make a mistake, Messer Francesco," said he, "in handing over to the Bianchini all the gold of modern manufacture. The Commissioners have decided that the old will do mixed with the new."... "But did I not in vain try to make him understand that this brilliant gold would hurt the faces, and completely ruin the effect of colour?"... The answer of the Procurator was, "The Bianchini do not scruple to use it, and their mosaics please the eye much better than yours," so his brother Valerio, laughing, asks, "What need of worrying yourself after such a decision as that? Suppress the shadows, cut a breadth of material from a great plate of enamel and lay it over the breast of St. Nicaise, render St. Cecilia's beautiful hair with a badly cut tile, a pretty lamb for St. John the Baptist, and the Commission will double your salary and the public clap its hands. Really, my brother, you who dream of glory, I do not understand how you can pledge yourself to the worship of art." "I dream of glory, it is true," replied Francesco, "but of a glory that is lasting, not the vain popularity of a day. I should like to leave an honoured name, if not an illustrious one, and make those who examine the cupolas of St. Mark's five hundred years hence say, 'This was the work of a conscientious artist.'" A description follows of the scene of the mosaic workers pursuing their calling. "Here was heard abusive language, there the joyous song; further on, the jest; above, the hammer: below, the trowel: now the dull and continuous thud of the tampon on the mosaics, and anon the clear and crystal like clicking of the glassware rolling from the baskets on to the pavement, in waves of rubies and emeralds. Then the fearful grating of the scraper on the cornice, and finally the sharp rasping cry of the saw in the marble, to say nothing of the low masses said at the end of the chapel in spite of the racket." [Illustration: MOSAIC IN BAS-RELIEF, NAPLES] The Zuccati were very independent skilled workmen, as well as being able to design their own subjects. They were, in the judgment of Georges Sand, superior to another of the masters in charge of the works, Bozza, who was less of a man, although an artist of some merit. Later than these men, there were few mosaic workers of high standing; in Florence the art degenerated into a mere decorative inlay of semi-precious material, heraldic in feeling, costly and decorative, but an entirely different art from that of the Greeks and Romans. Lapis-lazuli with gold veinings, malachite, coral, alabaster, and rare marbles superseded the smalts and gold of an elder day. CHAPTER XI ILLUMINATION OF BOOKS