"The picturesque height of San Miniato, now the great cemetery of the
city which dominates the Arno from the south, has an especial
religious and saintly interest. The grand Basilica, with its
glittering ancient mosaic, shines amid the cypresses against the sky,
and whether it gleams in the sunlight against the blue, or is cut in
black on the primrose sky of twilight, it is equally
imposing."--"_Echoes of Old Florence_," _by_ LEADER SCOTT.
To the old people of Florence, who still see visions and dream dreams,
and behold the wind and the stars at noonday (which latter thing I have
myself beheld), the very ancient convent of San Miniato, "the only one in
Tuscany which has preserved the ancient form of the Roman basilica," and
the neighbourhood, are still a kind of Sleepy Hollow, where witches fly
of nights more than elsewhere, where ghosts or _folletti_ are most
commonly seen, and where the _orco_ and the nightmare and her whole
ninefold disturb slumbers _a bel agio_ at their easiest ease, as appears
by the following narrative: