I looked again at Michael Angelo's Fates to-day; but cannot

satisfactorily make out what he meant by them. One of them--she who

holds the distaff--has her mouth open, as if uttering a cry, and might be

fancied to look somewhat irate. The second, who holds the thread, has a

pensive air, but is still, I think, pitiless at heart. The third sister

looks closely and coldly into the eyes of the second, meanwhile cutting

the thread with a pair of shears. Michael Angelo, if I may presume to

say so, wished to vary the expression of these three sisters, and give

each a different one, but did not see precisely how, inasmuch as all the

fatal Three are united, heart and soul, in one purpose. It is a very

impressive group. But, as regards the interpretation of this, or of any

other profound picture, there are likely to be as many interpretations as

there are spectators. It is very curious to read criticisms upon

pictures, and upon the same face in a picture, and by men of taste and

feeling, and to find what different conclusions they arrive at. Each man

interprets the hieroglyphic in his own way; and the painter, perhaps, had

a meaning which none of them have reached; or possibly he put forth a

riddle, without himself knowing the solution. There is such a necessity,

at all events, of helping the painter out with the spectator's own

resources of feeling and imagination, that you can never be sure how much

of the picture you have yourself made. There is no doubt that the public

is, to a certain extent, right and sure of its ground, when it declares,

through a series of ages, that a certain picture is a great work. It is

so; a great symbol, proceeding out of a great mind; but if it means one

thing, it seems to mean a thousand, and, often, opposite things.

June 27th.--I have had a heavy cold and fever almost throughout the past

week, and have thereby lost the great Florentine festivity, the Feast of

St. John, which took place on Thursday last, with the fireworks and

illuminations the evening before, and the races and court ceremonies on

the day itself. However, unless it were more characteristic and peculiar

than the Carnival, I have not missed anything very valuable.

Mr. Powers called to see me one evening, and poured out, as usual, a

stream of talk, both racy and oracular in its character. Speaking of

human eyes, he observed that they did not depend for their expression

upon color, nor upon any light of the soul beaming through them, nor any

glow of the eyeball, nor upon anything but the form and action of the

surrounding muscles. He illustrates it by saying, that if the eye of a

wolf, or of whatever fiercest animal, could be placed in another setting,

it would be found capable of the utmost gentleness of expression. "You

yourself," said he, "have a very bright and sharp look sometimes; but it

is not in the eye itself." His own eyes, as I could have sworn, were

glowing all the time he spoke; and, remembering how many times I have

seemed to see eyes glow, and blaze, and flash, and sparkle, and melt, and

soften; and how all poetry is illuminated with the light of ladies' eyes;

and how many people have been smitten by the lightning of an eye, whether

in love or anger, it was difficult to allow that all this subtlest and

keenest fire is illusive, not even phosphorescent, and that any other

jelly in the same socket would serve as well as the brightest eye.

Nevertheless, he must be right; of course he must, and I am rather

ashamed ever to have thought otherwise. Where should the light come

from? Has a man a flame inside of his head? Does his spirit manifest

itself in the semblance of flame? The moment we think of it, the

absurdity becomes evident. I am not quite sure, however, that the outer

surface of the eye may not reflect more light in some states of feeling

than in others; the state of the health, certainly, has an influence of

this kind.

I asked Powers what he thought of Michael Angelo's statue of Lorenzo de'

Medici. He allowed that its effect was very grand and mysterious; but

added that it owed this to a trick,--the effect being produced by the

arrangement of the hood, as he called it, or helmet, which throws the

upper part of the face into shadow. The niche in which it sits has, I

suppose, its part to perform in throwing a still deeper shadow. It is

very possible that Michael Angelo may have calculated upon this effect of

sombre shadow, and legitimately, I think; but it really is not worthy of

Mr. Powers to say that the whole effect of this mighty statue depends,

not on the positive efforts of Michael Angelo's chisel, but on the

absence of light in a space of a few inches. He wrought the whole statue

in harmony with that small part of it which he leaves to the spectator's

imagination, and if he had erred at any point, the miracle would have

been a failure; so that, working in marble, he has positively reached a

degree of excellence above the capability of marble, sculpturing his

highest touches upon air and duskiness.

Mr. Powers gave some amusing anecdotes of his early life, when he was a

clerk in a store in Cincinnati. There was a museum opposite, the

proprietor of which had a peculiar physiognomy that struck Powers,

insomuch that he felt impelled to make continual caricatures of it. He

used to draw them upon the door of the museum, and became so familiar

with the face, that he could draw them in the dark; so that, every

morning, here was this absurd profile of himself, greeting the museum-man

when he came to open his establishment. Often, too, it would reappear

within an hour after it was rubbed out. The man was infinitely annoyed,

and made all possible efforts to discover the unknown artist, but in

vain; and finally concluded, I suppose, that the likeness broke out upon

the door of its own accord, like the nettle-rash. Some years afterwards,

the proprietor of the museum engaged Powers himself as an assistant; and

one day Powers asked him if he remembered this mysterious profile.

"Yes," said he, "did you know who drew them?" Powers took a piece of

chalk, and touched off the very profile again, before the man's eyes.

"Ah," said he, "if I had known it at the time, I would have broken every

bone in your body!"

Before he began to work in marble, Powers had greater practice and

success in making wax figures, and he produced a work of this kind called

"The Infernal Regions," which he seemed to imply had been very famous.

He said he once wrought a face in wax which was life itself, having made

the eyes on purpose for it, and put in every hair in the eyebrows

individually, and finished the whole with similar minuteness; so that,

within the distance of a foot or two, it was impossible to tell that the

face did not live.

I have hardly ever before felt an impulse to write down a man's

conversation as I do that of Mr. Powers. The chief reason is, probably,

that it is so possible to do it, his ideas being square, solid, and

tangible, and therefore readily grasped and retained. He is a very

instructive man, and sweeps one's empty and dead notions out of the way

with exceeding vigor; but when you have his ultimate thought and

perception, you feel inclined to think and see a little further for

yourself. He sees too clearly what is within his range to be aware of

any region of mystery beyond. Probably, however, this latter remark does

him injustice. I like the man, and am always glad to encounter the

mill-stream of his talk. . . . . Yesterday he met me in the street

(dressed in his linen blouse and slippers, with a little bit of a

sculptor's cap on the side of his head), and gave utterance to a theory

of colds, and a dissertation on the bad effects of draughts, whether of

cold air or hot, and the dangers of transfusing blood from the veins of

one living subject to those of another. On the last topic, he remarked

that, if a single particle of air found its way into the veins, along

with the transfused blood, it caused convulsions and inevitable death;

otherwise the process might be of excellent effect.

Last evening, we went to pass the evening with Miss Blagden, who inhabits

a villa at Bellosguardo, about a mile outside of the walls. The

situation is very lofty, and there are good views from every window of

the house, and an especially fine one of Florence and the hills beyond,

from the balcony of the drawing-room. By and by came Mr. Browning, Mr.

Trollope, Mr. Boott and his young daughter, and two or three other

gentlemen. . . . .

Browning was very genial and full of life, as usual, but his conversation

has the effervescent aroma which you cannot catch, even if you get the

very words that seem to be imbued with it. He spoke most rapturously of

a portrait of Mrs. Browning, which an Italian artist is painting for the

wife of an American gentleman, as a present from her husband. The

success was already perfect, although there had been only two sittings as

yet, and both on the same day; and in this relation, Mr. Browning

remarked that P------, the American artist, had had no less than

seventy-three sittings of him for a portrait. In the result, every hair

and speck of him was represented; yet, as I inferred from what he did not

say, this accumulation of minute truths did not, after all, amount to the

true whole.

I do not remember much else that Browning said, except a playful abuse of

a little King Charles spaniel, named Frolic, Miss Blagden's lap-dog,

whose venerable age (he is eleven years old) ought to have pleaded in his

behalf. Browning's nonsense is of very genuine and excellent quality,

the true babble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he

lets it play among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child.

He must be an amiable man. I should like him much, and should make him

like me, if opportunities were favorable.

