crowned with Brunelleschi's cupola, and rich in
sculpture and stained glass, is, as it were, a symbol of Florence, the
shrine of art. Browning, in his inspired vision of St. Peter's at Rome
in _Christmas Eve_, catches Byron's note to sound a loftier strain--

"Is it really on the earth
This miraculous dome of God?"

"It is somewhere mentioned that Michael Angelo, when he set out from
Florence to build the dome of St. Peter's, turned his horse round in the
road to contemplate that of the cathedral, as it rose in the grey of the
morning from among the pines and cypresses of the city, and that he
said, after a pause, 'Come te non voglio! Meglio di te non posso.' He
never, indeed, spoke of it but with admiration; and, if we may believe
tradition, his tomb, by his own desire, was to be so placed in the Santa
Croce as that from it might be seen, when the doors of the church stood
open, that noble work of Brunelleschi."--Rogers's _Italy: Poems_, ii.
315, note to p. 133, line 5--"Beautiful Florence."]

[445] {377} [Byron, contrary to traditional use (see Wordsworth's
sonnet, "Near the Lake of Thrasymene;" and Rogers's _Italy_, see note,
p. 378), sounds the final vowel in Thrasym[=e]ne. The Greek, Latin, and
Italian equivalents bear him out; but, most probably, he gave Thrasymene
and himself an extra syllable "vel metri vel euphoniae causa."]

[na] _Where Courage perished in unyielding files_.--[MS. M.]

[446] ["Tantusque fuit ardor armorum, adeo intentus pugnae animus, ut eum
motum terrae, qui multarum urbium Italiae magnas partes, prostravit,
avertitque cursu rapidos amnes, marce fluminibus invexit, montes lapsu
ingenti proruit, nemo pugnantium senserit" (Livy, xxii. 5). Polybius
says nothing about an earthquake; and Ihne (_Hist, of Rome_, ii.
207-210) is also silent; but Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, ii. 84) and Coelius
Antipater (ap. Cic., _De Div._, i. 35), who wrote his _Annales_ about a
century after the battle of Lake Thrasymenus (B.C. 217), synchronize the
earthquake and the battle. Compare, too, Rogers's _Italy_, "The
Pilgrim:" _Poems_, 1852, ii. 152--

"From the Thrasymene, that now
Slept in the sun, a lake of molten gold,
And from the shore that once, when armies met,
Rocked to and fro unfelt, so terrible
The rage, the slaughter, I had turned away."

Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet (No. xii.), "Near the Lake of
Thrasymene" (_Works_, 1888, p. 756)--

"When here with Carthage