[Illustration: _M. M. Newell_ ARCADES WHERE HANG THE COPPER AND WOOLEN GOODS] Very different, indeed, must it have been in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Prato was in the zenith of her wealth and pride, when Donatello and Fra Lippo Lippi, Mino da Fiesole, and the Pisani were busy there, and all the world was running to see their work; crowned heads and critics, humble aspirants and cavalcades of brilliantly attired Florentines were arriving daily to admire and criticize the new art. The jaded tourist of to-day, if a true lover of nature and history, thinks yearningly of the mediæval journeyings over these roads; of the humble enthusiast making his way on foot, and of gay trains of mounted nobles riding leisurely through these regions of delight. Benozzo Gozzoli has shown us how it was done in his noble fresco "Procession of the Magi," painted on the walls of the Riccardi Palace to commemorate the visit of the Eastern Emperor, John Palæologos, in 1439, who, according to an inscription in the Duomo of Prato, made an excursion thither from Florence accompanied by the illustrious Bessarion and a suite of six hundred cavaliers magnificently appointed. The "three kings" in the fresco are represented by the Emperor, the patriarch Joseph, and the young Lorenzo de' Medici, who are surrounded by theologians and scribes, attended by a train of cardinals, bishops, and nobles, with their servants and horses, in splendid array. The painted scene is full of the vigour and freshness of spring--of that spring when men awoke to the force and meaning of human existence, "freedom of thought, beauty of the world, and goodness of youth and strength and love and life." Those gay young cavaliers prancing over the plain, exuberant with their new joy in nature, colour, and splendour of dress, are equally keen in their intellectual freshness; every man is a poet, Lorenzo de' Medici himself the "most typical poet of his century," and their every verse rings with the burden, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." [Illustration: _M. M. Newell_ THE FORTRESS] "I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May. Violets and lilies grew on every side Mid the green grass, and young flowers wonderful, Golden and white and red and azure-eyed; Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful, To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay. I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May." [Illustration: _Alinari_ THE CATHEDRAL OF PRATO]