I may here explain to the reader that this tale with its elaborate invocations is not current as here given among the _people_. Such forms and formulas are confined to the witches, who, as in all countries, are the keepers of mysterious traditions. All that is generally heard as regards this subject is, that when the full moon shines on Biancone at midnight, he becomes animated, and walks about the Signoria conversing with the other statues. The Neptune was, with horses and all, produced by Bartolommeo Ammanati between 1564 and 1565. It has a certain merit of grandeur, but in lesser degree is like its neighbour Cacus, by Baccio Bandinelli, which Benvenuto Cellini justly regarded as resembling a mere bag of fat. When Michael Angelo saw the Neptune he exclaimed: “Ammanato! Ammanato! che bel blocco che hai sciupato!”—“Ammanato, what a fine block of marble thou hast spoiled!” The Italians say that the satyr at the corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is a copy, because the original was stolen one night in January in 1821, “and is now one of the finest bronzes in the British Museum of London.” It may be so; there was a great deal of fine stealing in those days. I suspect, however, that the truth is that as these images return to life now and then, the satyr availed himself of his revivification to set forth on his travels, and coming to London and finding good company in the British Museum, settled down there. But truly, when I think of the wanton and heartless destruction of beautiful and valuable old relics which has gone on of late years in Florence, to no earthly purpose, and to no profit whatever, I feel as if all the tales of such things being stolen or sold away to foreign museums were supremely silly, and as if it were all just so much saved from ruin—in case the tales are true. “_Hæc fabula docet_,” wrote Flaxius, “a strange lesson. For as it was anciently forbidden to make images, because it was an imitation of God’s work; and secondly, because men believed that spirits would enter into them—even so doth it become all novel-writers, romancers, and poets, to take good heed how they portray satyrs, free-love nymphs, and all such deviltry, because they may be sure that into these models or types there will enter many a youthful soul, who will be led away thereby to madness and ruin. Which is, I take it, the most practical explanation for commandment, which hath been as yet set _coram populo_.” THE RED GOBLIN OF THE BARGELLO “Lord Foulis in his castle sat, And beside him old Red-cap sly; ‘Now tell me, thou sprite, who art mickle of might, The death which I shall die?’” —SCOTT’S _Border Minstrelsy_.