In this genial climate the Poplar and the Phillyrea retain their leaves till the end of December; and, among groves of Evergreens, are here remarked the Olive, the Cypress, the Holly, and all the branches of the Family of Pines, plentifully interspersed with Laurels.

At the rural Retreat called Carreggi de Medici, on the banks of the Arno-in the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Platonic Society used to assemble, every week, to plan Public Edifices, and useful Institutions.

At Pratolino, another Royal Villa, in the neighbourhood, is a marble Statue of the Genius of the Appenines, executed by the gigantic standard of sixty feet.

On the Vigil of San Giovanni, the Wives and Daughters of the neighbouring Peasants, with their languishing black eyes, and lofty eye-brows set off by Arcadian dresses, crowd the streets of the Capital, to see the Chariots of the Nobility drive round the Statue of Ferdinand I. in the Square of the Annunciation; and to behold the dangerous horse races of the Strada del Duomo, which are evident modifications of the games of the Ancient Romans.

Within the Cloisters of the Church that fronts this Square is the celebrated Fresco of the Madonna del Sacco, so called from having been executed for the Fathers of the Convent, during a period of famine, for the price of a sack of corn. In a semicircle of one of the Arcades

cades, the Painter has represented the Holy Family, at their devotions. Mary sits in the centre, with her infant Child, and both of them listen with earnest, but resigned attention, to Joseph, recumbent on a sack, and reading to the Mother and her Son, the predictions of the Prophets, which announce the sufferings of the Messiah, before he should enter into glory.

The Cathedral Church, remarkable for being the first Dome that was raised in Europe, after the decline of the Roman Empire, was begun in 1294 by Arnolfo, the Disciple of Cimabue, and finished in 1445, by Brunellesco, the Contemporary of Michael Angelo. The Prince of Architects is here said to have complimented

his

1

his Fellow-Citizen, when he was him

self employed in swelling the Hemisphere of St. Peters, in an Italian adage:

Come te non volo-meglio de te non posso.

But this unmerited flattery savours too little of the conscious superiority of genius, ever to have escaped the Painter of the Prophets and Sybils of the Capella Sistina.

The Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore (for most of the Cathedrals of Italy are dedicated to the Virgin) is nothing more than a vast and gloomy concave, dimly impressed with the innumerable Figures of the Last Judgment, trembling before the dreaded

↑ "I will not imitate thee, though I cannot excel."

dreaded Tribunal of final recompenses; while the Sanctum Sanctorum, inclosed below it from vulgar profanation, swarms alike, with equivocal Beatitudes, and Candidates for Purgatory.

Behind the dingy altar is a marble Pieta [the mournful mother, weeping over the body of her Son] said to be the last work of Michael Angelo-at which the superannuated Sculptor was arrested by the hand of Death.

In one of the darkened Chapels that surround the Choir (under the patronage of San Zenobi) is a bronze Ciborio, by Lorenzo Ghiberti, glimmering at noon day, with the dubious light of waxen tapers, flaring round a Christian Sanctuary, while the surrounding pavement is black

ened