Florence 285 



tion is most wanted; in the hour of grief and misery. Why is the 

 impassioned and still loving husband^ or the tender and feeling 

 bosom of the father, to be denied the last rites to the corpse of 

 a wife or a daughter, especially when such rites are neither 

 injurious nor inconvenient to society? The regulations of the 

 Grand Duke are in part entirely rational, — and that part not in 

 the least inconsistent with the consolation to be derived from a 

 relaxation in some other points. But, in the name of common 

 sense, why admit exceptions ? Why is the archbishop to have 

 this favour ? Why the religious ? This is absolutely destructive 

 of the principle on which the whole is founded; for it admits 

 the force of those prejudices I have touched on, and deem 

 exemption from their tie as a favour! It is declaring such 

 feelings to be follies, too absurd to be indulged, and, in the same 

 breath, assigning the indulgence as the reward of rank and purity ! 

 If the exemption is a privilege so valuable as to be a favour 

 proper for the first ecclesiastic and for the religious of the sex 

 only, — you confess the observance to be directly, in such propor- 

 tion, a burthen, and the common feelings of mankind are sanc- 

 tioned, even in the moment of their outrage. Nothing could 

 pardon such an edict but its being absolutely free from all 

 exemptions, and its containing an express declaration and ordin- 

 ance to be executed, with rigour, on the bodies of the prince 

 himself, and every individual of his family. 



December i. To the shop of the brothers Pisani, sculptors, 

 where for half an hour I was foolish enough to wish myself rich, 

 that I might have bought Niobe, the gladiator, Diana, Venus, 

 and some other casts from the antique statues. I threw away 

 a few pauls instead of three or four hundred zechins. Before 

 I quit Florence I must observe that besides the buildings and 

 various objects I have mentioned there are at least a thousand 

 more which I have not seen at all; — the famous bridge Ponta 

 della Santa Trinita deserves, however, a word: it is the origin 

 of that at Neuille and so many others in France, but much more 

 beautiful ; being indeed the first in the world. The circumstance 

 that strikes one at Florence is the antiquity of the principal 

 buildings; everything one sees considerable is of three or four 

 hundred years' standing: of new buildings there are next to 

 none; all here remind one of the Medicis: there is hardly a street 

 that has not some monument, some decoration, that bears the 

 stamp of that splendid and magnificent family. How commerce 

 could enrich it sufficiently to leave such prodigious remains is 

 a question not a little curious ; for I may venture, without appre- 



