says fond imagination, be the
very spot to which the Fesulean ancestors of the Florentines descended
from their high fastness to traffic with the rustic population of the
valley, had not been shunned as a place of residence by Florentine
wealth. In the early decades of the fifteenth century, which was now
near its end, the Medici and other powerful families of the _popolani
grassi_, or commercial nobility, had their houses there, not perhaps
finding their ears much offended by the loud roar of mingled dialects,
or their eyes much shocked by the butchers' stalls, which the old poet
Antonio Pucci accounts a chief glory, or _dignita_, of a market that, in
his esteem, eclipsed the markets of all the earth beside. But the glory
of mutton and veal (well attested to be the flesh of the right animals;
for were not the skins, with the heads attached, duly displayed,
according to the decree of the Signoria?) was just now wanting to the
Mercato, the time of Lent not being yet over. The proud corporation, or
"Art," of butchers was in abeyance, and it was the great harvest-time of
the market-gardeners, the cheesemongers, the vendors of macaroni, corn,
eggs, milk, and dried fruits: a change which was apt to make the women's
voices predominant in the chorus. But in all seasons there was the
experimental ringing of pots and pans, the chinking of the
money-changers, the tempting offers of cheapness at the old-clothes
stalls, the challenges of the dicers, the vaunting of new linens and
woollens, of excellent wooden-ware, kettles, and frying-pans; there was
the choking of the narrow inlets with mules and carts, together with
much uncomplimentary remonstrance in terms remarkably identical with the
insults in use by the gentler sex of the present day, under the same
imbrowning and heating circumstances. Ladies and gentlemen, who came to
market, looked on at a larger amount of amateur fighting than could
easily be seen in these later times, and beheld more revolting rags,
beggary, and rascaldom, than modern householders could well picture to
themselves. As the day wore on, the hideous drama of the gaming-house
might be seen here by any chance open-air spectator--the quivering
eagerness, the blank despair, the sobs, the blasphemy, and the blows:--

"E vedesi chi perde con gran soffi,
E bestemmiar colla mano alia mascella,
E ricever e dar di molti ingoffi."

But still there was the relief of prettier sights: there were
brood-rabb