ith the old lion and
thus obtain inspiration for some fine memorial stanzas. On September
17th, 1864, Death found Landor ready--as nine years earlier he had
promised it should--

To my ninth decade I have totter'd on,
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.

Landor was buried, as we saw, in the English cemetery within the city,
whither his son Arnold was borne less than seven years later. Here is
his own epitaph, one of the most perfect things in form and substance
in the English language:--

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life,
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

It should be cut on his tombstone.

CHAPTER XXV

The Carmine and San Miniato

The human form divine and waxen--Galileo--Bianca Capella--A
faithful Grand Duke--S. Spirito--The Carmine--Masaccio's place
in art--Leonardo's summary--The S. Peter frescoes--The Pitti
side--Romola--A little country walk--The ancient wall--The Piazzale
Michelangelo--An evening prospect--S. Miniato--Antonio Rossellino's
masterpiece--The story of S. Gualberto--A city of the dead--The
reluctant departure.

The Via Maggio is now our way, but first there is a museum which
I think should be visited, if only because it gave Dickens so much
pleasure when he was here--the Museo di Storia Naturale, which is
open three days a week only and is always free. Many visitors to
Florence never even hear of it and one quickly finds that its chief
frequenters are the poor. All the better for that. Here not only is
the whole animal kingdom spread out before the eye in crowded cases,
but the most wonderful collection of wax reproductions of the human
form is to be seen. These anatomical models are so numerous and so
exact that, since the human body does not change with the times,
a medical student could learn everything from them in the most
gentlemanly way possible. But they need a strong stomach. Mine,
I confess, quailed before the end.

The hero of the Museum is Galileo, whose tomb at S. Croce we have seen:
here are preserved certain of his instruments in a modern, floridly
decorated Tribuna named after him. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) belongs
rather to Pisa, where he was born and where he found the Leaning Tower
useful for experiments, and to Rome, where in 1611 he demons