own into gaol, and,
on being set free when his time was done, was shown the treasury as
an object lesson. Of the wealth and purposefulness of Florence at
that time, in spite of the disastrous bellicose period she had been
passing through, Villani the historian, who wrote history as it was
being made, gives an excellent account, which Macaulay summarizes in
his vivid way. Thus: "The revenue of the Republic amounted to three
hundred thousand florins; a sum which, allowing for the depreciation of
the precious metals, was at least equivalent to six hundred thousand
pounds sterling; a larger sum than England and Ireland, two centuries
ago, yielded to Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two
hundred factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually
produced sold, at an average, for twelve hundred thousand florins;
a sum fully equal in exchangeable value to two millions and a half of
our money. Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. Eighty
banks conducted the commercial operations, not of Florence only but of
all Europe. The transactions of these establishments were sometimes
of a magnitude which may surprise even the contemporaries of the
Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward III of
England upwards of three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the
mark contained more silver than fifty shillings of the present day,
and when the value of silver was more than quadruple of what it now
is. The city and its environs contained a hundred and seventy thousand
children inhabitants. In the various schools about ten thousand
children were taught to read; twelve hundred studied arithmetic;
six hundred received a learned education."

Giotto died in 1386, and after his death, as I have said, Andrea
Pisano came in for a while; to be followed by Talenti, who is said
to have made considerable alterations in Giotto's design and to
be responsible for the happy idea of increasing the height of the
windows with the height of the tower and thus adding to the illusion
of springing lightness. The topmost ones, so bold in size and so
lovely with their spiral columns, almost seem to lift it.

The campanile to-day is 276 feet in height, and Giotto proposed to
add to that a spire of 105 feet. The Florentines completed the facade
of the cathedral in 1887 and are now spending enormous sums on the
Medici chapel at S. Lorenzo; why should they not one day carry out
their greatest artist's intention?