I Was Struck With The Figure Of A Woman Lying Dead
On A Tomb-Stone, Covered With A Piece Of Thin Drapery, So
Delicately Cut As To Shew All The Flexures Of The Attitude, And
Even All The Swellings And Sinuosities Of The Muscles.
Instead of
stone, it looks like a sheet of wet linen.
[One of these
antiquities representing the Hunting of Meleager was converted
into a coffin for the Countess Beatrice, mother of the famous
Countess Mathilda; it is now fixed to the outside of the church
wall just by one of the doors, and is a very elegant piece of
sculpture. Near the same place is a fine pillar of Porphyry
supporting the figure of a Lion, and a kind of urn which seems to
be a Sarcophagus, though an inscription round the Base declares
it is a Talentum in which the antient Pisans measured the Census
or Tax which they payed to Augustus: but in what metal or specie
this Census was payed we are left to divine. There are likewise
in the Campo Santo two antique Latin edicts of the Pisan Senate
injoining the citizens to go into mourning for the Death of Caius
and Lucius Caesar the Sons of Agrippa, and heirs declared of the
Emperor. Fronting this Cemetery, on the other side of the Piazza
of the Dome, is a large, elegant Hospital in which the sick are
conveniently and comfortably lodged, entertained, and attended.]
For four zechines I hired a return-coach and four from Pisa to
Florence. This road, which lies along the Arno, is very good; and
the country is delightful, variegated with hill and vale, wood
and water, meadows and corn-fields, planted and inclosed like the
counties of Middlesex and Hampshire; with this difference,
however, that all the trees in this tract were covered with
vines, and the ripe clusters black and white, hung down from
every bough in a most luxuriant and romantic abundance. The vines
in this country are not planted in rows, and propped with sticks,
as in France and the county of Nice, but twine around the hedge-
row trees, which they almost quite cover with their foliage and
fruit. The branches of the vine are extended from tree to tree,
exhibiting beautiful festoons of real leaves, tendrils, and
swelling clusters a foot long. By this oeconomy the ground of the
inclosure is spared for corn, grass, or any other production. The
trees commonly planted for the purpose of sustaining the vines,
are maple, elm, and aller, with which last the banks of the Arno
abound. [It would have been still more for the advantage of the
Country and the Prospect, if instead of these they had planted
fruit trees for the purpose.] This river, which is very
inconsiderable with respect to the quantity of water, would be a
charming pastoral stream, if it was transparent; but it is always
muddy and discoloured. About ten or a dozen miles below Florence,
there are some marble quarries on the side of it, from whence the
blocks are conveyed in boats, when there is water enough in the
river to float them, that is after heavy rains, or the melting of
the snow upon the mountains of Umbria, being part of the
Apennines, from whence it takes its rise.
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