ught that
several Florentine palaces and villas built before Columbus sailed
for America are now occupied by rich Americans, some of them draw
possibly much of their income from the manufacture of steel girders
for sky-scrapers. These ancient streets with their stern and sombre
palaces specially touched the imagination of Dickens when he was in
Florence in 1844, but in his "Pictures from Italy" he gave the city
only fugitive mention. The old prison, which then adjoined the Palazzo
Vecchio, and in which the prisoners could be seen, also moved him.

The Borgo degli Albizzi, as I have said, is crowded with
Palazzi. No. 24--and there is something very incongruous in palaces
having numbers at all--is memorable in history as being one of the
homes of the Pazzi family who organized the conspiracy against the
Medici in 1478, as I have related in the second chapter, and failed
so completely. Donatello designed the coat of arms here. The palace
at No. 18 belonged to the Altoviti. No. 12 is the Palazzo Albizzi,
the residence of one of the most powerful of the Florentine families,
whose allies were all about them in this quarter, as it was wise to be.

As a change from picture galleries, I can think of nothing more
delightful than to wander about these ancient streets, and, wherever a
courtyard or garden shines, penetrate to it; stopping now and again to
enjoy the vista, the red Duomo, or Giotto's tower, so often mounting
into the sky at one end, or an indigo Apennine at the other. Standing
in the middle of the Via Ricasoli, for example, one has sight of both.

At the Piazza S. Pietro we see one of the old towers of Florence,
of which there were once so many, into which the women and children
might retreat in times of great danger, and here too is a series of
arches which fruit and vegetable shops make gay.

The next Piazza is that of S. Ambrogio. This church is interesting
not only for doing its work in a poor quarter--one has the feeling at
once that it is a right church in the right place--but as containing,
as I have said, the grave of Mino da Fiesole: Mino de' Poppi detto da
Fiesole, as the floor tablet has it. Over the altar of Mino's little
chapel is a large tabernacle from his hand, in which the gayest little
Boy gives the benediction, own brother to that one by Desiderio at
S. Lorenzo. The tabernacle must be one of the master's finest works,
and beneath it is a relief in which a priest pours something--perhaps
the very