There is much, in every way, in the city of Florence to excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify the taste. Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesoli, whose cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary to ages before the Roman, before the Etruscan power, the flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces. Dark and frowning piles of mediæval structure; a majestic dome, the prototype of St. Peter's; basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest of the dead; the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the Campanile; the house of Michael Angelo, still occupied by a descendant of his lineage and name, his hammer, his chisel, his dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday; airy bridges, which seem not so much to rest on the earth as to hover over the waters they span; the loveliest creations of ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages again to enchant the world; the breathing marbles of Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and Titian, museums filled with medals and coins of every age from Cyrus the younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the sepulchers of Egyptian Pharaohs coëval with Joseph, and Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy before the Romans,--libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient literature,--gardens of rose and orange, and pomegranate, and myrtle,--the very air you breathe languid with music and perfume;--such is Florence. But among all its fascinations, addressed to the sense, the memory, and the heart, there was none to which I more frequently gave a meditative hour during a year's residence, than to the spot where Galileo Galilei sleeps beneath the marble door of Santa Croce; no building on which I gazed with greater reverence, than I did upon the modest mansion at Arcetri, villa at once and prison, in which that venerable sage, by command of the Inquisition, passed the sad closing years of his life. The beloved daughter on whom he had depended to smooth his passage to the grave, laid there before him; the eyes with which he had discovered worlds before unknown, quenched in blindness: Ahime! quegli occhi si son fatti oscuri, Che vider più di tutti i tempi antichi, E luce fur dei secoli futuri.