though still partaking of the Perugino school, St. John in the Wilderness, a portrait of Pope Giulio II., and another of La Fornarina, who was celebrated for her attachment to Raphael, all three painted in his last and best style; a portrait, by Vandyck, supposed to represent Jean de Montford, and another, representing Charles V. on horseback; a Holy Family, by Schidone; Job and Isaiah, by Fra Bartolomeo della Porta; the Flight into Egypt, the Virgin adoring the Infant Jesus, and the Decapitation of St. John, by Correggio; Herodias receiving the head of St. John, by Leonardo da Vinci; a Madonna and Child, by Giulio Romano; Hercules between Vice and Virtue, by Rubens. We have been thus particular in naming these splendid works of art, that our readers may form some idea of the immense treasures grouped in this chamber.

The Palazzo Pitti, where the grand-duke of Tuscany usually resides, was begun after the design of Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, the most celebrated architect of the fifteenth century, and finished by Ammannati. In the quadrangle is the basso-relievo of a mule, who constantly drew a sledge which contained the materials employed in the building; and over this basso-relievo is a statue of Hercules, attributed to Lysippas. On the ground-floor is a chapel, which contains a beautiful altar, of Florentine work, with the Last Supper, executed in pietri duri, in its centre; the ceiling and walls are adorned with frescoes, of which that representing the Crucifixion seems the best. The ground-floor likewise contains fine frescoes by Sebastiano Ricci, Giovanni da San Giovanni, &c. The first room up stairs contains ten statues, taken from the Villa Medicis; and the best of these is a Minerva. The second room contains busts of Roman emperors, and other sculpture, likewise taken from the Villa Medicis, and in another apartment is the world-renowned Madonna della Seggiola, a picture so full of beauty and sweetness, that its original must have existed only in the imagination of the painter.

The beautiful Giardino di Boboli is very large, and contains several pieces of sculpture, the most remarkable of which are two Dacian prisoners, in oriental porphyry, at the entrance; a colossal Ceres; the fountain at the end of the principal walk, decorated with a colossal Neptune, standing on a granite basin above twenty feet in diameter, with the Ganges, Nile, and Euphrates, beneath, all by Giovanni di Bologna; Neptune, in bronze, surrounded with sea-monsters, by Lorenzi; and four unfinished statues by Buonaroti.

The Museo d'Istoria Naturale, collected by the Grand Duke Leopoldo, is said to be the finest museum existing, with respect to the anatomical preparations in wax and wood, the petrifactions and minerals, and the thick-leaved, milky, and spongy plants, which can not be preserved in the common way, and are therefore beautifully represented in wax, to complete the botanical part of this princely collection. All the anatomical preparations, in wax and wood, were executed under the orders of Cav. F. Fontana, except the famous representation of the plague, which was done by the Abate Lumbo in the days of the Medici, and is so painfully fine that few can bear to examine it. This masterly performance owes its present place to Cav. Giovanni Fabbronni, a gentleman who has not only contributed essentially to the improvement of the museum, but likewise to that of arts and sciences in general. Below stairs is a laboratory. On the first floor are two rooms filled with large quadrupeds, fishes, &c, a library, rooms destined to mechanics, hydraulics, electricity, and mathematics, together with a botanic garden; and on the second floor are twenty rooms, containing the representation of the plague, and anatomical preparations; all of which may be avoided by persons not inclined to see them. In another suite of apartments, on the same floor, are birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, shells, fossils, minerals, wax-plants, &c. The observatory makes a part of this museum.

The Duomo, or cathedral of Florence, in extent and magnificence, ranks among the first ecclesiastical edifices of Europe. It also derives an interest from its venerable antiquity, and from its being considered as a new era in the history of architecture. Tuscan writers, rather too lavish of their praise, have said a great deal about the bold abandonment of the Gothic style, and the happy adaptation of the ancient Roman style of architecture in this building, which shows an admixture of several styles, though it certainly has more of the ancient Roman than any work that preceded it in the middle ages. Its fine double cupola was the first raised in Europe, and in other respects, the Duomo of Florence served as a model to succeeding architects. This cathedral was begun in 1296. The first architect employed upon it was Arnolfo di Lapo, a scholar of Cimabue, the old painter. In one hundred and fifty

