I wonder was he ever, in his
bitter exile, withheld from cursing the very stones in the streets
of Florence the ungrateful, by any kind remembrance of this old
musing-place, and its association with gentle thoughts of little
Beatrice!
The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels, of Florence; the
church of Santa Croce where Michael Angelo lies buried, and where
every stone in the cloisters is eloquent on great men's deaths;
innumerable churches, often masses of unfinished heavy brickwork
externally, but solemn and serene within; arrest our lingering
steps, in strolling through the city.
In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the Museum of
Natural History, famous through the world for its preparations in
wax; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior
animals; and gradually ascending, through separate organs of the
human frame, up to the whole structure of that wonderful creation,
exquisitely presented, as in recent death. Few admonitions of our
frail mortality can be more solemn and more sad, or strike so home
upon the heart, as the counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are
lying there, upon their beds, in their last sleep.
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