massive church-keys.  In strange contrast to his uncouth garb he flirted a pink Japanese fan, gracefully disposing it to cool his sunburned olive cheeks.  This made us look at him.  He was not ugly.  Nay, there was something of attractive in his face—­the smooth-curved chin, the shrewd yet sleepy eyes, and finely cut thin lips—­a curious mixture of audacity and meekness blent upon his features.  Yet this impression was but the prelude to his smile.  When that first dawned, some breath of humour seeming to stir in him unbidden, the true meaning was given to his face.  Each feature helped to make a smile that was the very soul’s life of the man expressed.  I broadened, showing brilliant teeth, and grew into a noiseless laugh; and then I saw before me Dosso’s jester, the type of Shakspere’s fools, the life of that wild irony, now rude, now fine, which once delighted Courts.  The laughter of the whole world and of all the centuries was silent in his face.  What he said need not be repeated.  The charm was less in his words than in his personality; for Momus-philosophy lay deep in every look and gesture of the man.  The place lent itself to irony:  parties of Americans and English parsons, the former agape for any rubbishy old things, the latter learned in the lore of obsolete Church-furniture, had thronged Torcello; and now they were all gone, and the sun had set behind the Alps, while an irreverent stranger drank his wine in Attila’s chair, and nature’s jester smiled—­Sic Genius.

When I slept that night I dreamed of an altar-piece in the Temple of Folly.  The goddess sat enthroned beneath a canopy hung with bells and corals.  On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who flourished two bright torches.  On her left hand stood the man of Modena with his white lamb, a new S. John.  On her right stood the man of Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter.  Both were laughing after their all-absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was written, Sic Genius.  Are not all things, even profanity, permissible in dreams?

* * * * *

COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO

To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of beauty be accorded?  This question may not unfrequently have moved the idle minds of travellers, wandering through that loveliest region from Orta to Garda—­from little Orta, with her gemlike island, rosy granite crags, and chestnut-covered swards above the Colma; to Garda, bluest of all waters, surveyed in majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione, a silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and clear waves bathed in modulated azure.  And between these extreme points what varied lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, winding Como, Varese with the laughing face upturned to heaven, Lugano overshadowed by the crested crags of Monte Generoso, and Iseo far withdrawn among the rocky Alps!  He who loves immense space,