CHAPTER XXVII
In the centre of the city of Milan is an artificial lake where the Milanise dearly love to go out in beautiful pleasure yots, and in the winter it serves for a skating rink. Milan is noted for its charitable institutions, which owns property to the amount of forty or fifty millions; it is a honor to her. It has flourishing colleges, lyceums, observatories, gymnasiums, famous libraries, institutes and schools of all kinds, and the Academy of Fine Arts is celebrated all over the world. It has a beautiful triumphal arch, begun in 1807 and finished in 1838. They take their own time, them old Milanise do, but when their work is done, it is done.
Josiah thought most probable they worked by the day. Sez he, “Men are most always more shiftless when you pay by the day.”
It has very fine public gardens, and one day we went to the Campo Santo. It is a beautiful spot; they say it has the finest sculpture and statuary in the world. We spent some time wandering around, resting our eyes on the beautiful marble forms on every side.
They wuz a quiet crowd, too; jest as calm and silent as them they kep’ watch over.
Some of the most celebrated pictures in the world are to be seen in the picture galleries at Milan, the Marriage of Mary and Joseph, by Raphael, is considered the most valuable. We went to see the fresco of the Lord’s Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, on the walls of an old convent. But the wall is crumbled and the picture is faded and worn; besides artists have tried to retouch it with just about as much success as Josiah would have if he undertook to paint the sky 323 indigo blue, or Ury tried to improve a white lily with a coat of whitewash. But we loved to look on it for what it wuz before Time’s hand had laid so heavy on it and artists had tried to protect it.
We wuz in Milan over Sunday and so we went to the Cathedral to service, and agin I realized its marvellous beauty and magnitude. Its ruff is supported by fifty-two columns, and it has eight thousand life-sized statutes inside and outside, plenty enough for comfort even if it wuz over-fond of statutes.
The Lazaretto, once used as a plague hospital, is now used as an apartment-house for the poor; it has one thousand two-roomed apartments in it, a city in itself.