The Via Maggio is now our way, but first there is a museum which I think should be visited, if only because it gave Dickens so much pleasure when he was here—­the Museo di Storia Naturale, which is open three days a week only and is always free.  Many visitors to Florence never even hear of it and one quickly finds that its chief frequenters are the poor.  All the better for that.  Here not only is the whole animal kingdom spread out before the eye in crowded cases, but the most wonderful collection of wax reproductions of the human form is to be seen.  These anatomical models are so numerous and so exact that, since the human body does not change with the times, a medical student could learn everything from them in the most gentlemanly way possible.  But they need a strong stomach.  Mine, I confess, quailed before the end.

The hero of the Museum is Galileo, whose tomb at S. Croce we have seen:  here are preserved certain of his instruments in a modern, floridly decorated Tribuna named after him.  Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) belongs rather to Pisa, where he was born and where he found the Leaning Tower useful for experiments, and to Rome, where in 1611 he demonstrated his discovery of the telescope; but Florence is proud of him and it was here that he died, under circumstances tragic for an astronomer, for he had become totally blind.

The frescoes in the Tribuna celebrate other Italian scientific triumphs, and in the cases are historic telescopes, astrolabes, binoculars, and other mysteries.

The Via Maggio, which runs from Casa Guidi to the Ponte Trinita, and at noon is always full of school-girls, brings us by way of the Via Michelozzo to S. Spirito, but by continuing in it we pass a house of great interest, now No. 26, where once lived the famous Bianca Capella, that beautiful and magnetic Venetian whom some hold to have been so vile and others so much the victim of fate.  Bianca Capella was born in 1543, when Francis I, Cosimo I’s eldest son, afterwards to play such a part in her life, was two years of age.  While he was being brought up in Florence, Bianca was gaining loveliness in her father’s palace.  When she was seventeen she fell in love with a young Florentine engaged in a bank in Venice, and they were secretly married.  Her family were outraged by the mesalliance and the young couple had to flee to Florence, where they lived in poverty and hiding, a prize of 2000 ducats being offered by the Capella family to anyone who would kill the husband; while, by way of showing how much in earnest they were, they had his uncle thrown into prison, where he died.

One day the unhappy Bianca was sitting at her window when the young prince Francis was passing:  he looked up, saw her, and was enslaved on the spot. (The portraits of Bianca do not, I must admit, lay emphasis on this story.  Titian’s I have not seen; but there is one by Bronzino in our National Gallery—­No. 650—­and many in Florence.) There was, however, something in Bianca’s face