I ascended the Campanile still another day and from its height viewed all Florence, the windings of the Arno, San Miniato, Fiesole, but, try as I might, I could not think of it in modern terms. It was too reminiscent of the Italy of the Medici, of the Borgias, Julius II, Michelangelo and all the glittering company who were their contemporaries. One thing that was strongly impressed upon me there was that every city should have a great cathedral. Not so much as a symbol or theory of religion as an object of art, something which would indicate the perfection of the religious ideal taken from an artistic point of view. Here you can stand and admire the exquisite double windows with twisted columns, the infinite variety of the inlaid marble work, and the quaint architecture of the niches supported by columns. It was after midnight and the moon was high in the heavens shining down with a rich springlike effect before I finally returned from the Duomo Square, following the banks of the Arno and admiring the shadows cast by the cornices and so finally reached my hotel and my bed. The Uffizi and Pitti collections of paintings are absolutely the most amazing I saw abroad. There are other wonderful collections, the Louvre being absolutely unbelievable for size; but here the art is so uniformly relative to Italy, so identified with the Renaissance, so suggestive of the influence and the patronage which gave it birth. The influence of religion, the wealth of the Catholic Church, the power of individual families such as the Medici and the Dukes of Venice are all clearly indicated. Botticelli’s “Adoration of the Magi” in the Uffizi, showing the proud Medici children, the head of Cosimo Pater Patriae, and the company of men of letters and statesmen of the time, all worked in as figures about the Christ child, tell the whole story. Art was flattering to the nobility of the day. It was dependent for its place and position upon religion, upon the patronage of the Church, and so you have endless “Annunciations,” “Adorations,” “Flights into Egypt,” “Crucifixions,” “Descents from the Cross,” “Entombments,” “Resurrections,” and the like. The sensuous “Magdalena,” painted for her form and the beauty of suggestion, you will encounter over and over again. All the saints in the calendar, the proud Popes and Cardinals of a dozen families, the several members of the Medici family--they are all there. Now and then you will encounter a Rubens, a Van Dyck, a Rembrandt, or a Frans Hals from the Netherlands, but they are rare. Florence, Rome, Venice, Pisa, and Milan, are best represented by their own sculptors, painters and architects and it is the local men largely in whom you rejoice. The bits from other lands are few and far between. Rome for sculptures, frescoes, jewel-box churches, ancient ruins, but Florence for paintings and the best collections of medieval artistic craftsmanship.