I conversed principally with Mr. Trollope, the son, I believe, of the

Mrs. Trollope to whom America owes more for her shrewd criticisms than we

are ever likely to repay. Mr. Trollope is a very sensible and cultivated

man, and, I suspect, an author: at least, there is a literary man of

repute of this name, though I have never read his works. He has resided

in Italy eighteen years. It seems a pity to do this. It needs the

native air to give life a reality; a truth which I do not fail to take

home regretfully to myself, though without feeling much inclination to go

back to the realities of my own.

We had a pleasant cup of tea, and took a moonlight view of Florence from

the balcony. . . . .

June 28th.--Yesterday afternoon, J----- and I went to a horse-race, which

took place in the Corso and contiguous line of streets, in further

celebration of the Feast of St. John. A crowd of people was already

collected, all along the line of the proposed race, as early as six

o'clock; and there were a great many carriages driving amid the throng,

open barouches mostly, in which the beauty and gentility of Florence were

freely displayed. It was a repetition of the scene in the Corso at Rome,

at Carnival time, without the masks, the fun, and the confetti. The

Grand Duke and Duchess and the Court likewise made their appearance in as

many as seven or eight coaches-and-six, each with a coachman, three

footmen, and a postilion in the royal livery, and attended by a troop of

horsemen in scarlet coats and cocked hats. I did not particularly notice

the Grand Duke himself; but, in the carriage behind him, there sat only a

lady, who favored the people along the street with a constant succession

of bows, repeated at such short intervals, and so quickly, as to be

little more than nods; therefore not particularly graceful or majestic.

Having the good fortune, to be favored with one of these nods, I lifted

my hat in response, and may therefore claim a bowing acquaintance with

the Grand Duchess. She is a Bourbon of the Naples family, and was a

pale, handsome woman, of princely aspect enough. The crowd evinced no

enthusiasm, nor the slightest feeling of any kind, in acknowledgment of

the presence of their rulers; and, indeed, I think I never saw a crowd so

well behaved; that is, with so few salient points, so little ebullition,

so absolutely tame, as the Florentine one. After all, and much contrary

to my expectations, an American crowd has incomparably more life than any

other; and, meeting on any casual occasion, it will talk, laugh, roar,

and be diversified with a thousand characteristic incidents and gleams

and shadows, that you see nothing of here. The people seems to have no

part even in its own gatherings. It comes together merely as a mass of

spectators, and must not so much as amuse itself by any activity of mind.

The race, which was the attraction that drew us all together, turned out

a very pitiful affair. When we had waited till nearly dusk, the street

being thronged quite across, insomuch that it seemed impossible that it

should be cleared as a race-course, there came suddenly from every throat

a quick, sharp exclamation, combining into a general shout. Immediately

the crowd pressed back on each side of the street; a moment afterwards,

there was a rapid pattering of hoofs over the earth with which the

pavement was strewn, and I saw the head and back of a horse rushing past.

A few seconds more, and another horse followed; and at another little

interval, a third. This was all that we had waited for; all that I saw,

or anybody else, except those who stood on the utmost verge of the

course, at the risk of being trampled down and killed. Two men were

killed in this way on Thursday, and certainly human life was never spent

for a poorer object. The spectators at the windows, to be sure, having

the horses in sight for a longer time, might get a little more enjoyment

out of the affair. By the by, the most picturesque aspect of the scene

was the life given to it by the many faces, some of them fair ones, that

looked out from window and balcony, all along the curving line of lofty

palaces and edifices, between which the race-course lay; and from nearly

every window, and over every balcony, was flung a silken texture, or

cloth of brilliant line, or piece of tapestry or carpet, or whatever

adornment of the kind could be had, so as to dress up the street in gala

attire. But, the Feast of St. John, like the Carnival, is but a meagre

semblance of festivity, kept alive factitiously, and dying a lingering

death of centuries. It takes the exuberant mind and heart of a people to

keep its holidays alive.

I do not know whether there be any populace in Florence, but I saw none

that I recognized as such, on this occasion. All the people were

respectably dressed and perfectly well behaved; and soldiers and priests

were scattered abundantly among the throng. On my way home, I saw the

Teatro Goldoni, which is in our own street, lighted up for a

representation this Sunday evening. It shocked my New England prejudices

a little.

Thus forenoon, my wife and I went to the Church of Santa Croce, the great

monumental deposit of Florentine worthies. The piazza before it is a

wide, gravelled square, where the liberty of Florence, if it really ever

had any genuine liberty, came into existence some hundreds of years ago,

by the people's taking its own rights into its hands, and putting its own

immediate will in execution. The piazza has not much appearance of

antiquity, except that the facade of one of the houses is quite covered

with ancient frescos, a good deal faded and obliterated, yet with traces

enough of old glory to show that the colors must have been well laid on.

The front of the church, the foundation of which was laid six centuries

ago, is still waiting for its casing of marbles, and I suppose will wait

forever, though a carpenter's staging is now erected before it, as if

with the purpose of doing something.

The interior is spacious, the length of the church being between four and

five hundred feet. There is a nave, roofed with wooden cross-beams,

lighted by a clere-story and supported on each side by seven great

pointed arches, which rest upon octagonal pillars. The octagon seems to

be a favorite shape in Florence. These pillars were clad in yellow and

scarlet damask, in honor of the Feast of St. John. The aisles, on each

side of the nave, are lighted with high and somewhat narrow windows of

painted glass, the effect of which, however, is much diminished by the

flood of common daylight that comes in through the windows of the

clere-story. It is like admitting too much of the light of reason and

worldly intelligence into the mind, instead of illuminating it wholly

through a religious medium. The many-hued saints and angels lose their

mysterious effulgence, when we get white light enough, and find we see

all the better without their help.

The main pavement of the church is brickwork; but it is inlaid with many

sepulchral slabs of marble, on some of which knightly or priestly figures

are sculptured in bas-relief. In both of the side aisles there are

saintly shrines, alternating with mural monuments, some of which record

names as illustrious as any in the world. As you enter, the first

monument, on your right is that of Michael Angelo, occupying the ancient

burial-site of his family. The general design is a heavy sarcophagus of

colored marble, with the figures of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture

as mourners, and Michael Angelo's bust above, the whole assuming a

pyramidal form. You pass a shrine, within its framework of marble

pillars and a pediment, and come next to Dante's monument, a modern work,

with likewise its sarcophagus, and some huge, cold images weeping and

sprawling over it, and an unimpressive statue of Dante sitting above.

Another shrine intervenes, and next you see the tomb of Alfieri, erected

to his memory by the Countess of Albany, who pays, out of a woman's love,

the honor which his country owed him. Her own monument is in one of the

chapels of the transept.

Passing the next shrine you see the tomb of Macchiavelli, which, I think,

was constructed not many years after his death. The rest of the

monuments, on this side of the church, commemorate people of less than

world-wide fame; and though the opposite side has likewise a monument

alternating with each shrine, I remember only the names of Raphael

Morghen and of Galileo. The tomb of the latter is over against that of

Michael Angelo, being the first large tomb on the left-hand wall as you

enter the church. It has the usual heavy sarcophagus, surmounted by a

bust of Galileo, in the habit of his time, and is, of course, duly

provided with mourners in the shape of Science or Astronomy, or some such

cold-hearted people. I wish every sculptor might be at once imprisoned

for life who shall hereafter chisel an allegoric figure; and as for those

who have sculptured them heretofore, let them be kept in purgatory till

the marble shall have crumbled away. It is especially absurd to assign

to this frozen sisterhood of the allegoric family the office of weeping

for the dead, inasmuch as they have incomparably less feeling than a lump

of ice, which might contrive to shed a tear if the sun shone on it. But

they seem to let themselves out, like the hired mourners of an English

funeral, for the very reason that, having no interest in the dead person,

nor any affections or emotions whatever, it costs them no wear and tear

of heart.

All round both transepts of the church there is a series of chapels, into

most of which we went, and generally found an inscrutably dark picture

over the altar, and often a marble bust or two, or perhaps a mediaeval

statue of a saint or a modern monumental bas-relief in marble, as white

as new-fallen snow. A chapel of the Bonapartes is here, containing

memorials of two female members of the family. In several chapels,

moreover, there were some of those distressing frescos, by Giotto,

Cimabue, or their compeers, which, whenever I see them,--poor, faded

relics, looking as if the Devil had been rubbing and scrubbing them for

centuries, in spite against the saints,--my heart sinks and my stomach

sickens. There is no other despondency like this; it is a new shade of

human misery, akin to the physical disease that comes from dryrot in a

wall. These frescos are to a church what dreary, old remembrances are to

a mind; the drearier because they were once bright: Hope fading into

Disappointment, Joy into Grief, and festal splendor passing into funereal

duskiness, and saddening you all the more by the grim identity that you

find to exist between gay things and sorrowful ones. Only wait long

enough, and they turn out to be the very same.

