Cimabue's. I should be sorry to have the church go to decay, because it
was here that Boccaccio's dames and cavaliers encountered one another,
and formed their plan of retreating into the country during the
plague. . . . .

At the door we bought a string of beads, with a small crucifix appended,
in memory of the place. The beads seem to be of a grayish, pear-shaped
seed, and the seller assured us that they were the tears of St. Job.
They were cheap, probably because Job shed so many tears in his lifetime.

It being still early in the day, we went to the Uffizi gallery, and after
loitering a good while among the pictures, were so fortunate as to find
the room of the bronzes open. The first object that attracted us was
John of Bologna's Mercury, poising himself on tiptoe, and looking not
merely buoyant enough to float, but as if he possessed more than the
eagle's power of lofty flight. It seems a wonder that he did not
absolutely fling himself into the air when the artist gave him the last
touch. No bolder work was ever achieved; nothing so full of life has
been done since. I was much interested, too, in the original little wax
model, two feet high, of Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus. The wax seems to
be laid over a wooden framework, and is but roughly finished off. . . . .

In an adjoining room are innumerable specimens of Roman and Etruscan
bronzes, great and small. A bronze Chimera did not strike me as very
ingeniously conceived, the goat's head being merely an adjunct, growing
out of the back of the monster, without possessing any original and
substantive share in its nature. The snake's head is at the end of the
tail. The object most really interesting was a Roman eagle, the standard
of the Twenty-fourth Legion, about the size of a blackbird.