girl who, arriving too late at Arles to hear the mass at St. Trophime, cried herself to sleep in the porch. When she awoke it was moonlight, and lo! in order to console her, the carved saints came down out of the portal and said the mass for her. They are so living, those saints, that the fable seems the most natural thing in the world.
And the cloisters within, how melancholy in their peace! And then, across the way, the Museum, with its unparalleled sarcophagi. The finest was discovered—I think in 1890—in digging the new railway across the Camargue. Never have I felt so strongly as in this Museum, as rich in Early Christian as in Classic monuments, the difference between the Pagan and the Christian conception of death. The Roman tombs are carved all over with beautiful and cheerful images, some scene of daily life, some vine-gathering or olive-harvest, perfectly human and natural, as though they would have placed between the sealed eyes of the dead an abiding memory of the pleasantest things on earth. The figures on the Christian coffins have lost their early grace; but these large-headed, large-handed, awkward saints and mourners have an intensity of expression, a pathetic conviction in the reality of a Beyond, which we have not seen before. The Roman mourners look back, the Christian look forward; the vision of the one is all regret and beauty, the other is exalted by an ardent and a yearning faith.
We have not yet done with the tombs of Arles. It was the first of May when we walked through the Alyscamps, and the latest hawthorn bushes were abloom about the Sacred Way. To tell the truth, we were disappointed with the Alyscamps. The railway has come too near to these Elysian fields, sadly narrowing their proportions. The most beautiful sarcophagi are all in the Museum or in St. Trophime. The tombs no longer chequer all the fields beyond, as when Dante wandered among them and thought of Hell; no longer—
“ad Arli ove ’l Rodano stagna ...
Fanno i sepolcri tutto ’l loco varo.”
There is left but one long alley, borders with antique tombs, mostly lidless, obviously empty, shaded by a fringe of plane trees which leads to the ancient church of St. Honorat. This is a quaint, damp, melancholy place, with the raised quire built over the crypt, as at San Miniato. Its round, short pillars, five feet thick, wear an air of sturdy age. Itself appears a tomb. There is a charm in this mouldering old Romanesque church, with its illustrious perspective of the Alyscamps. Yet for a last impression of Arles we would fain go a little further up the hill, through the lovely Public Gardens to the Roman Theatre. Here we will sit on the marble steps awhile, and gaze on the unchangeable elegance of its proportions, serene in ruin, unabated of their dignity, and no less beautiful in their decay.
Adieu, beautiful city! Gallula Roma of the ancients! How different had been the fate of all our western world if Constantine had realised his dream, making of Arles the centre of the Roman empire!