We were to dine at three, and start for Florence at four the next day, and we spent our morning in traversing the mountain paths, and getting views on every side. Fifty or a hundred feet above the convent, perched on a rock like an eyry, stands a small building in which Milton is supposed to have lived, during his six weeks sojourn at the convent. It is now fitted up as a nest of small chapels--every one of its six or eight little chambers having an altar. The ladies were not permitted to enter it. I selected the room I presumed the poet must have chosen--the only one commanding the immense view to the west, and, looking from the window, could easily feel the truth of his simile, "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." It is a mountain of foliage. Another sumptuous dinner was served, Father Gasparo sitting by, even more voluble than before, the baskets and the pony were brought to the door, and we bade farewell to the old monk with more regret than a day's acquaintance often produces. We reached our carriage in an hour, and were in Florence at eight--having passed, by unanimous opinion, the two brightest days in our calendar of travel. LETTER XLIX. HOUSE OF MICHAEL ANGELO--THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF SAN MINIATO--MADAME CATALANI--WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR--MIDNIGHT MASS, ETC. I went with a party this morning to visit _the house of Michael Angelo_. It stands as he lived in it, in the Via Ghibellini, and is still in possession of his descendants. It is a neat building of three stories, divided on the second floor into three rooms, shown as those occupied by the painter, sculptor, and poet. The first is panelled and painted by his scholars after his death--each picture representing some incident of his life. There are ten or twelve of these, and several of them are highly beautiful. One near the window represents him in his old age on a visit to "Lorenzo the Magnificent," who commands him to sit in his presence. The Duke is standing before his chair, and the figure of the old man is finely expressive. The next room appears to have been his parlor, and the furniture is exactly as it stood when he died. In one corner is placed a bust of him in his youth, with his face perfect; and opposite, another, taken from a cast after his nose was broken by a fellow painter in the church of the Carmine. There are also one or two portraits of him, and the resemblance through them all, shows that the likeness we have of him in the engravings are uncommonly correct. In the inner room, which was his studio, they show his pallet, brushes, pots, maul-sticks, slippers, and easel--all standing carelessly in the little closets around, as if he had left them but yesterday. The walls are painted in fresco, by Angelo himself, and represent groups of all the distinguished philosophers, poets and statesmen of his time. Among them are the heads of Petrarch, Dante, Galileo, and Lorenzo de Medici. It is a noble gallery! perhaps a hundred heads in all.