Do you not wish with me you could stand in the window with
Raffaelle to see the earth as it was then?
No doubt the good folks of Urbino laughed at him often for a
little moonstruck dreamer, so many hours did he stand looking,
looking,--only looking,--as eyes have a right to do that see well
and not altogether as others see. Happily for him, the days of his
childhood were times of peace, and he did not behold, as his
father had done, the torches light up the street and the flames
devour the homesteads.
At this time Urbino was growing into fame for its pottery work:
those big dishes and bowls, those marriage plates and pharmacy
jars which it made, were beginning to rival the products of its
neighbor Gubbio, and when its duke wished to send a bridal gift,
or a present on other festal occasions, he oftenest chose some
service or some rare platter of his own Urbino ware. Now, pottery
had not then taken the high place among the arts of Italy that it
was destined very soon to do. As you will learn when you are
older, after the Greeks and the Christians had exhausted all that
was beautiful in shape and substance of clay vases, the art seemed
to die out, and the potters and the pottery painters died with it,
or at any rate went to sleep for a great many centuries, whilst
soldiers and prelates, nobles and mercenaries, were trampling to
and fro all over the land and disputing it, and carrying fire and
torch, steel and desolation, with them in their quarrels and
covetousness.
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