number of statues, bas-reliefs, and casts, and what was especially
interesting, the vague and rude commencement of a statue of St. Matthew
by Michael Angelo. The conceptions of this great sculptor were so
godlike that he seems to have been discontented at not likewise
possessing the godlike attribute of creating and embodying them with an
instantaneous thought, and therefore we often find sculptures from his
hand left at the critical point of their struggle to get out of the
marble. The statue of St. Matthew looks like the antediluvian fossil of
a human being of an epoch when humanity was mightier and more majestic
than now, long ago imprisoned in stone, and half uncovered again.


July 16th.--We went yesterday forenoon to see the Bargello. I do not
know anything more picturesque in Florence than the great interior court
of this ancient Palace of the Podesta, with the lofty height of the
edifice looking down into the enclosed space, dark and stern, and the
armorial bearings of a long succession of magistrates carved in stone
upon the walls, a garland, as it were, of these Gothic devices extending
quite round the court. The best feature of the whole is the broad stone
staircase, with its heavy balustrade, ascending externally from the court
to the iron-grated door in the second story. We passed the sentinels
under the lofty archway that communicates with the street, and went up
the stairs without being questioned or impeded. At the iron-grated door,
however, we were met by two officials in uniform, who courteously
informed us that there was nothing to be exhibited in the Bargello except
an old chapel containing some frescos by Giotto, and that these could
only be seen by making a previous appointment with the custode, he not
being constantly on hand. I was not sorry to escape the frescos, though
one of them is a portrait of Dante.