As the Florentine in the Inferno saw the souls of unfortunate lovers borne upon a whirlwind, so have I seen all things fair and precious,outpourings of wealth,all the talents,all the offerings of duty and devotion,angelic graces of person and of soul,borne and swept violently around on the circular gale.

Brunelleschi, who, again according to Vasari, was small, and therefore as different as may be from the figure which is seated on the clergy house opposite the south door of the cathedral, watching his handiwork, was born in 1377, the son of a well-to-do Florentine of good family who wished to make him a notary.

A Florentine by birth, Machiavelli was sent by his fellow-citizens, in 1502, on a mission to Borgia, who had just returned from a visit to the King of France in Lombardy.

The immense superiority of Michelangelo is manifest in this chapel itself, where are paintings of Ghirlandajo, of Signorelli, which pale near those of the Florentine as the light of a lamp does in the light of the sun.

I have to thank very heartily a good English Florentine for the construction of the historical chart at the end of the volume.

" For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and "further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, "for they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account I added a sixth."

As a colourist he went further and produced more beautiful effects than any Florentine before him.