All the time we were in the church some great religious ceremony had been

going forward; the organ playing and the white-robed priests bowing,

gesticulating, and making Latin prayers at the high altar, where at least

a hundred wax tapers were burning in constellations. Everybody knelt,

except ourselves, yet seemed not to be troubled by the echoes of our

passing footsteps, nor to require that we should pray along with them.

They consider us already lost irrevocably, no doubt, and therefore right

enough in taking no heed of their devotions; not but what we took so much

heed, however, as to give the smallest possible disturbance. By and by

we sat down in the nave of the church till the ceremony should be

concluded; and then my wife left me to go in quest of yet another chapel,

where either Cimabue or Giotto, or both, have left some of their now

ghastly decorations. While she was gone I threw my eyes about the

church, and came to the conclusion that, in spite of its antiquity, its

size, its architecture, its painted windows, its tombs of great men, and

all the reverence and interest that broods over them, it is not an

impressive edifice. Any little Norman church in England would impress me

as much, and more. There is something, I do not know what, but it is in

the region of the heart, rather than in the intellect, that Italian

architecture, of whatever age or style, never seems to reach.

Leaving the Santa Croce, we went next in quest of the Riccardi Palace.

On our way, in the rear of the Grand Ducal Piazza, we passed by the

Bargello, formerly the palace of the Podesta of Florence, and now

converted into a prison. It is an immense square edifice of dark stone,

with a tall, lank tower rising high above it at one corner. Two stone

lions, symbols of the city, lash their tails and glare at the passers-by;

and all over the front of the building windows are scattered irregularly,

and grated with rusty iron bars; also there are many square holes, which

probably admit a little light and a breath or two of air into prisoners'

cells. It is a very ugly edifice, but looks antique, and as if a vast

deal of history might have been transacted within it, or have beaten,

like fierce blasts, against its dark, massive walls, since the thirteenth

century. When I first saw the city it struck me that there were few

marks of antiquity in Florence; but I am now inclined to think otherwise,

although the bright Italian atmosphere, and the general squareness and

monotony of the Italian architecture, have their effect in apparently

modernizing everything. But everywhere we see the ponderous Tuscan

basements that never can decay, and which will look, five hundred years

hence, as they look now; and one often passes beneath an abbreviated

remnant of what was once a lofty tower, perhaps three hundred feet high,

such as used to be numerous in Florence when each noble of the city had

his own warfare to wage; and there are patches of sculpture that look old

on houses, the modern stucco of which causes them to look almost new.

Here and there an unmistakable antiquity stands in its own impressive

shadow; the Church of Or San Michele, for instance, once a market, but

which grew to be a church by some inherent fitness and inevitable

consecration. It has not the least the aspect of a church, being high

and square, like a mediaeval palace; but deep and high niches are let

into its walls, within which stand great statues of saints, masterpieces

of Donatello, and other sculptors of that age, before sculpture began to

be congealed by the influence of Greek art.

The Riccardi Palace is at the corner of the Via Larga. It was built by

the first Cosmo de' Medici, the old banker, more than four centuries ago,

and was long the home of the ignoble race of princes which he left behind

him. It looks fit to be still the home of a princely race, being nowise

dilapidated nor decayed externally, nor likely to be so, its high Tuscan

basement being as solid as a ledge of rock, and its upper portion not

much less so, though smoothed into another order of stately architecture.

Entering its court from the Via Larga, we found ourselves beneath a

pillared arcade, passing round the court like a cloister; and on the

walls of the palace, under this succession of arches, were statues,

bas-reliefs, and sarcophagi, in which, first, dead Pagans had slept, and

then dead Christians, before the sculptured coffins were brought hither

to adorn the palace of the Medici. In the most prominent place was a

Latin inscription of great length and breadth, chiefly in praise of old

Cosino and his deeds and wisdom. This mansion gives the visitor a

stately notion of the life of a commercial man in the days when merchants

were princes; not that it seems to be so wonderfully extensive, nor so

very grand, for I suppose there are a dozen Roman palaces that excel it

in both these particulars. Still, we cannot but be conscious that it

must have been, in some sense, a great man who thought of founding a

homestead like this, and was capable of filling it with his personality,

as the hand fills a glove. It has been found spacious enough, since

Cosmo's time, for an emperor and a pope and a king, all of whom have been

guests in this house. After being the family mansion of the Medici for

nearly two centuries, it was sold to the Riccardis, but was subsequently

bought of then by the government, and it is now occupied by public

offices and societies.

After sufficiently examining the court and its antiquities, we ascended a

noble staircase that passes, by broad flights and square turns, to the

region above the basement. Here the palace is cut up and portioned off

into little rooms and passages, and everywhere there were desks,

inkstands, and men, with pens in their fingers or behind their ears. We

were shown into a little antique chapel, quite covered with frescos in

the Giotto style, but painted by a certain Gozzoli. They were in pretty

good preservation, and, in fact, I am wrong in comparing them to Giotto's

works, inasmuch as there must have been nearly two hundred years between

the two artists. The chapel was furnished with curiously carved old

chairs, and looked surprisingly venerable within its little precinct.

We were next guided into the grand gallery, a hall of respectable size,

with a frescoed ceiling, on which is represented the blue sky, and

various members of the Medici family ascending through it by the help of

angelic personages, who seem only to have waited for their society to be

perfectly happy. At least, this was the meaning, so far as I could

make it out. Along one side of the gallery were oil-pictures on

looking-glasses, rather good than otherwise; but Rome, with her palaces

and villas, takes the splendor out of all this sort of thing elsewhere.

On our way home, and on our own side of the Ponte Vecchio, we passed the

Palazzo Guicciardini, the ancient residence of the historian of Italy,

who was a politic statesman of his day, and probably as cruel and

unprincipled as any of those whose deeds he has recorded. Opposite,

across the narrow way, stands the house of Macchiavelli, who was his

friend, and, I should judge, an honester man than he. The house is

distinguished by a marble tablet, let into the wall, commemorative of

Macchiavelli, but has nothing antique or picturesque about it, being in a

continuous line with other smooth-faced and stuccoed edifices.

June 30th.--Yesterday, at three o'clock P. M., I went to see the final

horse-race of the Feast of St. John, or rather to see the concourse of

people and grandees whom it brought together. I took my stand in the

vicinity of the spot whence the Grand Duke and his courtiers view the

race, and from this point the scene was rather better worth looking at

than from the street-corners whence I saw it before. The vista of the

street, stretching far adown between two rows of lofty edifices, was

really gay and gorgeous with the silks, damasks, and tapestries of all

bright hues, that flaunted from windows and balconies, whence ladies

looked forth and looked down, themselves making the liveliest part of the

show. The whole capacity of the street swarmed with moving heads,

leaving scarce room enough for the carriages, which, as on Sunday, passed

up and down, until the signal for the race was given. Equipages, too,

were constantly arriving at the door of the building which communicates

with the open loggia, where the Grand Ducal party sit to see and to be

seen. Two sentinels were standing at the door, and presented arms as

each courtier or ambassador, or whatever dignity it might be, alighted.

Most of them had on gold-embroidered court-dresses; some of them had

military uniforms, and medals in abundance at the breast; and ladies also

came, looking like heaps of lace and gauze in the carriages, but lightly

shaking themselves into shape as they went up the steps. By and by a

trumpet sounded, a drum beat, and again appeared a succession of half a

dozen royal equipages, each with its six horses, its postilion, coachman,

and three footmen, grand with cocked hats and embroidery; and the

gray-headed, bowing Grand Duke and his nodding Grand Duchess as before.

The Noble Guard ranged themselves on horseback opposite the loggia; but

there was no irksome and impertinent show of ceremony and restraint upon

the people. The play-guard of volunteer soldiers, who escort the

President of the United States in his Northern progresses, keep back

their fellow-citizens much more sternly and immitigably than the

Florentine guard kept back the populace from its despotic sovereign.

