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from childhood
with the pictures and accounts of that remarkable structure, could it be
that my eyes were now really beholding it! In the morning we hastened to
the spot where it stands in connection with three other objects of unusual
interest – the Baptistery, the Campo Santa, and the Cathedral. The
Baptistery erected in the twelfth century is a beautiful building of white
marble, circular and dome-like, relieved in the exterior by fine Corinthian
columns. The exterior is mostly marble, also, and exquisitely finished.
In the centre is a large font, fourteen feet in its longest diameter, adapted
and probably used for the emersion of candidates for baptism.
The large room rising into the high dome, afforded delightful echoes; and
when a few of us sang a part of the hymn
“My heavenly home is bright and fair,
Nor pain nor death shall enter there”
The fullness and prolongation of the sounds were organ-like and charming.
The Campo Santa is a cemetery, an immense oblong structure, with cloisters
extending around it, and the open space within filled with earth, to the
amount of fifty-three ship loads, brought from Calvary. There are numerous
monuments in the cloisters, and some striking frescoes. One of the better,
representing the Last Judgment, has a touch of satire, as well as truth,
no doubt; for the artist has mixed kings and queens and monks with the
wicked. The Cathedral is spacious and splendid. “The doors are of
bronze, the roof is of carved and gilded wood, the floor of marble white
and gallow; statues of exquisite workmanship adorn the walls, while a
dim light spreads through the painted windows, and clothes with a mellowing
softness, the stupendous column”. But I was interested most of all
in the Campanile or Leaning Tower. It is a beautiful marble structure,
fifty-three feet in diameter at the base, one hundred and eighty feet
high, inclining towards the South more than thirteen feet from the perpendicular.
My
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