At one moment he was conspiring and hoping; at another, despairing and endeavouring to conciliate his beautiful Florence: now again catching hope from some new movement of the Emperor's; and then, not very handsomely threatening and re-abusing her; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work.

We enjoyed Florence, its palaces and galleries of art, the quaint old churches, about which the religious sentiment of ages seems to hang like an atmosphere, the morning and evening clamor of musical bells, the Arno, and the olive-crowned Tuscan hills,all so delightful to the senses and the soul.

They enslaved Florence; and even painting was not slow to suffer from the stifling atmosphere of tyranny.

[6084] Montaigne, in his Essays, gives instate in Caesar, Mahomet the Turk, that sacked Constantinople, and Ladislaus, king of Naples, that besieged Florence: great men, and great soldiers, are commonly great, &c., probatum est, they are good doers.

The Torre della Castagna, across the way, has an inscription in Italian, which may be translated thus: "This Tower, the so-called Tower of the Chestnut, is the solitary remnant of the head-quarters from which the Priors of the Arts governed Florence, before the power and glory of the Florentine Commune procured the erection of the Palace of the Signoria".

You remember Florence?" "Florence Mountjoy?

Bright be the rip'ning beam, that shines Fair FLORENCE, on thy purple vines!