four years, and under successive artists, it was nearly finished. "But," says an old Florentine author, "the grand cupola was the parturition of the marvellous genius of Ser Filippo Brunellesco, an architect who in his days had no equal." It is related of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, that he used to gaze at this proud dome with rapture, and say it never could be surpassed by mortal man. He afterward surpassed it himself, in his dome of St. Peter's, at Rome; but spite of his magnificent boast, the cupola of Florence was a prototype, and had more to do with St. Peter's than the dome of the Pantheon, which Buonarotti said he would suspend in the air. Brunellesco, the author of the cupola, gave the finishing-hand to the cathedral. In size, materials, and boldness of conception, it is only inferior among Italian churches to St. Peter's. The walls are cased with black and white marble, and both without and within they are adorned with numerous statues, many of which are beautiful as works of art, or interesting as early specimens of Italian sculpture. As in the cathedral of Milan, where there is a complete army of statues, too many of them are placed in positions where they can scarcely be seen.

Like other old buildings, the cathedral of Florence has been subjected to the caprices of power, and the bad taste of despotism. The façade was almost half incrusted with beautiful marble, and additionally adorned with many statues and bassorelievoes, executed from designs by the venerable Giotto, one of the fathers of pamting—one of the immortal Italians who dug up the fine arts from the grave in which they had been buried for centuries. In 1586, without any visible motive, a grandduke of the house of Medici demolished this antique front, and began another on a totally different design. This new façade was very slowly executed, and never finished; and in 1688, another grand-duke, whose taste it did not please, knocked it all down, just as his predecessor had demolished the venerable works of Giotto. For several years, the front of the church presented nothing but bare, unsightly walls; and then, on the occasion of some ducal marriage, the reigning Medici had it shabbily painted in fresco, and in that condition it remained for a century. The spirited republicans, the merchants and manufacturers of old Florence. with whose money the vast cathedral was originally built, could afford to lavish costly statues and the most precious marbles; but the population, enterprise, and wealth of the country had suffered a sad blight under the despotic government which succeeded the commonwealth, and the grand-dukes could only provide a little plaster and paint for a building which was the boast of the city, as it was the glory of the old republicans. The Medici-that family of merchant-princes, whose virtues and abilities went out like lamps lacking oil, almost immediately after their assumption of absolute power— kept their marbles, their "porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues" to heap upon their own inglorious tomb, in the church of St. Lorenzo; and even that monument of their vanity and tawdry taste they never finished.

Seven great doors, three in front and two on either side, give admittance to the interior of the Florence cathedral. These doors are richly ornamented. Giovanni di Pisa and Ghirlandaio both employed their genius upon them. The floor of the church is paved with rich variegated marbles, disposed in a beautiful manner. Italian writers, who deserve our love by the fond, minute attention they have paid to such matters, record that the pavement of the great central aisle was laid down by Francesco di San Gallo; that round the choir by the versatile and great Michael Angelo; and the rest by Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo. The windows are smaller and fewer than usual, and the glass being painted with the deep, rich tints common in ancient glass-staining, admits but a subdued light. As Forsyth observes, Here is just that 'dim, religious light' which pleases poetical and devout minds." This light almost becomes "a darkness visible" in the choir, for the cupola or dome under which it stands, is closed at top, and admits no flood of sunshine, like the dome of St. Peter's. The choir is in itself a blemish. It is of an octagonal form, to correspond with the shape of the cupola, which is not circular but octagonal or eight-sided. It is enclosed by a colonnade which is fine, considered apart and by itself, but its Ionic elevation is at variance, and jars with the rest of the building. Some curious basso-relievoes enrich the choir, and high overhead the interior of the cupola is covered with fresco paintings, the work of Frederico Zuccheri and Giorgio Vasari.

