It was in the first Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which stood on the site of the present, that San Zenobio in the fourth century had walled into the high altar an inestimable gift which he had received from the Pope. This was “the two bodies of the glorious martyrs Abdon and Sennen, who had been thrown unto wild beasts, which would not touch them, whereupon they were put to death by swords in the hands of viler human beasts.” I may remark by the way, adds the observant Flaxius, that relics have of late somewhat lost their value in Florence. I saw not long ago for sale a very large silver casket, stuffed full of the remains of the holiest saints, and the certificates of their authenticity, and I was offered the whole for the value of the silver in the casket—the relics being generously thrown in! And truly the mass of old bones, clay, splinters, nails, rags with blood, bits of wood, dried-up eyes, _et cetera_, was precisely like the Voodoo-box or conjuring bag of an old darkey in the United States. But then the latter was heathen! “That is a _very_ different matter.” BIANCONE, THE GIANT STATUE IN THE SIGNORIA “_Fons Florentinus_.—In foro lympidas aquas fons effundit marmoreis figuris Neptuni et Faunorum ab Amanate confectis.”—_Templum Naturæ Historicum_. HENRICI KORNMANNI, A.D. 1614. The most striking object in the most remarkable part of Florence is the colossal marble Neptune in the Fountain of the Signoria, by Ammanati, dating from 1575. He stands in a kind of car or box, drawn by horses which Murray declares “are exceedingly spirited.” They are indeed more so than he imagined, for according to popular belief, when the spirit seizes them and their driver, and the bronze statues round them, they all go careering off like mad beings over the congenial Arno, and even on to the Mediterranean! That is to say, that they did so on a time, till they were all petrified with their driver in the instant when they were bounding like the billows, which are typified by white horses. Neptune has, however, lost his name for the multitude, who simply call him the Biancone, or Great White Man; and this is the legend (given to me in writing by a witch), by which he is popularly known: BIANCONE, THE GOD OF THE ARNO. “Biancone was a great and potent man, held in great respect for his grandeur and manly presence, a being of tremendous strength, and the true type of a magician, {152} he being a wizard indeed. In those days there was much water in the Arno, {153} and Biancone passed over it in his car.