the woof and weft of vivid pictures of men and women, sung by Petrarch and Dante, or otherwise famous in song and story. Portraits of some of them have come down to us in quaint miniatures and panel pictures, or on frescoed walls of church, or castle, public palace and oratory.

The diplomi, or documentary archives, range in date from the eighth to the nineteenth century, inclusive, and are drawn from sixty-nine different sources. They bear upon every phase of the civil, political, and religious life of the city, commune, and republic of Siena, in peace and in war; internecine strife at home, or conquest and disaster abroad. In conjunction with the magisterial correspondence and records of governmental acts and decrees, they throw a flood of light upon the widespread international relations of the walled city on the Tuscan hills, financial and commercial, no less than political and military.

Documents, or letters, of famous popes, emperors, kings and queens, or other civil and military chieftains and leaders of men in church or state, even of captains of adventure, reveal in a wonderful way, by the will or act recorded, or in a characteristic turn of expression, the personality of each writer. Nor are these human documents limited to the truly great or infamous, as the standards of this world may decide their character. Four long shelves are devoted to original letters, documents, and data of the life and work of St. Catherine, including the bull of her canonization. The memory of that keen humorist, marvellous story-teller, and most successful preacher withal, St. Bernardino, is kept alive by sermons written with his own hand. His quaint figure and sweet face are happily preserved to us in Christian art, and the official estimate of his true sanctity is shown by the bull of his canonization, here treasured.

Among the Sienese archives are letters from many other men, whose holiness or zeal brought them into relations with officials or ecclesiastics of Siena. Thus, Brother Giovannino Torriani, general of the Order of Friars Preachers, writes to the rectors of the commune of Siena, announcing to them that he has commissioned Brother Girolamo Savonarola to visit their city for the purpose of infusing sterner discipline into the minds and hearts of his Dominican brethren of the convent of San Spirito. St. Francis de Sales seeks, by letter, the release of a

invitation of the republic of Siena to preach sermons, through Advent or Lent, in the Sienese country. Three years later, Brother Ambrogio Caterino addresses a letter to the government of Siena, announcing his publication of a brief treatise against the Socinian doctrines of the same Bernardino Ochino. Among the original diplomi, or documents, anterior to the downfall of the republic, are two hundred and sixty-four imperial grants, decrees, or letters- patent, and this series presents a beautiful collection of seals of the emperors, including many Byzantine designs. The archives of Siena are particularly rich in official seals, as well as in numerous impressions, such as are attached to these imperial diplomi. The Sienese have ever shown solicitous care in providing intelligent custodians for their public documents and records, seals, weights and measures, and every other detail of official administration. This was the case as well in the times of the free commune as during the supremacy of the Medicis, who, in so far as the art of government is concerned, preserved the names and forms of the republican offices.

Many interesting and curious documents and letters attest the relations of Siena with military engineers, architects, sculptors, and painters, who served the republic, its citizens and guilds. Much of their work remains to us, and furnishes abundant evidence of that cultivation of the arts which would have rendered Siena a still more wonderful survival in mediæval architecture but for the factional fights and internal dissension that so largely contributed to the loss of independence. Contracts, receipts, letters, declarations of property-ownership, for purposes of taxation, and sometimes ingenious appeals for indirect assistance from the government, reveal the relative prosperity, or improvidence, that the character or circumstances of individual artists developed. The Sienese school of art was unique in Italy, in a distinct, mystic individuality, inspired by religious faith, and never vitiated by the paganizing element in the influence of the Renaissance. I mean to say that, in the treatment of religious subjects, the work of Sienese artists was never marred by that grossness (not to say sensuality) noticeable elsewhere in Italy, particularly at Venice. In the lesser arts Siena produced some remarkable work, as we shall presently see, since I desire, in this article, to call special attention to the

THE PICCOLOMINI PALACE.-PRESENT HOME OF THE ARCHIVES.

Before dwelling upon them it is well to note a series of Dantesque documents, forming original materials illustrative of those whom Dante has seen in vision. Those whose blessed souls the great poet has evoked from Heaven, or whose weird spirits he has conjured up in Purgatory, or Hell, can be viewed,

inating with the very men whom Dante has crowned, or branded with infamy, largely as his prejudices, as a Florentine and a partisan, influenced him to do. This splendid collection would possess an intense human interest, even if not illumined by the genius of Dante's Divina Commedia, rare and early editions of which further enrich this assortment of documents, identified with his heroes and foes.

Besides a vast accumulation of documents and letters, arranged by centuries, years, months, and days, there are thousands of manuscript books of accounts, of vital statistics, of hospital administration, records of the General Council, registers of the great commercial houses and financial companies, or bankers, whose widespread international relations with various parts of Italy, France, England, Germany, and the Orient' brought wealth and fame to Siena. There are There are the complete family records of old feudal lords and their descendants, for hundreds of years, and of the more practical nobility who devoted themselves to trade and finance. Here are hundreds of registers of extinct or suppressed monasteries and convents, once hives of industry, of spiritual life, or missionary effort, now in ruins, or confiscated, as the vicissitudes of time or spoliation by the government of United Italy may have determined the result.

Originally preserved in various localities, these historic archives of Siena now occupy forty-five large rooms of the second and third floors of the Piccolomini Palace, in the Via Ricasoli. This building is in itself a splendid memorial, in stone, of one of Siena's foremost men of the past, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.) This massive structure of the fifteenth century was erected by nephews of the great Pope, whose name it commemorates, from designs of Bernardo Rossellino. It is said that Martino di Giorgio da Varena, a Lombard master, was the first superintendent of works identified with its construction. In his recent History of Siena Mr. Langton Douglas states that Lorenzo di Mariano (known as Marrina), one of the greatest sculptors of that age, made the capitals of the columns of the courtyard of this Piccolomini Palace and other sculptured ornaments for the same building. Mr. Douglas attributes the building of this palace to Pietro Paolo Porrina of Casole, Francesco di Giorgio's rival, and he

THE PICCOLOMINI PALACE.-PRESENT HOME OF THE ARCHIVES.

Before dwelling upon them it is well to note a series of Dantesque documents, forming original materials illustrative of those whom Dante has seen in vision. Those whose blessed souls the great poet has evoked from Heaven, or whose weird spirits he has conjured up in Purgatory, or Hell, can be viewed,