This morning J----- and I have been to the Uffizi gallery. It was his

first visit there, and he passed a sweeping condemnation upon everything

he saw, except a fly, a snail-shell, a caterpillar, a lemon, a piece of

bread, and a wineglass, in some of the Dutch pictures. The Venus de'

Medici met with no sort of favor. His feeling of utter distaste reacted

upon me, and I was sensible of the same weary lack of appreciation that

used to chill me through, in my earlier visits to picture-galleries; the

same doubt, moreover, whether we do not bamboozle ourselves in the

greater part of the admiration which we learn to bestow. I looked with

some pleasure at one of Correggio's Madonnas in the Tribune,--no divine

and deep-thoughted mother of the Saviour, but a young woman playing with

her first child, as gay and thoughtless as itself. I looked at Michael

Angelo's Madonna, in which William Ware saw such prophetic depth of

feeling; but I suspect it was one of the many instances in which the

spectator sees more than the painter ever dreamed of.

Straying through the city, after leaving the gallery, we went into the

Church of Or San Michele, and saw in its architecture the traces of its

transformation from a market into a church. In its pristine state it

consisted of a double row of three great open arches, with the wind

blowing through them, and the sunshine falling aslantwise into them,

while the bustle of the market, the sale of fish, flesh, or fruit went on

within, or brimmed over into the streets that enclosed them on every

side. But, four or five hundred years ago, the broad arches were built

up with stone-work; windows were pierced through and filled with painted

glass; a high altar, in a rich style of pointed Gothic, was raised;

shrines and confessionals were set up; and here it is, a solemn and

antique church, where a man may buy his salvation instead of his dinner.

At any rate, the Catholic priests will insure it to him, and take the

price. The sculpture within the beautifully decorated niches, on the

outside of the church, is very curious and interesting. The statues of

those old saints seem to have that charm of earnestness which so attracts

the admirers of the Pre-Raphaelite painters.

It appears that a picture of the Virgin used to hang against one of the

pillars of the market-place while it was still a market, and in the year

1291 several miracles were wrought by it, insomuch that a chapel was

consecrated for it. So many worshippers came to the shrine that the

business of the market was impeded, and ultimately the Virgin and St.

Michael won the whole space for themselves. The upper part of the

edifice was at that time a granary, and is still used for other than

religious purposes. This church was one spot to which the inhabitants

betook themselves much for refuge and divine assistance during the great

plague described by Boccaccio.

July 2d.--We set out yesterday morning to visit the Palazzo Buonarotti,

Michael Angelo's ancestral home. . . . . It is in the Via Ghibellina, an

ordinary-looking, three-story house, with broad-brimmed eaves, a stuccoed

front, and two or three windows painted in fresco, besides the real ones.

Adown the street, there is a glimpse of the hills outside of Florence.

The sun shining heavily directly upon the front, we rang the door-bell,

and then drew back into the shadow that fell from the opposite side of

the street. After we had waited some time a man looked out from an upper

window, and a woman from a lower one, and informed us that we could not

be admitted now, nor for two or three months to come, the house being

under repairs. It is a pity, for I wished to see Michael Angelo's sword

and walking-stick and old slippers, and whatever other of his closest

personalities are to be shown. . . . .

We passed into the Piazza of the Grand Duke, and looked into the court of

the Palazzo Vecchio, with its beautifully embossed pillars; and, seeing

just beyond the court a staircase of broad and easy steps, we ascended it

at a venture. Upward and upward we went, flight after flight of stairs,

and through passages, till at last we found an official who ushered us

into a large saloon. It was the Hall of Audience. Its heavily embossed

ceiling, rich with tarnished gold, was a feature of antique magnificence,

and the only one that it retained, the floor being paved with tiles and

the furniture scanty or none. There were, however, three cabinets

standing against the walls, two of which contained very curious and

exquisite carvings and cuttings in ivory; some of them in the Chinese

style of hollow, concentric balls; others, really beautiful works of art:

little crucifixes, statues, saintly and knightly, and cups enriched with

delicate bas-reliefs. The custode pointed to a small figure of St.

Sebastian, and also to a vase around which the reliefs seemed to assume

life. Both these specimens, he said, were by Benvenuto Cellini, and

there were many others that might well have been wrought by his famous

hand. The third cabinet contained a great number and variety of

crucifixes, chalices, and whatever other vessels are needed in altar

service, exquisitely carved out of amber. They belong to the chapel of

the palace, and into this holy closet we were now conducted. It is large

enough to accommodate comfortably perhaps thirty worshippers, and is

quite covered with frescos by Ghirlandaio in good preservation, and with

remnants enough of gilding and bright color to show how splendid the

chapel must have been when the Medicean Grand Dukes used to pray here.

The altar is still ready for service, and I am not sure that some of the

wax tapers were not burning; but Lorenzo the Magnificent was nowhere to

be seen.

The custode now led us back through the Hall of Audience into a smaller

room, hung with pictures chiefly of the Medici and their connections,

among whom was one Carolina, an intelligent and pretty child, and Bianca

Capella.

There was nothing else to show us, except a very noble and most spacious

saloon, lighted by two large windows at each end, coming down level with

the floor, and by a row of windows on one side just beneath the cornice.

A gilded framework divides the ceiling into squares, circles, and

octagons, the compartments of which are filled with pictures in oil; and

the walls are covered with immense frescos, representing various battles

and triumphs of the Florentines. Statues by Michael Angelo, John of

Bologna, and Bandinello, as well historic as ideal, stand round the hall,

and it is really a fit theatre for the historic scenes of a country to be

acted in. It was built, moreover, with the idea of its being the

council-hall of a free people; but our own little Faneuil, which was

meant, in all simplicity, to be merely a spot where the townspeople

should meet to choose their selectmen, has served the world better in

that respect. I wish I had more room to speak of this vast, dusky,

historic hall. [This volume of journal closes here.]

July 4th 1858.--Yesterday forenoon we went to see the Church of Santa

Maria Novella. We found the piazza, on one side of which the church

stands, encumbered with the amphitheatrical ranges of wooden seats that

had been erected to accommodate the spectators of the chariot-races, at

the recent Feast of St. John. The front of the church is composed of

black and white marble, which, in the course of the five centuries that

it has been built, has turned brown and yellow. On the right hand, as

you approach, is a long colonnade of arches, extending on a line with the

facade, and having a tomb beneath every arch. This colonnade forms one

of the enclosing walls of a cloister. We found none of the front

entrances open, but on our left, in a wall at right angles with the

church, there was an open gateway, approaching which, we saw, within the

four-sided colonnade, an enclosed green space of a cloister. This is

what is called the Chiostro Verde, so named from the prevailing color of

the frescos with which the walls beneath the arches are adorned.

This cloister is the reality of what I used to imagine when I saw the

half-ruinous colonnades connected with English cathedrals, or endeavored

to trace out the lines along the broken wall of some old abbey. Not that

this extant cloister, still perfect and in daily use for its original

purposes, is nearly so beautiful as the crumbling ruin which has ceased

to be trodden by monkish feet for more than three centuries. The

cloister of Santa Maria has not the seclusion that is desirable, being

open, by its gateway, to the public square; and several of the neighbors,

women as well as men, were loitering within its precincts. The convent,

however, has another and larger cloister, which I suppose is kept free

from interlopers. The Chiostro Verde is a walk round the four sides of a

square, beneath an arched and groined roof. One side of the walk looks

upon an enclosed green space with a fountain or a tomb (I forget which)

in the centre; the other side is ornamented all along with a succession

of ancient frescos, representing subjects of Scripture history. In the

days when the designs were more distinct than now, it must have been a

very effective way for a monk to read Bible history, to see its

personages and events thus passing visibly beside him in his morning and

evening walks. Beneath the frescos on one side of the cloistered walk,

and along the low stone parapet that separates it from the grass-plat on

the other, are inscriptions to the memory of the dead who are buried

underneath the pavement. The most of these were modern, and recorded the

names of persons of no particular note. Other monumental slabs were

inlaid with the pavement itself. Two or three Dominican monks, belonging

to the convent, passed in and out, while we were there, in their white

habits.

