re at once among the hotels and
pensions, which continue cheek by jowl right away to the Ponte Vecchio
and beyond. In the Piazza Goldoni, where the Ponte Carraia springs off,
several streets meet, best of them and busiest of them being that Via
della Vigna Nuova which one should miss few opportunities of walking
along, for here is the palazzo--at No. 20--which Leon Battista Alberti
designed for the Rucellai. The Rucellai family's present palace, I
may say here, is in the Via della Scala, and by good fortune I found
at the door sunning himself a complacent major-domo who, the house
being empty of its august owners, allowed me to walk through into
the famous garden--the Orti Oricellari--where the Platonic Academy
met for a while in Bernardo Rucellai's day. A monument inscribed
with their names has been erected among the evergreens. Afterwards
the garden was given by Francis I to his beloved Bianca Capella. Its
natural beauties are impaired by a gigantic statue of Polyphemus,
bigger than any other statue in Florence.

The new Rucellai palace does not compare with the old, which is, I
think, the most beautiful of all the private houses of the great day,
and is more easily seen too, for there is a little piazza in front
of it. The palace, with its lovely design and its pilastered windows,
is now a rookery, while various industries thrive beneath it. Part of
the right side has been knocked away; but even still the proportions
are noble. This is a bad quarter for vandalism; for in the piazza
opposite is a most exquisite little loggia, built in 1468, the three
lovely arches of which have been filled in and now form the windows of
an English establishment known as "The Artistic White House". An absurd
name, for if it were really artistic it would open up the arches again.

The Rucellai chapel, behind the palace, is in the Via della Spada,
and the key must be asked for in the palace stables. It is in a
shocking state, and quite in keeping with the traditions of the
neighbourhood, while the old church of S. Pancrazio, its neighbour,
is now a Government tobacco factory. The Rucellai chapel contains a
model of the Holy Sepulchre, at Jerusalem, in marble and intarsia,
by the great Alberti--one of the most jewel-like little buildings
imaginable. Within it are the faint vestiges of a fresco which the
stable-boy calls a Botticelli, and indeed the hands and faces of
the angels, such as one can see of them with a farthing dip, do not
re