Rome, feeling grateful that we had been permitted to look upon these relics of the past. A missionary and his wife from India occupied an apartment with us in the railway car, and we chatted so gayly together that seven hours pleasantly slipped by, and we were in Florence.

CHAPTER V.

FLORENCE is situated in a pretty valley on both sides of the river Arno, and is picturesquely surrounded by spurs of the Apennines. It has one hundred and twenty-three thousand inhabitants. The streets are much wider than in Rome, and the shop windows are gay and attractive, especially the mosaic jewelry shops, presenting a most tempting display of delicate flowered mosaics, so much prettier to my mind than the Roman mosaics. Then there are pretty fountains every now and then, monuments, and numerous memorial tablets, recording important events in the history of Florence. A large fountain, with Neptune seated

in his car, drawn by sea-horses, and tritons sporting in the basin, occupies the site of the stake at which Savonarola and two other Dominican monks were burned on the twenty-third of May, 1498. During the study of theology, Savonarola was awakened to the corruption of doctrine that prevailed in the Romish church, and he began earnestly to expose the evils in the city of Florence; but in a few years he was judged by papal power to be guilty of heresy, and was burned to death on this spot, and his ashes thrown into the river Arno. This city has the honor of being the birthplace of Dante in 1265. Galileo died here, and Michael Angelo resided here for a time. We saw the exterior of each of their houses; they are all exceedingly plain stone. buildings. A bust of Michael Angelo is over the door of the house where he lived.

We visited the famous Uffizi Gallery by wearily climbing up one hundred and twenty-six steps, and upon entering the second vestibule were greeted by two dogs and a wild boar, so perfectly formed by the sculptor's chisel that we smiled aloud at their comical appearance. We hastened on to the Tribune, an octag. gonal room lighted from the top, which contains the choicest

gems of the whole collection, master-pieces of ancient sculpture found at different places in the sixteenth century (the names of the artists are unknown), and also modern paintings. The five following exquisite pieces of sculpture are ranged around the room: "A Satyr," playing on the cymbal and also playing a stringed instrument by the pressure of his foot; the “Wrestlers,” representing two men in a desperate struggle, one holding the other down, with their heads bent nearly to the ground, and the blood vessels of the faces nearly ready to burst from exertion. The anatomy of the bodies is perfectly wonderful as delineated in the straining sinews, and swollen, distended muscles; "The Grinder," a man kneeling down, sharpening or grinding a sickle on a stone;"The Apollino," or young Apollo, is another beautiful figure; but the Venus de Medici, found in the Villa of Hadrian, outstrips them all in beauty and gracefulness of form. I think, I can truthfully say, that it surpasses any statute we saw while abroad, in its easy grace of attitude. It scarcely seems possible that cold, stiff marble, could be brought to appear so flexible. Among the finest paintings in the Tribune are the Madonna and Child, by Raphael; Venus of Urbino, by Titian; and Adoration of the Magi, by A. Durer. In another room we were delighted with the charming picture of Mary visiting Elizabeth, and also a fine picture of St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, by Sodoma.

We were informed that the Santa Croce is the most noted church in Florence, and were somewhat disappointed at its exceedingly plain interior. It is paved with brick, and there are a great many memorial tablets on the floor, with the figures of persons on them in bass-relief, so if one is not careful he will fall down and make another bass-relief on the pavement. I stumbled over the head of somebody's image. The frescoes on the walls are faded and dim, having been discovered during the last twenty years under the whitewash. This church is to Florence what Westminster Abbey is to London. There are many distinguished people buried here-historians, naturalists, and other scholars. The remains of Michael Angelo rest beneath a fine.

monument, with a female figure weeping over it. He died at Rome in 1564, and was brought here for burial. Directly opposite, in the left aisle, is the monument of Galileo, who died in 1642. The philosopher is represented as sitting on the sarcophagus, with the world in one hand and a telescope in the other. A monument to Dante is also here, but he is buried at Ravenna. Owing to the extreme heat we were compelled to cut our stay short at Florence, and seek the more congenial atmosphere of Venice, with its cool refreshing breezes from the Adriatic. For I felt that if I remained there long, I might also become a subject for the Santa Croce. The facts in the case are that I had overworked in Rome, and my loss of appetite, unstrung nerves, and general debility, made me a fit subject for a hospital rather than an enthusisatic tourist. But at the rate of five dollars a day one cannot afford to be sick, so I pressed on.

We left Florence at seven o'clock in the morning, and reached Venice at half-past four in the afternoon. Our train entered Venice (one of the most famous and singular cities in the world), over a bridge more than two miles long and fourteen feet wide, which spans the lagoon, and is supported by two hundred and twenty-two arches. We almost shouted for joy as we approached this city of our dreams, which had always seemed to us more like the haunt of fairies than a real, practical dwelling place. Upon alighting from the train, everything was new and strange to us. Instead of a long line of omnibuses and carriages waiting for passengers, as in other cities, there was on the canal a row of gondolas, long, light crafts, painted black, according to a law of the fifteenth century, nicely cushioned and carpeted. Some of them have a low, black canopy or cabin made of leather, and others of some light material, as a protection from the sun and rain. They are about thirty feet long and four feet wide. The prow and stern terminate in a point, and curve out of the water to a height of five feet. The rowers always stand. The porter from the Beau Rivage hotel, which we had selected, and the gondolier, placed our valises in one of these long black boats, politely seated us, and then we glided gently along,

charmed with this peaceful mode of traveling; no clattering of horses' hoofs, no noise of wheels, no dust from this highway. It was amusing to watch the gondoliers ingeniously turn the corners, or dexterously pick their way through a crowd of gondolas. They throw themselves gracefully over their tremendous oars, which splash in the water with the regularity of a pendulum. We passed under the celebrated Bridge of Sighs, which connects the Doge's Palace with the prison. It is a covered gallery, and prisoners, when led to execution, passed from their cells across this bridge to the palace to hear their sentence of death. This is why it was called the Bridge of Sighs. It has two passages in it, one for the political criminals who received their sentence from the Council of Three, to pass through, and the other for the papal criminals who received their sentence from the Council of Ten. The great marble palaces on either side, which seemed to rise vision-like from the edge of the water, and the pretty bridges which connect the islands, were so fascinating that we were sorry when our first gondola ride was ended, and we stopped in front of our hotel.

The next morning after our arrival, my husband sent for Dr. Riechetti who declared that I had not Roman fever, but that my nervous system was greatly exhausted. He toned me up so that

I was confined to my room but two days, and was then able to recline in the luxurious gondola and dreamily float about through the different canals, fanned by the delicious sea-breezes, so smoothly, quietly, and lazily that I almost fell asleep. The landlord and all the servants were exceedingly kind and humored every whim during our stay of five days. I do not think it was kindness begotten of policy, but genuine sympathy. History tells us that the culminating point of the glory of Venice was at the close of the fifteenth century. It was then the grand focus of the entire commerce of Europe, and numbered two hundred thousand inhabitants. But the population has been reduced to one hundred and twenty-eight thousand, and one-fourth of them are beggars, which beset you on all sides. One writer says of them, "They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they