Miss Nightingale was born in the city of Florence in the year 1820, and it is from that beautiful Italian town that she derives her Christian name.

you will be walking from Florence to Mount EtnaFlorence, Rome, Naples, Palermo.

The foundations were consecrated in 1296 and the first stone laid on September 8th, 1298, and no one was more interested in its early progress than a young, grave lawyer who used to sit on a stone seat on the south side and watch the builders, little thinking how soon he was to be driven from Florence for ever.

Ancient Florence, the city of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, the Florence of the nobles, the Florence of the Ghibellines, the Florence in which nearly every house was a castle, with frowning towers hundreds of feet high, machicolated battlements, donjon keeps, oubliettes, and all other appurtenances of a feudal stronghold, exists no longer.

The latter, requiring to go to Florence on business, went to the Pope for money.

This masterpiece of laborious and minute scholarship is based upon a collation of the various manuscripts preserved in the Casa Buonarroti at Florence with the Vatican and other Codices.

When the fact is recalled that such contemporaries as Pomponius Laetus, Bartolommeo Sacchi, Molza, Alessandro Farnese (Paul III), Platina, Sabellicus at Rome; Pontanus, Sannazaro, and Porcello in Naples; and Pomponasso and Boiardo at Ferrara, were then at or nearing their prime, the position of Florence as the acknowledged centre of European culture was conceded by sense of right alone.

It is a philosophico-historical novel, the scene of which is laid in Florence at the time of Savonarola,the period called the Renaissance, when art and literature were revived with great enthusiasm; a very interesting period, the glorious morning, as it were, of modern civilization.

Michael Angelo was one of the most frequent and enthusiastic visitors to this garden, where in due time he attracted the attention of the magnificent Lord of Florence by a head chiselled so remarkably that he became an inmate of the palace, sat at the table of Lorenzo, and at last was regularly adopted as one of the Prince's family, with every facility for prosecuting his studies.

Looking at Florence from the hill-top, one is more impressed than ever with the appropriateness of its name.

Italy at this time held clearly the intellectual supremacy of the western world, and Florence under the Medici, Cosmo and then Lorenzo, held the supremacy of Italy.

It was now Neifile's turn to tell a story, and she said that as there had been much controversy at Florence during the plague concerning religion, this had put her in mind of the tale of Melchizedeck.

Michelangelo was no doubt the greatest individualist in the whole history of art, and everything that he did grips the memory in a vice; but Florence without Michelangelo would still be very nearly Florence, whereas Florence without Brunelleschi is unthinkable.

He was engineer as well as architect, and fortified Florence against her enemies.

Whatever made Cosimo take such a weird course no one can really say, although horrible rumours were indeed rife in Florence about the relations between father and child!

Dante in Florence After the painting by Rafaeli Sorbi.

Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom the Medici ever patronized.

We may take it, then, as sufficiently well ascertained that Michelangelo departed from Florence before the end of 1534, and that he never returned during the remainder of his life.

There was a general move after Paul and Florence down the staircase, in which the whole Blimber family were included.

CHAPTER XV APRIL-JULY, 1818 Journey from Florence to Pisa and from thence by the Appennines to GenoaMassaCarraraGenoaMonuments and works of artThe GenoeseReturn to FlorenceJourney from Florence through Bologna and Ferrara to VeniceMonument to Ariosto in FerraraA description of VenicePaduaVicenzaVeronaCremonaReturn to MilanThe Scala

We know that, in some way or other, perhaps during those early years at Florence among the members of the Platonic Academy, Michelangelo absorbed the doctrines of the Phoedrus and Symposium.

From the Cascine we may either return to Florence along the banks of the river, or cross the river by the vile iron Ponte Sospeso and enter the city again, on the Pitti side, by the imposing Porta S. Frediano.

When Polly Richards was left alone, her heart was sore for the motherless little girl, and she determined to devise some means of having Florence beside her lawfully and without rebellion.

However, letters suddenly arrived from her sons, conjuring her to leave Rome and announcing that they would leave Florence within the hour, in order to hasten forward to meet their mother.

Nevertheless, Michelangelo was again in Florence toward the close of 1534.