There is perhaps not one well-educated person in society in England who has not had the opportunity to remark how very much any old family can succeed in being notorious if it can only once make it known that it has an hereditary _secret_. Novels will be written on it, every member of it will be pointed out everywhere, and people who do not know the name of a sovereign in Europe can tell you all about it and them. And the number is not small of those who consider themselves immensely greater because they have in some way mastered something which they are expected to keep concealed. I could almost believe that this “’orrible tale” was composed as a satire on family secrets. But I believe that she who told it firmly believed it. _Credo quia absurdum_ would not be well understood among humble folk in Italy. * * * * * “To this I may add,” writes Flaxius, “that there is an English legend of a certain skull which always returned to a certain window in a tower. _Apropos_ of which there is a poem called _The Student and the Head_ in ‘Hans Breitmann in Germany’ (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895), prefaced by a remark to the effect that the subject is so extensive as to deserve a book—instancing the head of the physician Douban in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ with that of Orpheus, which spoke to Cyrus, and that of the priest of Jupiter, and another described by Trallianus, and the marvellously preserved head of a saint in Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga, and the Witch’s Head of Rider Haggard, with many more, not to speak of the talking Teraphim heads, and Friar Bacon’s bust. With which a thoroughly exhaustive list should include the _caput mortuum_ of the alchemists “‘And the dead-heads of the Press.’” THE COLUMN OF COSIMO, OR DELLA SANTA TRINITA “_Columna Florentina_.—Prope Sanctæ Trinitatis ædem ingens et sublimis columna erecta, cujus in fastigio extat justitia. Eam erexit Cosmus Magnus Dux, cui per urbem deambulanti, illic de victoria renunciatum fuit quam Malignani Marchio in Senarum finibus anno 1555 contra Petrum Strozium obtinuit.”—_Templum Naturæ Historicum_, Darmstadt, 1611. “Vesti una Colonna, Le par una donna.”—_Italian Proverb_. The central spot of Florence is the grand column of granite which stands in the middle of the Piazza di Santa Trinità, in the Via Tornabuoni, opposite the Palazzo Feroni. It was brought from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, and erected in 1564 by Cosimo I., “in commemoration of the surrender of Siena in 1554, and of the destruction of the last liberties of Florence by the victory at Monte Murlo, 1537, over those whom his tyranny had driven into exile, headed by Filippo and Piero Strozzi. It is surmounted by a statue of ‘Justice’ in porphyry, by _Ferruci_,” says Murray’s Guide-Book—the Italian declares it to be by _Taddi_, adding that the column was from the Baths of Antoninus, and was a gift to Cosimo I. from Pius IV.