The solemn old church is rich is associations and historical recollections. Here are the tombs of Giotto the painter, Brunellesco the architect, and Marsilius Ficinus, the reviver of the Platonic philosophy, and the friend and instructor of Lorenzo the

Magnificent. Here, on the 26th day of April, 1478, when high mass was performing, and just as the priest held up the host, the blood of Giuliano de Medici was shed by the Pazzi; and his brother Lorenzo, clinging to the horns of the altar, and afterward flying into the sacristy, escaped with difficulty from those determined conspirators, who would have restored liberty to their country, but who set about it in a wrong way, and mostly from violent and personal motives, and who, moreover, leagued themselves with the king of Naples, the greatest tyrant in Italy, and with other despots, who hated liberty even more than they hated the Medici. Here, some years before, when Constantinople was trembling at the approach of the Turks, the Greek emperor, half a fugitive, and wholly a mean supplicant and beggar, sat side by side with the pope, consenting to renounce the schisms and heresies of the Greek church, and engaging (without consulting them) to bring all his people into the bosom of the church of Rome, on conditions agreed upon, that the pope should procure him arms, treasures, and the assistance of the catholic princes of Europe. Here the German emperor, Frederic III., forgetting that the holy spirit of the place was one of peace and good-will to all men, knighted some scores of the bravest or fiercest of his cut-throat soldiery. A portrait recalls the memory of the greatest of all Florentines, and shows the tardy repentance of his ungrateful countrymen. "An ancient picture by Orcagna, in which is painted the divine poet Dante, is placed here in consequence of an express decree of the Florentine republic; and this is the only public memorial we possess of that great master of Tuscan poetry." Such are the melancholy words of an old Florentine writer, who, like all his countrymen, deplored that the bard should have died in poverty and exile, and have left his strictly-guarded ashes in a foreign state. Next to this picture of Dante is the portrait of an English soldier of fortune, the renowned and infamous condottiero, Sir John Hawkwood, who betrayed and sold the Pisans, in whose service he was, to their bitter enemies, the Florentines.

In another part of the church there is a curious old portrait of Giotto. Brunellesco has the honor of a bust, as well as that of a Latin epitaph, on his tomb. This epitaph, which was written by Carlo Marzuppini of Arezzo, "poet and secretary of the republic," is remarkable, as it includes the original idea of the inscription in St. Paul's to the memory of Sir Christopher Wren. The Florentine inscription tells the reader to look at the cupola to form a notion of Brunellesco's excellence in architecture. The inscription to Wren, which is better turned, says, "Reader, if you would behold his monument, look around you."

In various parts of the cathedral, there are statues by Baccio Bandanelli, Savino Rovezzano, and other early artists. The chapels which shoot off from the side aisles are rich in pictures, sculptures, and relics. The campanile, or belfry, which is the square tower that the reader will see in our engraving, surmounted with a flag, is close to, but wholly detached from, the body of the cathedral. This, was a common method in old Italian churches, where the bells were hung, not in the temple, but in a separate tower near to it. Instances of this occur at the celebrated cathedral of Pisa, at the church of Santa Chiara in Naples, and in many other places. The campanile of Florence is light and airy. It is coated on the outside with variegated marble, and studded, here and there, with statues. Giotto, the painter, drew the designs on which it was erected. And here it is worthy of remark, that nearly every one of these early artists was not a mere painter, or sculptor, or architect, but united in himself the knowledge and practice of all the three arts, besides being skilled in civil engineering, and in most cases, a poet, or an accomplished musician, to boot. They were a wonderful set of men, who suddenly sprung up and flourished, and filled their native cities with beauty, in the midst of a most turbulent liberty, when wars and factions shook the peninsula from one end to the other, and every citizen or burgess of the free states of Tuscany and Lombardy was of necessity a soldier. The impulse they gave lasted some years after the decline of freedom; but Italy never saw such men in the tranquillity that arose out of confirmed despotism. Opposite to the principal entrance of the cathedral there stands another detached building, which the reader will see in our view. This is the baptistery, which it was also usual not to include in the church, but to erect apart. At Pisa, as here, and in many other places, the baptistery is a separate edifice, rising near the cathedral. This baptistery was not confined to one parish; all the children born in the city and suburbs used to be christened in it; and as the population in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, was immense, the baptismal fonts must have pre-

sented very busy scenes. A notion may be formed of the extent of the population from a fact mentioned by Machiavelli. He says that the bells of the campanile sounding the tocsin, would, in a few hours, bring together 135,000 well-armed men, and all these from Florence alone, with the adjoining valley of the Arno.

