Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/79

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77
EARLY ITALIAN WOOD-ENGRAVING.
77

Valor and of Pleasure; again, he lingers among ancient ruins and remembers their perished glory, and falls into reflection, like that Fig. 25.—Mary and the Risen Lord. From "Epistile di San Hieronymo Volgare." Ferrara, 1497. of the traveller whom he describes, "among those venerable monuments which still make Rome the queen of cities; where he sees," thinks Poliphilo, "the hand of Time, which punishes the excess of pride; and, seeking then on the steps of the amphitheatre the heads of the legions and that conquering eagle, that Senate whose decrees made and unmade the kings of the world, those profound historians, those Fig. 26.—St. Baruch. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506. eloquent orators, he finds there only a rabble of beggars, to whom an ignorant and oft-times lying hermit preaches, only altars without honor and saints without a believer; the artist reigns alone in that vast enclosure; pencil in hand, rich with memories, he sees the whole of Rome, her pomp and her glory, in one mutilated block which a fragment of bass-relief adorns." Inspired