After going round three sides, we came to the fourth, formed by the wall

of the church, and heard the voice of a priest behind a curtain that fell

down before a door. Lifting it aside, we went in, and found ourselves in

the ancient chapter-house, a large interior formed by two great pointed

arches crossing one another in a groined roof. The broad spaces of the

walls were entirely covered with frescos that are rich even now, and must

have glowed with an inexpressible splendor, when fresh from the artists'

hands, five hundred years ago. There is a long period, during which

frescos illuminate a church or a hall in a way that no other adornment

can; when this epoch of brightness is past, they become the dreariest

ghosts of perished magnificence. . . . . This chapter-house is the only

part of the church that is now used for the purposes of public worship.

There are several confessionals, and two chapels or shrines, each with

its lighted tapers. A priest performed mass while we were there, and

several persons, as usual, stepped in to do a little devotion, either

praying on their own account, or uniting with the ceremony that was going

forward. One man was followed by two little dogs, and in the midst of

his prayers, as one of the dogs was inclined to stray about the church,

he kept snapping his fingers to call him back. The cool, dusky

refreshment of these holy places, affording such a refuge from the hot

noon of the streets and piazzas, probably suggests devotional ideas to

the people, and it may be, when they are praying, they feel a breath of

Paradise fanning them. If we could only see any good effects in their

daily life, we might deem it an excellent thing to be able to find

incense and a prayer always ascending, to which every individual may join

his own. I really wonder that the Catholics are not better men and

women.

When we had looked at the old frescos, . . . . we emerged into the

cloister again, and thence ventured into a passage which would have led

us to the Chiostro Grande, where strangers, and especially ladies,

have no right to go. It was a secluded corridor, very neatly kept,

bordered with sepulchral monuments, and at the end appeared a vista of

cypress-trees, which indeed were but an illusory perspective, being

painted in fresco. While we loitered along the sacristan appeared and

offered to show us the church, and led us into the transept on the right

of the high altar, and ushered us into the sacristy, where we found two

artists copying some of Fra Angelico's pictures. These were painted on

the three wooden leaves of a triptych, and, as usual, were glorified with

a great deal of gilding, so that they seemed to float in the brightness

of a heavenly element. Solomon speaks of "apples of gold in pictures of

silver." The pictures of Fra Angelico, and other artists of that age,

are really pictures of gold; and it is wonderful to see how rich the

effect, and how much delicate beauty is attained (by Fra Angelico at

least) along with it. His miniature-heads appear to me much more

successful than his larger ones. In a monkish point of view, however,

the chief value of the triptych of which I am speaking does not lie in

the pictures, for they merely serve as the framework of some relics,

which are set all round the edges of the three leaves. They consist of

little bits and fragments of bones, and of packages carefully tied up in

silk, the contents of which are signified in Gothic letters appended to

each parcel. The sacred vessels of the church are likewise kept in the

sacristy. . . . .

Re-entering the transept, our guide showed us the chapel of the Strozzi

family, which is accessible by a flight of steps from the floor of the

church. The walls of this chapel are covered with frescos by Orcagna,

representing around the altar the Last Judgment, and on one of the walls

heaven and the assembly of the blessed, and on the other, of course,

hell. I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation; but, at all

events, it was purgatory to look at it. . . . .

We next passed into the choir, which occupies the extreme end of the

church behind the great square mass of the high altar, and is surrounded

with a double row of ancient oaken seats of venerable shape and carving.

The choir is illuminated by a threefold Gothic window, full of richly

painted glass, worth all the frescos that ever stained a wall or ceiling;

but these walls, nevertheless, are adorned with frescos by Ghirlandaio,

and it is easy to see must once have made a magnificent appearance. I

really was sensible of a sad and ghostly beauty in many of the figures;

but all the bloom, the magic of the painter's touch, his topmost art,

have long ago been rubbed off, the white plaster showing through the

colors in spots, and even in large spaces. Any other sort of ruin

acquires a beauty proper to its decay, and often superior to that of its

pristine state; but the ruin of a picture, especially of a fresco, is

wholly unredeemed; and, moreover, it dies so slowly that many generations

are likely to be saddened by it.

We next saw the famous picture of the Virgin by Cimabue, which was deemed

a miracle in its day, . . . . and still brightens the sombre walls with

the lustre of its gold ground. As to its artistic merits, it seems to me

that the babe Jesus has a certain air of state and dignity; but I could

see no charm whatever in the broad-faced Virgin, and it would relieve my

mind and rejoice my spirit if the picture were borne out of the church in

another triumphal procession (like the one which brought it there), and

reverently burnt. This should be the final honor paid to all human works

that have served a good office in their day, for when their day is

over, if still galvanized into false life, they do harm instead of good.

. . . . The interior of Santa Maria Novella is spacious and in the Gothic

style, though differing from English churches of that order of

architecture. It is not now kept open to the public, nor were any of the

shrines and chapels, nor even the high altar itself, adorned and lighted

for worship. The pictures that decorated the shrines along the side

aisles have been removed, leaving bare, blank spaces of brickwork, very

dreary and desolate to behold. This is almost worse than a black

oil-painting or a faded fresco. The church was much injured by the

French, and afterwards by the Austrians, both powers having quartered

their troops within the holy precincts. Its old walls, however, are yet

stalwart enough to outlast another set of frescos, and to see the

beginning and the end of a new school of painting as long-lived as

Cimabue's. I should be sorry to have the church go to decay, because it

was here that Boccaccio's dames and cavaliers encountered one another,

and formed their plan of retreating into the country during the

plague. . . . .

At the door we bought a string of beads, with a small crucifix appended,

in memory of the place. The beads seem to be of a grayish, pear-shaped

seed, and the seller assured us that they were the tears of St. Job.

They were cheap, probably because Job shed so many tears in his lifetime.

It being still early in the day, we went to the Uffizi gallery, and after

loitering a good while among the pictures, were so fortunate as to find

the room of the bronzes open. The first object that attracted us was

John of Bologna's Mercury, poising himself on tiptoe, and looking not

merely buoyant enough to float, but as if he possessed more than the

eagle's power of lofty flight. It seems a wonder that he did not

absolutely fling himself into the air when the artist gave him the last

touch. No bolder work was ever achieved; nothing so full of life has

been done since. I was much interested, too, in the original little wax

model, two feet high, of Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus. The wax seems to

be laid over a wooden framework, and is but roughly finished off. . . . .

In an adjoining room are innumerable specimens of Roman and Etruscan

bronzes, great and small. A bronze Chimera did not strike me as very

ingeniously conceived, the goat's head being merely an adjunct, growing

out of the back of the monster, without possessing any original and

substantive share in its nature. The snake's head is at the end of the

tail. The object most really interesting was a Roman eagle, the standard

of the Twenty-fourth Legion, about the size of a blackbird.

July 8th.--On the 6th we went to the Church of the Annunziata, which

stands in the piazza of the same name. On the corner of the Via dei

Servi is the palace which I suppose to be the one that Browning makes the

scene of his poem, "The Statue and the Bust," and the statue of Duke

Ferdinand sits stately on horseback, with his face turned towards the

window, where the lady ought to appear. Neither she nor the bust,

however, was visible, at least not to my eyes. The church occupies one

side of the piazza, and in front of it, as likewise on the two adjoining

sides of the square, there are pillared arcades, constructed by

Brunelleschi or his scholars. After passing through these arches, and

still before entering the church itself, you come to an ancient cloister,

which is now quite enclosed in glass as a means of preserving some

frescos of Andrea del Sarto and others, which are considered valuable.

Passing the threshold of the church, we were quite dazzled by the

splendor that shone upon us from the ceiling of the nave, the great

parallelograms of which, viewed from one end, look as if richly

embossed all over with gold. The whole interior, indeed, has an effect

of brightness and magnificence, the walls being covered mostly with

light-colored marble, into which are inlaid compartments of rarer and

richer marbles. The pillars and pilasters, too, are of variegated

marbles, with Corinthian capitals, that shine just as brightly as if they

were of solid gold, so faithfully have they been gilded and burnished.

