"It is not difficult, gazing on these silent but eloquent walls, to repeople them with the group once, as we know-five hundred years ago--assembled within them,--Giotto intent upon his work, his wife Ciuta admiring his progress, and Dante, with abstracted eye, alternately conversing with his friend and watching the gambols of the children playing on the grass before the door. It is generally affirmed that Dante, during this visit, inspired Giotto with his taste for allegory, and that the Virtues and Vices of the Arena were the first fruits of their intercourse; it is possible, certainly, but I doubt it,--allegory was the universal language of the time, as we have seen in the history of the Pisan school."--Vol. ii., pp. 199, 200. * * * It ought to have been further mentioned, that the representation of the Virtues and Vices under these Giottesque figures continued long afterwards. We find them copied, for instance, on the capitals of the Ducal Palace at Venice, with an amusing variation on the "Stultitia," who has neither Indian dress nor club, as with Giotto, but is to the Venetians sufficiently distinguished by riding a horse. 65. The notice of the frescoes at Assisi consists of little more than an enumeration of the subjects, accompanied by agreeable translations of the traditions respecting St. Francis, embodied by St. Buonaventura. Nor have we space to follow the author through his examination of Giotto's works at Naples and Avignon. The following account of the erection of the Campanile of Florence is too interesting to be omitted:--- * * * "Giotto was chosen to erect it, on the ground avowedly of the universality of his talents, with the appointment of Capomaestro, or chief architect of the Cathedral and its dependencies, a yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship, and under the special understanding that he was not to quit Florence. His designs being approved of, the republic passed a decree in the spring of 1334, that 'the Campanile should be built so as to exceed in magnificence, height and excellence of workmanship whatever in that kind had been achieved of old by the Greeks and Romans in the time of their utmost power and greatness--"della loro piu florida potenza."' The first stone was laid accordingly, with great pomp, on the 18th of July following, and the work prosecuted with such vigor and with such costliness and utter disregard of expense, that a citizen of Verona, looking on, exclaimed that the republic was taxing her strength too far,--that the united resources of two great monarchs would be insufficient to complete it; a _criticism which the Signoria resented by confining him for two months in prison_, and afterwards conducting him through the public treasury, to teach him that the Florentines could build their whole city of marble, and not one poor steeple only, were they so inclined.