em, his
eyes will not dwell on that blank; they are drawn irresistibly to the
unique tower springing, like a tall flower-stem drawn towards the sun,
from the square turreted mass of the Old Palace in the very heart of the
city--the tower that looks none the worse for the four centuries that
have passed since he used to walk under it. The great dome, too,
greatest in the world, which, in his early boyhood, had been only a
daring thought in the mind of a small, quick-eyed man--there it raises
its large curves still, eclipsing the hills. And the well-known
bell-towers--Giotto's, with its distant hint of rich colour, and the
graceful-spired Badia, and the rest--he looked at them all from the
shoulder of his nurse.

"Surely," he thinks, "Florence can still ring her bells with the solemn
hammer-sound that used to beat on the hearts of her citizens and strike
out the fire there. And here, on the right, stands the long dark mass
of Santa Croce, where we buried our famous dead, laying the laurel on
their cold brows and fanning them with the breath of praise and of
banners. But Santa Croce had no spire then: we Florentines were too
full of great building projects to carry them all out in stone and
marble; we had our frescoes and our shrines to pay for, not to speak of
rapacious condottieri, bribed royalty, and purchased territories, and
our facades and spires must needs wait. But what architect can the
Frati Minori [the Franciscans] have employed to build that spire for
them? If it had been built in my day, Filippo Brunelleschi or
Michelozzo would have devised something of another fashion than that--
something worthy to crown the church of Arnolfo."

At this the Spirit, with a sigh, lets his eyes travel on to the city
walls, and now he dwells on the change there with wonder at these modern
times. Why have five out of the eleven convenient gates been closed?
And why, above all, should the towers have been levelled that were once
a glory and defence? Is the world become so peaceful, then, and do
Florentines dwell in such harmony, that there are no longer conspiracies
to bring ambitious exiles home again with armed bands at their back?
These are difficult questions: it is easier and pleasanter to recognise
the old than to account for the new. And there flows Arno, with its
bridges just where they used to be--the Ponte Vecchio, least like other
bridges in the world, laden with the same quaint shops where our Spirit
remembe