The pavement is formed of squares of black and white marble. There are

no side aisles, but ranges of chapels, with communication from one to

another, stand round the whole extent of the nave and choir; all of

marble, all decorated with pictures, statues, busts, and mural monuments;

all worth, separately, a day's inspection. The high altar is of great

beauty and richness, . . . . and also the tomb of John of Bologna in a

chapel at the remotest extremity of the church. In this chapel there are

some bas-reliefs by him, and also a large crucifix, with a marble Christ

upon it. I think there has been no better sculptor since the days of

Phidias. . . . .

The church was founded by seven gentlemen of Florence, who formed

themselves into a religious order called "Servants of Mary." Many

miraculous cures were wrought here; and the church, in consequence, was

so thickly hung with votive offerings of legs, arms, and other things in

wax, that they used to tumble upon people's heads, so that finally they

were all cleared out as rubbish. The church is still, I should imagine,

looked upon as a place of peculiar sanctity; for while we were there it

had an unusual number of kneeling worshippers, and persons were passing

from shrine to shrine all round the nave and choir, praying awhile at

each, and thus performing a pilgrimage at little cost of time and labor.

One old gentleman, I observed, carried a cushion or pad, just big enough

for one knee, on which he carefully adjusted his genuflexions before each

altar. An old woman in the choir prayed alternately to us and to the

saints, with most success, I hope, in her petitions to the latter, though

certainly her prayers to ourselves seemed the more fervent of the two.

When we had gone entirely round the church, we came at last to the chapel

of the Annunziata, which stands on the floor of the nave, on the left

hand as we enter. It is a very beautiful piece of architecture,--a sort

of canopy of marble, supported upon pillars; and its magnificence within,

in marble and silver, and all manner of holy decoration, is quite

indescribable. It was built four hundred years ago, by Pietro de'

Medici, and has probably been growing richer ever since. The altar is

entirely of silver, richly embossed. As many people were kneeling on the

steps before it as could find room, and most of them, when they finished

their prayers, ascended the steps, kissed over and over again the margin

of the silver altar, laid their foreheads upon it, and then deposited an

offering in a box placed upon the altar's top. From the dulness of the

chink in the only case when I heard it, I judged it to be a small copper

coin.

In the inner part of this chapel is preserved a miraculous picture of the

"Santissima Annunziata," painted by angels, and held in such holy repute

that forty thousand dollars have lately been expended in providing a new

crown for the sacred personage represented. The picture is now veiled

behind a curtain; and as it is a fresco, and is not considered to do much

credit to the angelic artists, I was well contented not to see it.

We found a side door of the church admitting us into the great cloister,

which has a walk of intersecting arches round its four sides, paved with

flat tombstones, and broad enough for six people to walk abreast. On the

walls, in the semicircles of each successive arch, are frescos

representing incidents in the lives of the seven founders of the church,

and all the lower part of the wall is incrusted with marble inscriptions

to the memory of the dead, and mostly of persons who have died not very

long ago. The space enclosed by the cloistered walk, usually made

cheerful by green grass, has a pavement of tombstones laid in regular

ranges. In the centre is a stone octagonal structure, which at first I

supposed to be the tomb of some deceased mediaeval personage; but, on

approaching, I found it a well, with its bucket hanging within the curb,

and looking as if it were in constant use. The surface of the water lay

deep beneath the deepest dust of the dead people, and thence threw up its

picture of the sky; but I think it would not be a moderate thirst that

would induce me to drink of that well.

On leaving the church we bought a little gilt crucifix. . . . .

On Sunday evening I paid a short visit to Mr. Powers, and, as usual, was

entertained and instructed with his conversation. It did not, indeed,

turn upon artistical subjects; but the artistic is only one side of his

character, and, I think, not the principal side. He might have achieved

valuable success as an engineer and mechanician. He gave a dissertation

on flying-machines, evidently from his own experience, and came to the

conclusion that it is impossible to fly by means of steam or any other

motive-power now known to man. No force hitherto attained would suffice

to lift the engine which generated it. He appeared to anticipate that

flying will be a future mode of locomotion, but not till the moral

condition of mankind is so improved as to obviate the bad uses to which

the power might be applied. Another topic discussed was a cure for

complaints of the chest by the inhalation of nitric acid; and he produced

his own apparatus for that purpose, being merely a tube inserted into a

bottle containing a small quantity of the acid, just enough to produce

the gas for inhalation. He told me, too, a remedy for burns accidentally

discovered by himself; viz., to wear wash-leather, or something

equivalent, over the burn, and keep it constantly wet. It prevents all

pain, and cures by the exclusion of the air. He evidently has a great

tendency to empirical remedies, and would have made a natural doctor of

mighty potency, possessing the shrewd sense, inventive faculty, and

self-reliance that such persons require. It is very singular that there

should be an ideal vein in a man of this character.

This morning he called to see me, with intelligence of the failure of the

new attempt to lay the electric cable between England and America; and

here, too, it appears the misfortune might have been avoided if a plan of

his own for laying the cable had been adopted. He explained his process,

and made it seem as practicable as to put up a bell-wire. I do not

remember how or why (but appositely) he repeated some verses, from a

pretty little ballad about fairies, that had struck his fancy, and he

wound up his talk with some acute observations on the characters of

General Jackson and other public men. He told an anecdote, illustrating

the old general's small acquaintance with astronomical science, and his

force of will in compelling a whole dinner-party of better instructed

people than himself to succumb to him in an argument about eclipses and

the planetary system generally. Powers witnessed the scene himself. He

thinks that General Jackson was a man of the keenest and surest

intuitions, in respect to men and measures, but with no power of

reasoning out his own conclusions, or of imparting them intellectually to

other persons. Men who have known Jackson intimately, and in great

affairs, would not agree as to this intellectual and argumentative

deficiency, though they would fully allow the intuitive faculty. I have

heard General Pierce tell a striking instance of Jackson's power of

presenting his own view of a subject with irresistible force to the mind

of the auditor. President Buchanan has likewise expressed to me as high

admiration of Jackson as I ever heard one man award to another. Surely

he was a great man, and his native strength, as well of intellect as

character, compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach;

and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him

the sharper tool.

Speaking of Jackson, and remembering Raphael's picture of Pope Julius

II., the best portrait in the whole world, and excellent in all its

repetitions, I wish it had been possible for Raphael to paint General

Jackson!

Referring again to General Jackson's intuitions, and to Powers's idea

that he was unable to render a reason to himself or others for what he

chose to do, I should have thought that this very probably might have

been the case, were there not such strong evidence to the contrary. The

highest, or perhaps any high administrative ability is intuitive, and

precedes argument, and rises above it. It is a revelation of the very

thing to be done, and its propriety and necessity are felt so strongly

that very likely it cannot be talked about; if the doer can likewise

talk, it is an additional and gratuitous faculty, as little to be

expected as that a poet should be able to write an explanatory criticism

on his own poem. The English overlook this in their scheme of

government, which requires that the members of the national executive

should be orators, and the readiest and most fluent orators that can be

found. The very fact (on which they are selected) that they are men of

words makes it improbable that they are likewise men of deeds. And it is

only tradition and old custom, founded on an obsolete state of things,

that assigns any value to parliamentary oratory. The world has done with

it, except as an intellectual pastime. The speeches have no effect till

they are converted into newspaper paragraphs; and they had better be

composed as such, in the first place, and oratory reserved for churches,

courts of law, and public dinner-tables.

July 10th.--My wife and I went yesterday forenoon to see the Church of

San Marco, with which is connected a convent of Dominicans. . . . . The

interior is not less than three or four hundred years old, and is in the

classic style, with a flat ceiling, gilded, and a lofty arch, supported

by pillars, between the nave and choir. There are no side aisles, but

ranges of shrines on both sides of the nave, each beneath its own pair of

pillars and pediments. The pavement is of brick, with here and there a

marble tombstone inlaid. It is not a magnificent church; but looks dingy

with time and apparent neglect, though rendered sufficiently interesting

by statues of mediaeval date by John of Bologna and other old sculptors,

and by monumental busts and bas-reliefs: also, there is a wooden crucifix

by Giotto, with ancient gilding on it; and a painting of Christ, which

was considered a wonderful work in its day. Each shrine, or most of

them, at any rate, had its dark old picture, and there is a very old and

hideous mosaic of the Virgin and two saints, which I looked at very

slightly, with the purpose of immediately forgetting it. Savonarola, the

reforming monk, was a brother of this convent, and was torn from its

shelter, to be subsequently hanged and burnt in the Grand Ducal Piazza.

