CHURCHES NORTH OF ARNO:  OGNISSANTI—­S.  TRINITA—­SS.  APOSTOLI—­S.  STEFANO—­BADIA—­S.  PIERO—­S.  AMBROGIO—­S.  MARIA MADDALENA DE’ PAZZI—­ANNUNZIATA—­OSPEDALE DEGLI INNOCENTI—­LO SCALZO—­S.  APOLLONIA—­S.  ONOFRIO—­S.  SALVI

To pass through Florence for the most part by the old ways, from church to church, is too often like visiting forgotten shrines in a museum.  Something seems to have been lost in these quiet places; it is but rarely after all that they retain anything of the simplicity which once made them holy.  To their undoing, they have been found in possession of some beautiful thing which may be shown for money, and so some of them have ceased altogether to exist as churches or chapels or convents; you find yourself walking through them as through a gallery, and if you should so far forget yourself as to uncover your head, some official will eagerly nudge you and say, “It is not necessary for the signore to bare his head:  here is no longer a church, but a public monument.”  A public monument!  But indeed, as we know, the Italian “public” is no longer capable of building anything that is beautiful.  If it is a bridge they need, it is not such a one as the Trinita that will be built, but some hideous structure of iron, as in Pisa, Venice, and Rome.  If it is a monument they wish to carve, they will destroy numberless infinitely precious things, and express themselves as vulgarly as the Germans could do, as in the monument of Vittorio Emmanuele at Rome, which is founded on the ruined palaces of nobles, the convents of the poor.  If it is a Piazza they must make, they are no longer capable of building such place as Piazza Signoria, but prefer a hideous and disgusting clearing, such as Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele in Florence.  How often have I sat at the little cafe there on the far side of the square, wondering why the house of Savoy should have brought this vandalism from Switzerland.  Nor is this strange monarchy content with broken promises and stolen dowries; in its grasping barbarism it must rename the most famous and splendid ways of Italy after itself:  thus the Corso of Rome has become Corso Umberto Primo, and we live in daily expectation that Piazza Signoria of Florence will become Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele II.  If that has not yet befallen, it is surely an oversight; the Government has been so busy renaming Roman places—­the Villa Borghese, for instance—­that Florence has so far nearly escaped.  Not altogether, however:  beyond the Carraja bridge, just before the Pescaia in the Piazza Manin, is the suppressed convent (now a barracks) of the Humiliati, that democratic brotherhood which improved the manufacture of wool almost throughout Italy.  What has the Venetian Jew, Daniel Manin, to do with them?  Yet he is remembered by means of a bad statue, while the Humiliati and the Franciscans are forgotten:  yet for sure they did more for Florence than he.  But no doubt it would be difficult to remind oneself tactfully of those one has robbed,