EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 48, 25 January 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

ITALY’S FAMOUS SONS. Few lands have given the world more men of fame. There was Cicero who lived a century before Christ'. There was Mark Antony and Julius Caesar—-shapers of the world. There was Alaric, Iving of the Goths—inseparable from Italian territory. There was Virgil who died at Brindizi in 19 B.C. Passing over a thousand years we find a mail in a cowl and long habit, a man of singular beauty and simplicity. He is St. Francis of Assisi, born in 1182. His'life ran out in 1226, but Italy still holds his name dear, and stones of his sanctity and of his sweet disposition are told to this hour. Who thinks of Italy—or sees its greens plains and blue seas—without thinking of Dante? Born at Florence in 1265, he has a place among the world’s immortals, a poet -whose imagination was truly superb. We may be pardoned for forgetting that Columbus was an Italian by birth, but Genoa never forgets it, any more that Florence forgets that she gave birth to Amerigo Vespucci after whom (in spite of much recent discussion) America is said to be named. But no one forgets two artists of outstanding merit. They were born in towns only a little distance apart, Michael Angelo, a son of Caprese where he was born in 1475, and Raphael who was born at Urbino in 1483. When will their glory fade? Their pictures are among the greatest treasures in Europe.-Their fame can never be dimmed. At Florence in 1498 was burnt Savonarola. At Pisa in 1564 was born Galileo—the man who led the way to a breaking down of the old conceptions of the universe and a building up of our new knowledge. Cremona cherishes the name of Stradivari—the Italian whose, violins are without rivals. Possagno is proud' of its sou, Canova, the amazing sculptor.—(G).