A large chapel in the left transept is of the Salviati family, dedicated

to St. Anthony, and decorated with several statues of saints, and with

some old frescos. When we had more than sufficiently examined these, the

custode proposed to show us some frescos of Fra Angelico, and conducted

us into a large cloister, under the arches of which, and beneath a

covering of glass, he pointed to a picture of St. Dominic kneeling at the

Cross. There are two or three others by the angelic friar in different

parts of the cloister, and a regular series, filling up all the arches,

by various artists. Its four-sided, cloistered walk surrounds a square,

open to the sky as usual, and paved with gray stones that have no

inscriptions, but probably are laid over graves. Its walls, however, are

incrusted, and the walk itself is paved with monumental inscriptions on

marble, none of which, so far as I observed, were of ancient date.

Either the fashion of thus commemorating the dead is not ancient in

Florence, or the old tombstones have been removed to make room for new

ones. I do not know where the monks themselves have their burial-place;

perhaps in an inner cloister, which we did not see. All the inscriptions

here, I believe, were in memory of persons not connected with the

convent.

A door in the wall of the cloister admitted us into the chapter-house,

its interior moderately spacious, with a roof formed by intersecting

arches. Three sides of the walls were covered with blessed whitewash;

but on the fourth side, opposite to the entrance, was a great fresco of

the Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico, surrounded with a border or pictured

framework, in which are represented the heads of saints, prophets, and

sibyls, as large as life. The cross of the Saviour and those of the

thieves were painted against a dark red sky; the figures upon them were

lean and attenuated, evidently the vague conceptions of a man who had

never seen a naked figure. Beneath, was a multitude of people, most of

whom were saints who had lived and been martyred long after the

Crucifixion; and some of these had wounds from which gilded rays shone

forth, as if the inner glory and blessedness of the holy men blazed

through them. It is a very ugly picture, and its ugliness is not that of

strength and vigor, but of weakness and incompetency. Fra Angelico

should have confined himself to miniature heads, in which his delicacy of

touch and minute labor often produce an excellent effect. The custode

informed us that there were more frescos of this pious artist in the

interior of the convent, into which I might be allowed admittance, but

not my wife. I declined seeing them, and heartily thanked heaven for my

escape.

Returning through the church, we stopped to look at a shrine on the right

of the entrance, where several wax candles were lighted, and the steps of

which were crowded with worshippers. It was evidently a spot of special

sanctity, and, approaching the steps, we saw, behind a gilded framework

of stars and protected by glass, a wooden image of the Saviour, naked,

covered with spots of blood, crowned with thorns, and expressing all the

human wretchedness that the carver's skill could represent. The whole

shrine, within the glass, was hung with offerings, as well of silver and

gold as of tinsel and trumpery, and the body of Christ glistened with

gold chains and ornaments, and with watches of silver and gold, some of

which appeared to be of very old manufacture, and others might be new.

Amid all this glitter the face of pain and grief looked forth, not a whit

comforted. While we stood there, a woman, who had been praying, arose

from her knees and laid an offering of a single flower upon the shrine.

The corresponding arch, on the opposite side of the entrance, contained a

wax-work within a large glass case, representing the Nativity. I do not

remember how the Blessed Infant looked, but the Virgin was gorgeously

dressed in silks, satins, and gauzes, with spangles and ornaments of all

kinds, and, I believe, brooches of real diamonds on her bosom. Her

attire, judging from its freshness and newness of glitter, might have

been put on that very morning.

July 13th.--We went for the second time, this morning, to the Academy of

Fine Arts, and I looked pretty thoroughly at the Pre-Raphaelite pictures,

few of which are really worth looking at nowadays. Cimabue and Giotto

might certainly be dismissed, henceforth and forever, without any

detriment to the cause of good art. There is what seems to me a better

picture than either of these has produced, by Bonamico Buffalmacco, an

artist of about their date or not long after. The first real picture in

the series is the "Adoration of the Magi," by Gentile da Fabriano, a

really splendid work in all senses, with noble and beautiful figures in

it, and a crowd of personages, managed with great skill. Three pictures

by Perugino are the only other ones I cared to look at. In one of these,

the face of the Virgin who holds the dead Christ on her knees has a

deeper expression of woe than can ever have been painted since. After

Perugino the pictures cease to be interesting; the art came forward with

rapid strides, but the painters and their productions do not take nearly

so much hold of the spectator as before. They all paint better than

Giotto and Cimabue,--in some respects better than Perugino; but they

paint in vain, probably because they were not nearly so much in earnest,

and meant far less, though possessing the dexterity to express far more.

Andrea del Sarto appears to have been a good painter, yet I always turn

away readily from his pictures. I looked again, and for a good while, at

Carlo Dolce's portrait of the Eternal Father, for it is a miracle and

masterpiece of absurdity, and almost equally a miracle of pictorial art.

It is the All-powerless, a fair-haired, soft, consumptive deity, with a

mouth that has fallen open through very weakness. He holds one hand on

his stomach, as if the wickedness and wretchedness of mankind made him

qualmish; and he is looking down out of Heaven with an expression of

pitiable appeal, or as if seeking somewhere for assistance in his heavy

task of ruling the universe. You might fancy such a being falling on his

knees before a strong-willed man, and beseeching him to take the reins of

omnipotence out of his hands. No wonder that wrong gets the better of

right, and that good and ill are confounded, if the Supreme Head were as

here depicted; for I never saw, and nobody else ever saw, so perfect a

representation of a person burdened with a task infinitely above his

strength. If Carlo Dolce had been wicked enough to know what he was

doing, the picture would have been most blasphemous,--a satire, in the

very person of the Almighty, against all incompetent rulers, and against

the rickety machine and crazy action of the universe. Heaven forgive me

for such thoughts as this picture has suggested! It must be added that

the great original defect in the character as here represented is an easy

good-nature. I wonder what Michael Angelo would have said to this

painting.

In the large, enclosed court connected with the Academy there are a

number of statues, bas-reliefs, and casts, and what was especially

interesting, the vague and rude commencement of a statue of St. Matthew

by Michael Angelo. The conceptions of this great sculptor were so

godlike that he seems to have been discontented at not likewise

possessing the godlike attribute of creating and embodying them with an

instantaneous thought, and therefore we often find sculptures from his

hand left at the critical point of their struggle to get out of the

marble. The statue of St. Matthew looks like the antediluvian fossil of

a human being of an epoch when humanity was mightier and more majestic

than now, long ago imprisoned in stone, and half uncovered again.

July 16th.--We went yesterday forenoon to see the Bargello. I do not

know anything more picturesque in Florence than the great interior court

of this ancient Palace of the Podesta, with the lofty height of the

edifice looking down into the enclosed space, dark and stern, and the

armorial bearings of a long succession of magistrates carved in stone

upon the walls, a garland, as it were, of these Gothic devices extending

quite round the court. The best feature of the whole is the broad stone

staircase, with its heavy balustrade, ascending externally from the court

to the iron-grated door in the second story. We passed the sentinels

under the lofty archway that communicates with the street, and went up

the stairs without being questioned or impeded. At the iron-grated door,

however, we were met by two officials in uniform, who courteously

informed us that there was nothing to be exhibited in the Bargello except

an old chapel containing some frescos by Giotto, and that these could

only be seen by making a previous appointment with the custode, he not

being constantly on hand. I was not sorry to escape the frescos, though

one of them is a portrait of Dante.

We next went to the Church of the Badia, which is built in the form of a

Greek cross, with a flat roof embossed and once splendid with now

tarnished gold. The pavement is of brick, and the walls of dark stone,

similar to that of the interior of the cathedral (pietra serena), and

there being, according to Florentine custom, but little light, the effect

was sombre, though the cool gloomy dusk was refreshing after the hot

turmoil and dazzle of the adjacent street. Here we found three or four

Gothic tombs, with figures of the deceased persons stretched in marble

slumber upon them. There were likewise a picture or two, which it was

impossible to see; indeed, I have hardly ever met with a picture in a

church that was not utterly wasted and thrown away in the deep shadows of

the chapel it was meant to adorn. If there is the remotest chance of its

being seen, the sacristan hangs a curtain before it for the sake of his

fee for withdrawing it. In the chapel of the Bianco family we saw (if it

could be called seeing) what is considered the finest oil-painting of Fra

Filippo Lippi. It was evidently hung with reference to a lofty window on

the other side of the church, whence sufficient light might fall upon it

to show a picture so vividly painted as this is, and as most of Fra

Filippo Lippi's are. The window was curtained, however, and the chapel

so dusky that I could make out nothing.

