convent with a few black cypress spires clustered round it, or a solitary cross which the peasants choose as their midday resting-place, cuts the pellucid sky. Here in these great uplands, where all is so immense, the very sky itself seems more full of space than elsewhere: it is not the deep blue of the South, but so soft and aërial that it looks as if it were indeed the very heaven itself, only very far away." The chapter on Ravenna is the best in the book: it is an admirable piece of work, a complete monograph. Everything is there--history, legends, art--and the quotations and illustrations are peculiarly beautiful and convincing. Mr. Hare, like many gentlemen of similar tastes and tendencies, does not seem to have a strong sense of humor, although now and then he condescends to smile as he repeats some local legend, such as that of the crucifix at S. Francesco delle Cariere, which awoke an overwearied devotee, who had fallen asleep on his knees before it, with "un soavissimo schiaffo," the gentlest slap, and bade him go to sleep in the dormitory. He speaks of an ancient custom, not mentioned by _Murray_, of harboring lost cats in the cloister of San Lorenzo at Florence: "The feeding of the cats, which takes place when the clock strikes twelve, is a most curious sight.... From every roof and arch and parapet-wall, mewing, hissing and screaming, the cats rush down to devour." It sounds like a wicked parody on the poetic assembling of the Venetian pigeons at the daily scattering of grain in the square of St. Mark's.