nna lies low
to west, the pine-wood stretches away in long monotony to east. There
is nothing else to be seen except the spreading marsh, bounded by dim
snowy Alps and purple Apennines, so very far away that the level rack
of summer clouds seem more attainable and real. What sunsets and
sunrises that tower must see; what glaring lurid afterglows in August,
when the red light scowls upon the pestilential fen; what sheets of
sullen vapour rolling over it in autumn; what breathless heats, and
rainclouds big with thunder; what silences; what unimpeded blasts of
winter winds! One old monk tends this deserted spot. He has the huge
church, with its echoing aisles and marble columns and giddy
bell-tower and cloistered corridors, all to himself. At rare
intervals, priests from Ravenna come to sing some special mass at
these cold altars; pious folk make vows to pray upon their mouldy
steps and kiss the relics which are shown on great occasions. But no
one stays; they hurry, after muttering their prayers, from the
fever-stricken spot, reserving their domestic pieties and customary
devotions for the brighter and newer chapels of the fashionable
churches in Ravenna. So the old monk is left alone to sweep the marsh
water from his church floor, and to keep the green moss from growing
too thickly on its monuments. A clammy conferva covers everything
except the mosaics upon tribune, roof, and clerestory, which defy the
course of age. Christ on His throne _sedet aternumque sedebit_: the
saints around him glitter with their pitiless uncompromising eyes and
wooden gestures, as if twelve centuries had not passed over them, and
they were nightmares only dreamed last night, and rooted in a sick
man's memory. For those gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of
life or end of days. No fever touches them; no dampness of the wind
and rain loosens their firm cement. They stare with senseless faces in
bitter mockery of men who live and die and moulder away beneath. Their
poor old guardian told us it was a wea