• The Wheel of Fortune was one of the favorite subjects of art and song in the Middle Ages. On a large square of white marble set in the pavement of the nave of the Cathedral at Siena, is the representation of a revolving wheel. Three boys are climbing and clinging at the sides and below; above is a dignified figure with a stern countenance, holding the sceptre and ball. At the four corners are inscriptions from Seneca, Euripides, Aristotle, and Epictetus. The same symbol may be seen also in the wheel-of-fortune windows of many churches; as, for example, that of San Zcno at Verona. See Knight, Ecclesiastical Architecture , II plates V , VI . In the following poem Guido Cavalcanti treats this subject in Very much the same way that Dante docs; and it is curious to observe how at particular times certain ideas seem to float in the air, and to become the property of every one who chooses to make use of them. From the similarity between this poem and the lines of Dante, one might infer that the two friends had discussed the matter in conversation, and afterwards that each had written out their common thought. Cavalcanti’s “Song of Fortune,” as translated by Rossetti, Early Italian Poets , p. 366, runs as follows:⁠— “Lo! I am she who makes the wheel to turn; Lo!