a little wildflower from Theodore Parker’s grave to send home to one of his romantic admirers.  Fiesole must be a very ancient town, for there is a ruined amphitheatre there, and the remains of walls so old that they are called Pelasgic in their origin; which is, I take it, sufficiently vague.  The high hill is composed of the most solid marble; so the guidebooks say, at least.  This is five hundred and seventy-five feet above the sea, and on its summit stands the cathedral, very old indeed, and built in the form of a basilica, like that of San Miniato.  From this hill you look down upon the plain beneath, with the Arno winding through it, and upon Florence and the Apennine chain, above which rise the high mountains of Carrara.  Here, on the highest available point of the rock, I used to sit reading, and looking upon the panorama beneath, until the sinking sun warned me that I had only time to reach the city before its setting.  I used to love to look also at works of art in this way, for by so doing I fixed them in my mind for future reference.  I never passed the Piazza della Signoria without standing some minutes before the Loggia dei Lanzi and the old ducal palace with its marvelous tower.  Before this palace, exposed to the weather for three hundred and fifty years, stands Michael Angelo’s David; to the left, the fountain on the spot where Savonarola was burnt alive by the order of Alexander VI.; and immediately facing this is the post-office.  I never could pass the post-office without thinking of the poet Shelley, who was there brutally felled to the earth by an Englishman, who accused him of being an infidel, struck his blow and escaped.

I made many visits to the Nuova Sacrista to see the tombs of the two Medici by Michael Angelo.  The one at the right on entering is that of Giuliano, duke of Nemours, brother of Leo X. The two allegorical figures reclining beneath are Morning and Night.  The tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici, duke of Urfrino, stands on the other side of the chapel, facing that of the duke de Nemours.  The statue of Lorenzo, for grace of attitude and beauty of expression, has, in my opinion, never been equaled.  The allegorical figures at the feet of this Medici are more beautiful and more easily understood than most of Michael Angelo’s allegorical figures.  Nevertheless, I used sometimes, when looking at these four figures, to think that they had been created merely as architectural auxiliaries, and that their expression was an accident or a freak of the artist’s fancy, rather than the expression of some particular thought:  at other times I saw as much in them as most enthusiasts do—­enough, I have no doubt, to astonish their great author himself.  I believe that very few people really experience rapturous sensations when they look at works of art.  People are generally much more moved by the sight of the two canes preserved in Casa Buonarotti, upon which the great master in his latter days supported his tottering frame, than they are by the noblest achievements of his genius.