nder the suggestion impossible. On the altar is a terra-cotta Christ
which he calls a Donatello, and again he may be right; but fury at a
condition of things that can permit such a beautiful place to be so
desecrated renders it impossible to be properly appreciative.

Since we are here, instead of returning direct to the river let us
go a few yards along this Via della Spada to the left, cross the
Via de' Fossi, and so come to the busy Via di Pallazzuolo, on the
left of which, past the piazza of S. Paolino, is the little church of
S. Francesco de' Vanchetoni. This church is usually locked, but the key
is next door, on the right, and it has to be obtained because over the
right sacristy door is a boy's head by Rossellino, and over the left a
boy's head by Desiderio da Settignano, and each is joyful and perfect.

The Via de' Fossi will bring us again to the Piazza Goldoni and the
Arno, and a few yards farther along there is a palace to be seen,
the Corsini, the only palazzo still inhabited by its family to which
strangers are admitted--the long low white facade with statues on
the top and a large courtyard, on the Lungarno Corsini, just after
the Piazza Goldoni. It is not very interesting and belongs to the
wrong period, the seventeenth century. It is open on fixed days,
and free save that one manservant receives the visitor and another
conducts him from room to room. There are many pictures, but few
of outstanding merit, and the authorship of some of these has been
challenged. Thus, the cartoon of Julius II, which is called a Raphael
and seems to be the sketch for one of the well-known portraits at the
Pitti, Uffizi, or our National Gallery, is held to be not by Raphael
at all. Among the pleasantest pictures are a Lippo Lippi Madonna and
Child, a Filippino Lippi Madonna and Child with Angels, and a similar
group by Botticelli; but one has a feeling that Carlo Dolci and Guido
Reni are the true heroes of the house. Guido Reni's Lucrezia Romana,
with a dagger which she has already thrust two inches into her bosom,
as though it were cheese, is one of the most foolish pictures I ever
saw. The Corsini family having given the world a pope, a case of papal
vestments is here. It was this Pope when Cardinal Corsini who said to
Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Piozzi, meeting him in Florence in 1785,
"Well, Madam, you never saw one of us red-legged partridges before,
I believe".

There may be more beautiful bridges in the world than th