Magnificently Stern And Sombre Are The Streets Of Beautiful
Florence; And The Strong Old Piles Of Building Make Such Heaps
Of
shadow, on the ground and in the river, that there is another and a
different city of rich forms
And fancies, always lying at our feet.
Prodigious palaces, constructed for defence, with small distrustful
windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness formed of huge
masses of rough stone, frown, in their old sulky state, on every
street. In the midst of the city--in the Piazza of the Grand Duke,
adorned with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune--rises
the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, and
the Great Tower that watches over the whole town. In its court-
yard--worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom--is a
massive staircase that the heaviest waggon and the stoutest team of
horses might be driven up. Within it, is a Great Saloon, faded and
tarnished in its stately decorations, and mouldering by grains, but
recording yet, in pictures on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici
and the wars of the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by,
in an adjacent court-yard of the building--a foul and dismal place,
where some men are shut up close, in small cells like ovens; and
where others look through bars and beg; where some are playing
draughts, and some are talking to their friends, who smoke, the
while, to purify the air; and some are buying wine and fruit of
women-vendors; and all are squalid, dirty, and vile to look at.
'They are merry enough, Signore,' says the jailer.
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