The baptistery is an octagonal building, with a low dome, supported by many granite columns. Its interior walls are lined, and the pavement is inlaid with marble. The concave of the dome is covered with mosaic, the work of Andrea Tafi, one of Cimabue's pupils. But the glory and marvel of the baptistery lie in its three great bronze portals, which are wrought into basso-relievoes of exquisite beauty. The most ancient of the three was by Andrea Pisano, and bears the date of 1330. The other two, which are still more excellent in style, and so beautiful that Michael Angelo was accustomed to say they were worthy of being the gates of paradise, were the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti. The figures and groups of the relievoes refer to events in the life of St. John the Baptist. By the sides of the principal entrance there are two porphyry columns, given to the republic by the Pisans in 1117, in gratitude for the important services rendered by the then friendly Florentines, who had kept watch and ward in Pisa, while its warlike citizens went to the conquest of Majorca and Minorca. Close at hand, as also in some other parts of the city, are some very different memorials. They are links of a massy iron chain, with which, when entire, the Pisans used to shut up and defend their celebrated port. In 1362, the Florentines took the Porto Pisano, carried away the chain, and hung up fragments of it in their own town as trophies of victory.

The Church of the S. S. Annunziata contains a fresco of the Annunciation, done by a certain Bartolommeo, who being, it is said, at a loss how to make the countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic, fell asleep while pondering over his work, and, on waking, found it executed in a style he was unable to equal; upon which he instantly exclaimed, “A miracle! a miracle!" and his countrymen were too fond of miracles not to believe him, although the Madonna's face is by no means so exquisitely painted as to be attributed to a heavenly artist. The open vestibule, leading to the church, is ornamented with several frescoes, namely: A nativity, by Baldovinetti; St. Filippo Benizzi induced to embrace the monastic life in consequence of a vision, by Rosseli; St. Filippo covering a naked leper with his own shirt, by Andrea del Sarto; St. Filippo, while travelling toward Modena, reviled by young men under a tree, which being struck with lightning, two of the revilers are killed-this is by Andrea del Sarto; as are, St. Filippo delivering a young person from an evil spirit; a dead child restored to life by touching the garment which covered the corpse of the saint; women and children kneeling round a friar, who is adorned with the relics of St. Filippo's clothes; and seven lunettes, on the other side of the vestibule. The Marriage of the Madonna is by Francabigio; the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth, by Pontormo; and the Assumption, by Rossi. This corridor contains a bust of Andrea del Sarto.

The church of the Annunziata is loaded with ornaments. It contains, in the centre of the ceiling, an Assumption, by Volterrano, who likewise painted the cupola of the Tribune. In the chapel which encloses the miraculous picture is an altar, adorned with silver bassi-relievi; two silver candelabra, about six feet high; two large silver statues of angels; a ciborio, beautifully worked, and embellished with a head of our Savior, by Andrea del Sarto; a silver cornice, from which hangs a curtain of the same metal; and an immense number of silver lilies, and lamps, which encircle the altar. The pavement of this chapel is porphyry and Egyptian granite; and in the adjoining oratory, whose walls are incrusted with agate, jasper, and other precious stones, is a crucifix, by Antonio di San Gallo. To the left of the great door is a picture of the Last Judgment, by Aless. Allori, and another, of the Crucifixion, by Stradano: the ceiling and lunettes of the chapel on this side, at the end of the cross, are painted in fresco by Volterrano, and contain a curious old picture, over the altar, of St. Zenobio, and other figures. In front of the high-altar, which is adorned with a splendid silver ciborio, are recumbent statues, the one by Francesco da San Gallo, the other by Giovan batista Foggini; and behind the altar is a chapel decorated after the designs, and at the expense, of Giovanni di Bologna, who was buried in it; and whose tomb is adorned with a crucifix and basso-relievo in bronze, executed by himself for the grand duke, by whom they were thus handsomely and judiciously appropriated. The chapel contains a picture of the Resurrection, by Ligozzi; a Pietà, by Passignano; a Nativity, by Paggi; and a Cupoletta, by Poccetti. Leading from the