hence, as they look now; and one often passes beneath an abbreviated
remnant of what was once a lofty tower, perhaps three hundred feet high,
such as used to be numerous in Florence when each noble of the city had
his own warfare to wage; and there are patches of sculpture that look old
on houses, the modern stucco of which causes them to look almost new.
Here and there an unmistakable antiquity stands in its own impressive
shadow; the Church of Or San Michele, for instance, once a market, but
which grew to be a church by some inherent fitness and inevitable
consecration. It has not the least the aspect of a church, being high
and square, like a mediaeval palace; but deep and high niches are let
into its walls, within which stand great statues of saints, masterpieces
of Donatello, and other sculptors of that age, before sculpture began to
be congealed by the influence of Greek art.

The Riccardi Palace is at the corner of the Via Larga. It was built by
the first Cosmo de' Medici, the old banker, more than four centuries ago,
and was long the home of the ignoble race of princes which he left behind
him. It looks fit to be still the home of a princely race, being nowise
dilapidated nor decayed externally, nor likely to be so, its high Tuscan
basement being as solid as a ledge of rock, and its upper portion not
much less so, though smoothed into another order of stately architecture.
Entering its court from the Via Larga, we found ourselves beneath a
pillared arcade, passing round the court like a cloister; and on the
walls of the palace, under this succession of arches, were statues,
bas-reliefs, and sarcophagi, in which, first, dead Pagans had slept, and
then dead Christians, before the sculptured coffins were brought hither
to adorn the palace of the Medici. In the most prominent place was a
Latin inscription of great length and breadth, chiefly in praise of old
Cosino and his deeds and wisdom. This mansion gives the visitor a
stately notion of the life of a commercial man in the days when merchants