the vestibule of the Ospedale del Ceppo.  That is a work of the sixteenth century, and thus the fifteenth-century work, ever present with us in Florence, is missing here.  It is not, however, to any member of the della Robbia clan that we owe this beautiful work, I think, but to some unknown sculptor with whom Buglioni may have worked.  For the seven reliefs representing works of Charity and divided by figures of the Virtues are of a surprising splendour, a really classic beauty, and Burckhardt wishes to compare them with the frescoes of Andrea del Sarto and his companions rather than with the sculpture of that time.

One wanders about this quiet, alluring city, where the sculptures are scattered like flowers on every church porch and municipal building, without the weariness of the sightseer.  One day you go by chance to S. Francesco al Prato, a beautiful and spacious church in a wilderness of Piazza, built in 1294.  And there suddenly you come upon the little flowers of St. Francis, faded and fallen—­here a brown rose, there a withered petal; here a lily broken short, there a nosegay drooped and dead:  and you realise that here you are face to face with something real which has passed away, and so it is with joy you hurry out into the sun, which will always shine with splendour and life, the one thing perhaps that, if these dead might rise from their tombs in S. Francesco, they would recognise as a friend, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

Other churches too there are in Pistoja:  S. Piero Maggiore, where, as in Florence, so here, the Bishop, coming to the city, was wedded in a lovely symbol to the Benedictine Abbess—­there too are the works of Maestro Bono the sculptor; S. Salvadore, which stands in the place where, as it is said, they buried Cataline; S. Domenico, where you may find the beautiful tombs of Andrea Franchi and of Filippo Lazzeri the humanist—­this made by Rossellino in 1494.  Pistoja is a city of churches; one wanders into them and out again always with new delight; and indeed, they lend a sort of gravity to a place that is light-hearted and alluring beyond almost any other in this part of Tuscany certainly.  Thinking thus of her present sweetness, one is glad to find that one poet at least has thought Dante too hard with men.  It is strange that it should be Cino who sings—­

    “This book of Dante’s, very sooth to say,
    Is just a poet’s lovely heresy,
    Which by a lure as sweet as sweet can be
    Draws other men’s concerns beneath its sway;
    While, among stars’ and comets’ dazzling play,
    It beats the right down, let’s the wrong go free,
    Shows some abased, and others in great glee,
    Much as with lovers is Love’s ancient way. 
    Therefore his vain decrees, wherein he lied,
    Fixing folks’ nearness to the Fiend their foe,
    Must be like empty nutshells flung aside. 
    Yet through the vast false witness set to grow,
    French and Italian vengeance on such pride
    May fall, like Antony’s on Cicero."[143]