But The
Pedagogues Of Italy Are Like Her Legislators:
Theorists.
They close
their eyes to the cardinal principles of all education - that the waste
products and toxins of the imagination are best eliminated by motor
activities, and that the immature stage of human development, far from
being artificially shortened, should be prolonged by every possible
means. . If the internal arrangement of this institution is not all it
might be as regards the healthy development of youth, the situation of
the college resembles the venerable structures of Oxford in that it is
too good, far too good, for mere youngsters. This building, in its
seclusion from the world, its pastoral surroundings and soul-inspiring
panorama, is an abode not for boys but for philosophers; a place to fill
with a wave of deep content the sage who has outgrown earthly ambitions.
Your eye embraces the snow-clad heights of Dolcedorme and the Ionian
Sea, wandering over forests, and villages, and rivers, and long reaches
of fertile country; but it is not the variety of the scene, nor yet the
historical memories of old Sybaris which kindle the imagination so much
as the spacious amplitude of the whole prospect. In England we think
something of a view of ten miles. Conceive, here, a grandiose valley
wider than from Dover to Calais, filled with an atmosphere of such
impeccable clarity that there are moments when one thinks to see every
stone and every bush on the mountains yonder, thirty miles distant. And
the cloud-effects, towards sunset, are such as would inspire the brush
of Turner or Claude Lorraine. . . .
For the college, as befits its grave academic character, stands by
itself among fruitful fields and backed by a chestnut wood, at ten
minutes' walk from the crowded streets. It is an imposing edifice - the
Basilean convent of St. Adrian, with copious modern additions; the
founders may well have selected this particular site on account of its
fountain of fresh water, which flows on as in days of yore. One thinks
of those communities of monks in the Middle Ages, scattered over this
wild region and holding rare converse with one another by gloomy forest
paths - how remote their life and ideals! In the days of Fiore (1691) the
inmates of this convent still practised their old rites.
The nucleus of the building is the old chapel, containing a remarkable
font; two antique columns sawn up (apparently for purposes of
transportation from some pagan temple by the shore) - one of them being
of African marble and the other of grey granite; there is also a
tessellated pavement with beast-patterns of leopards and serpents akin
to those of Patir. Bertaux gives a reproduction of this serpent; he
assimilates it, as regards technique and age, to that which lies before
the altar of Monte Cassino and was wrought by Greek artisans of the
abbot Desiderius. The church itself is held to be two centuries older
than that of Patir.
The library, once celebrated, contains musty folios of classics and
their commentators, but nothing of value.
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