Several persons came in to say their prayers during the little time that

we remained in the church, and as we came out we passed a good woman who

sat knitting in the coolness of the vestibule, which was lined with mural

tombstones. Probably she spends the day thus, keeping up the little

industry of her fingers, slipping into the church to pray whenever a

devotional impulse swells into her heart, and asking an alms as often as

she sees a person of charitable aspect.

From the church we went to the Uffizi gallery, and reinspected the

greater part of it pretty faithfully. We had the good fortune, too,

again to get admittance into the cabinet of bronzes, where we admired

anew the wonderful airiness of John of Bologna's Mercury, which, as I now

observed, rests on nothing substantial, but on the breath of a zephyr

beneath him. We also saw a bronze bust of one of the Medici by Benvenuto

Cellini, and a thousand other things the curiosity of which is overlaid

by their multitude. The Roman eagle, which I have recorded to be about

the size of a blackbird, I now saw to be as large as a pigeon.

On our way towards the door of the gallery, at our departure, we saw the

cabinet of gems open, and again feasted our eyes with its concentrated

brilliancies and magnificences. Among them were two crystal cups, with

engraved devices, and covers of enamelled gold, wrought by Benvenuto

Cellini, and wonderfully beautiful. But it is idle to mention one or two

things, when all are so beautiful and curious; idle, too, because

language is not burnished gold, with here and there a brighter word

flashing like a diamond; and therefore no amount of talk will give the

slightest idea of one of these elaborate handiworks.

July 27th.--I seldom go out nowadays, having already seen Florence

tolerably well, and the streets being very hot, and myself having been

engaged in sketching out a romance [The Marble Faun.--ED.], which whether

it will ever come to anything is a point yet to be decided. At any rate,

it leaves me little heart for journalizing and describing new things; and

six months of uninterrupted monotony would be more valuable to me just

now, than the most brilliant succession of novelties.

Yesterday I spent a good deal of time in watching the setting out of a

wedding party from our door; the bride being the daughter of an English

lady, the Countess of ------. After all, there was nothing very

characteristic. The bridegroom is a young man of English birth, son of

the Countess of St. G------, who inhabits the third piano of this Casa

del Bello. The very curious part of the spectacle was the swarm of

beggars who haunted the street all day; the most wretched mob

conceivable, chiefly women, with a few blind people, and some old men and

boys. Among these the bridal party distributed their beneficence in the

shape of some handfuls of copper, with here and there a half-paul

intermixed; whereupon the whole wretched mob flung themselves in a heap

upon the pavement, struggling, lighting, tumbling one over another, and

then looking up to the windows with petitionary gestures for more and

more, and still for more. Doubtless, they had need enough, for they

looked thin, sickly, ill-fed, and the women ugly to the last degree. The

wedding party had a breakfast above stairs, which lasted till four

o'clock, and then the bridegroom took his bride in a barouche and pair,

which was already crammed with his own luggage and hers. . . . . He was a

well-looking young man enough, in a uniform of French gray with silver

epaulets; more agreeable in aspect than his bride, who, I think, will

have the upper hand in their domestic life. I observed that, on getting

into the barouche, he sat down on her dress, as he could not well help

doing, and received a slight reprimand in consequence. After their

departure, the wedding guests took their leave; the most noteworthy

person being the Pope's Nuncio (the young man being son of the Pope's

Chamberlain, and one of the Grand Duke's Noble Guard), an ecclesiastical

personage in purple stockings, attended by two priests, all of whom got

into a coach, the driver and footmen of which wore gold-laced cocked hats

and other splendors.

To-day I paid a short visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. I looked

long at a Madonna of Raphael's, the one which is usually kept in the

Grand Duke's private apartments, only brought into the public gallery for

the purpose of being copied. It is the holiest of all Raphael's

Madonnas, with a great reserve in the expression, a sense of being apart,

and yet with the utmost tenderness and sweetness; although she drops her

eyelids before her like a veil, as it were, and has a primness of eternal

virginity about the mouth. It is one of Raphael's earlier works, when he

mixed more religious sentiment with his paint than afterwards.

Perugino's pictures give the impression of greater sincerity and

earnestness than Raphael's, though the genius of Raphael often gave him

miraculous vision.

July 28th.--Last evening we went to the Powers's, and sat with them on

the terrace, at the top of the house, till nearly ten o'clock. It was a

delightful, calm, summer evening, and we were elevated far above all the

adjacent roofs, and had a prospect of the greater part of Florence and

its towers, and the surrounding hills, while directly beneath us rose the

trees of a garden, and they hardly sent their summits higher than we sat.

At a little distance, with only a house or two between, was a theatre in

full action, the Teatro Goldoni, which is an open amphitheatre, in the

ancient fashion, without any roof. We could see the upper part of the

proscenium, and, had we been a little nearer, might have seen the whole

performance, as did several boys who crept along the tops of the

surrounding houses. As it was, we heard the music and the applause, and

now and then an actor's stentorian tones, when we chose to listen. Mrs.

P------ and my wife, U---- and Master Bob, sat in a group together, and

chatted in one corner of our aerial drawing-room, while Mr. Powers and

myself leaned against the parapet, and talked of innumerable things.

When the clocks struck the hour, or the bells rang from the steeples, as

they are continually doing, I spoke of the sweetness of the Florence

bells, the tones of some of them being as if the bell were full of liquid

melody, and shed it through the air on being upturned. I had supposed,

in my lack of musical ear, that the bells of the Campanile were the

sweetest; but Mr. Powers says that there is a defect in their tone, and

that the bell of the Palazzo Vecchio is the most melodious he ever heard.

Then he spoke of his having been a manufacturer of organs, or, at least,

of reeds for organs, at one period of his life. I wonder what he has not

been! He told me of an invention of his in the musical line, a jewsharp

with two tongues; and by and by he produced it for my inspection. It was

carefully kept in a little wooden case, and was very neatly and

elaborately constructed, with screws to tighten it, and a silver

centre-piece between the two tongues. Evidently a great deal of thought

had been bestowed on this little harp; but Mr. Powers told me that it was

an utter failure, because the tongues were apt to interfere and jar with

one another, although the strain of music was very sweet and melodious--

as he proved, by playing on it a little--when everything went right. It

was a youthful production, and he said that its failure had been a great

disappointment to him at the time; whereupon I congratulated him that his

failures had been in small matters, and his successes in great ones.

We talked, furthermore, about instinct and reason, and whether the brute

creation have souls, and, if they have none, how justice is to be done

them for their sufferings here; and Mr. Powers came finally to the

conclusion that brutes suffer only in appearance, and that God enjoys for

them all that they seem to enjoy, and that man is the only intelligent

and sentient being. We reasoned high about other states of being; and I

suggested the possibility that there might be beings inhabiting this

earth, contemporaneously with us, and close beside us, but of whose

existence and whereabout we could have no perception, nor they of ours,

because we are endowed with different sets of senses; for certainly it

was in God's power to create beings who should communicate with nature by

innumerable other senses than those few which we possess. Mr. Powers

gave hospitable reception to this idea, and said that it had occurred to

himself; and he has evidently thought much and earnestly about such

matters; but is apt to let his idea crystallize into a theory, before he

can have sufficient data for it. He is a Swedenborgian in faith.

The moon had risen behind the trees, while we were talking, and Powers

intimated his idea that beings analogous to men--men in everything except

the modifications necessary to adapt them to their physical

circumstances--inhabited the planets, and peopled them with beautiful

shapes. Each planet, however, must have its own standard of the

beautiful, I suppose; and probably his sculptor's eye would not see much

to admire in the proportions of an inhabitant of Saturn.

The atmosphere of Florence, at least when we ascend a little way into it,

suggests planetary speculations. Galileo found it so, and Mr. Powers and

I pervaded the whole universe; but finally crept down his garret-stairs,

and parted, with a friendly pressure of the hand.