of the Freemasons and the Companions of Duty. The opinions of the
ancient owners of the Old Palace at Florence can be recognized by this
characteristic; the walls of the city are crenelated squarely in the
Guelph fashion, and the tower on the ramparts has the Ghibelline
battlements of swallow-tail shape.

The Vecchio Palace has for its basement several steps which were used in
former times as a species of tribune, from the top of which the
magistrates and demagogs harangued the people. Two colossal statues of
marble--Hercules slaying Cacus, by Bandinelli, and David the Conqueror
of Goliath, by Michael Angelo--mount near the door their age-long watch,
like two gigantic sentinels whom someone has forgotten to relieve. The
statue of David by Michael Angelo besides the inconvenience there is in
representing under a gigantic form a Biblical hero of notoriously small
size, seemed to us a trifle common and heavy, a rare defect with this
master; his David is a great big boy, fleshy, broad-backed, with
monstrous biceps, a market porter waiting to put a sack upon his back.
The working of the marble is remarkable and, after all, is a fine piece
of study which would do honor to any other sculptor except Michael
Angelo; but there is lacking that Olympian mastership which
characterizes the works of that superhuman sculptor.

One of the most curious features of the Old Palace is the grand salon, a
hall of enormous dimensions, which has its legend. When the Medici were
driven from Florence, in 1494, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who directed the
popular movement, proposed the idea of constructing an immense hall
where a council of a thousand citizens would elect the magistrates and
regulate the affairs of the republic. The architect Cronaca had charge
of this task and acquitted himself of it with a celerity so marvelous
that Brother Savonarola caused the rumor to spread that angels
descended from heaven to help the masons and continued at night the
interrupted work. The invention of these angels tempering the mortar and
carrying the hod is all done in the legendary style of the Middle Ages
and would furnish a charming subject for a picture to some ingenuous
painter of the school of Overbeck or of Hauser. In this rapid
construction Cronaca displayed, if not all his genius, at least all his
agility. The work has been justly admired and often consulted by
architects.

When the Medici returned to power and transferred their residence from
t