Identifier: whereghostswalkh00harl (find matches)
Title: Where ghosts walk : the haunts of familiar characters in history and literature
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Harland, Marion, 1830-1922
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : G. P. Putnam
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Walk (When Mt. Morello wears a cap, take acloak.) Villa Careggi is well hidden from thepublic road and eye behind her tall gatesand luxuriant plantations of ilex, willows,and beeches. The gardens through whichwe stroll in a sort of ecstatic trance beforeentering the house, could not have beenmore beautiful when II Magnifico pacedthe alleys, in grave discussion of the Aris-totelian philosophy with a learned Greekguest, or chatted of Florence scandals andexchanged gay repartees with his leastobjectionable favourite, gentle Pico dellaMirandola, seated lovingly beside him onone of the arboured stone benches near thefountain-pool, masked, to-day, with lily-pads. A branchy vine covers the wallcapped by the prettily painted loggia,where Lorenzo used to sit with his friends,overlooking Val dArno, and glimpsingthe Tower of Giotto and the Dome ofBrunelleschi. The thousand odourspressed from the wilderness of flowersbelow by the fall of evening dews, musthave regaled their senses while talk and
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II Magnifico 251 song went on, and when the wind blewfrom the east it would have brought thesweet clangour of bells from theCampanile,the Palazzo Vecchio, and a score of minortowers and steeples. The room in which II Magnifico lan-guished for so many weeks in the springof 1492 that we wonder no story has cometo us, as from the Grand Monarquesdeath-chamber, of sarcastic apology to hiscourtiers for taking such an unconscion-able time in dying, overlooks the loveli-est parterres of the garden. There is modern furniture here, and wegravely suspect that the mural decora-tions commemorative of the glories of theMedici may have been amplified and re-stored since the eagle eyes were blearedwith the weary gazing upon them. Butthe greenery, and the flush of an Aprilrain of blossoms, the fair pleasure-grounds,the tall cypress-bough, and the sheenyolives outlying the garden-walls, the hazydomes and turrets of the Florence he hadbeautified and corrupted, were what wesee through the casement opposi

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