[It was very hot weather during the week we stayed at Florence; and, never having been there before, I went through much hard service, and am not therefore _ashamed_ to confess I fell asleep before this picture and sitting with my back towards the Venus de Medicis. Buonaparte--in answer to one who had spoken of his being in a sound sleep up to the moment when one of his great battles was to be fought, as a proof of the calmness of his mind and command over anxious thoughts--said frankly, that he slept because from bodily exhaustion he could not help it. In like manner it is noticed that criminals on the night previous to their execution seldom awake before they are called, a proof that the body is the master of us far more than we need be willing to allow. Should this note by any possible chance be seen by any of my countrymen who might have been in the gallery at the time (and several persons were there) and witnessed such an indecorum, I hope he will give up the opinion which he might naturally have formed to my prejudice.--I.F.] The Baptist might have been ordain’d to cry Forth from the towers of that huge Pile, wherein His Father served Jehovah; but how win Due audience, how for aught but scorn defy The obstinate pride and wanton revelry 5 Of the Jerusalem below, her sin And folly, if they with united din Drown not at once mandate and prophecy? Therefore the Voice spake from the Desert, thence To Her, as to her opposite in peace, 10 Silence, and holiness, and innocence, To Her and to all Lands its warning sent, Crying with earnestness that might not cease, “Make straight a highway for the Lord--repent!” [155] This sonnet refers to the picture of the young St. John the Baptist, now in the Tribuna, Florence, designed about the same time as the Madonna di San Sisto, for Cardinal Colonna, who is said to have presented it to his doctor, Jacopo da Carpi. It has been much admired, and often copied; but it is inferior, both in drawing and in colouring, to the great works of Raphael. How much of it was actually from his hand is uncertain; and Baptist is painted rather like a Bacchus than a Saint.--ED. XXI AT FLORENCE--FROM MICHAEL ANGELO [However at first these two sonnets from Michael Angelo may seem in their spirit somewhat inconsistent with each other, I have not scrupled to place them side by side as characteristic of their great author, and others with whom he lived. I feel, nevertheless, a wish to know at what periods of his life they were respectively composed.[156] The latter, as it expresses, was written in his advanced years, when it was natural that the Platonism that pervades the one should give way to the Christian feeling that inspired the other: between both there is more than poetic affinity.--I.F.]