same position at Lorenzo's tomb, or "Ninny's tomb," or any other tomb?
Was Lorenzo any more to Aurora than Julian, that she should weep for
him only?

Therefore one must invent for one's self the fable of those immortal
groups. Each spectator must pluck out, unaided, the heart of their
mystery. Those matchless colossal forms, which the foolish chroniclers
of the time have baptized Night and Morning, speak an unknown language
to the crowd. They are mute as Sphinx to souls which cannot supply the
music and the poetry which fell from their marble lips upon the ear of
him who created them.


X.

PALAZZO RICCARDI.

The ancient residence of Cosmo Vecchio and his successors is a
magnificent example of that vast and terrible architecture peculiar to
Florence. This has always been a city, not of streets, but of
fortresses. Each block is one house, but a house of the size of a
citadel; while the corridors and apartments are like casemates and
bastions, so gloomy and savage is their expression. Ancient Florence,
the city of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, the
Florence of the nobles, the Florence of the Ghibellines, the Florence
in which nearly every house was a castle, with frowning towers
hundreds of feet high, machicolated battlements, donjon keeps,
oubliettes, and all other appurtenances of a feudal stronghold, exists
no longer. With the expulsion of the imperial faction, and the advent
of the municipal Guelphs,--that proudest, boldest, most successful,