In the right aisle we saw Bernardo Rossellino’s tomb of Leonardo Bruni; in the left is that of Bruni’s successor as Secretary of State, Carlo Marsuppini, by Desiderio da Settignano, which is high among the most beautiful monuments that exist.  “Faine, faine!” says Alfred Branconi, with his black eyes dimmed; and this though he has seen it every day for years and explained its beauties in the same words.  Everything about it is beautiful, as the photograph which I give in this volume will help the reader to believe:  proportions, figures, and tracery; but I still consider Mino’s monument to Ugo in the Badia the finest Florentine example of the gentler memorial style, as contrasted with the severe Michelangelesque manner.  Mino, it must be remembered, was Desiderio’s pupil, as Desiderio was Donatello’s.  Note how Desiderio, by an inspiration, opened the leaf-work at each side of the sarcophagus and instantly the great solid mass of marble became light, almost buoyant.  Never can a few strokes of the chisel have had so transforming an effect.  There is some doubt as to whether the boys are just where the sculptor set them, and the upper ones with their garlands are thought to be a later addition; but we are never likely to know.  The returned visitor from Florence will like to be reminded that, as of so many others of the best Florentine sculptures, there is a cast of this at South Kensington.

The last tomb of the highest importance in the church is that of Galileo, the astronomer, who died in 1642; but it is not interesting as a work of art.  In the centre of the church is a floor-tomb by Ghiberti, with a bronze figure of a famous Franciscan, Francesco Sansoni da Brescia.

Next the sacristy.  Italian priests apparently have no resentment against inquisitive foreigners who are led into their dressing-rooms while sumptuous and significant vestments are being donned; but I must confess to feeling it for them, and if my impressions of the S. Croce sacristy are meagre and confused it is because of a certain delicacy that I experienced in intruding upon their rites.  For on both occasions when I visited the sacristy there were several priests either robing or disrobing.  Apart from a natural disinclination to invade privacy, I am so poor a Roman Catholic as to be in some doubt as to whether one has a right to be so near such a mystery at all.  But I recollect that in this sacristy are treasures of wood and iron—­the most beautiful intarsia wainscotting I ever saw, by Giovanni di Michele, with a frieze of wolves and foliage, and fourteenth-century iron gates to the little chapel, pure Gothic in design, with a little rose window at the top, delicate beyond words:  all which things once again turn the thoughts to this wonderful Italy of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, when not even the best was good enough for those who built churches, but something miraculous was demanded from every craftsman.