eBooks Base 2000

I hate what I have said.
All the time that I was in the cathedral the space around the high altar,
which stands exactly under the dome, was occupied by priests or acolytes
in white garments, chanting a religious service.
After coming out, I took a view of the edifice from a corner of the
street nearest to the dome, where it and the smaller domes can be seen at
once. It is greatly more satisfactory than St. Peter's in any view I
ever had of it,--striking in its outline, with a mystery, yet not a
bewilderment, in its masses and curves and angles, and wrought out with a
richness of detail that gives the eyes new arches, new galleries, new
niches, new pinnacles, new beauties, great and small, to play with when
wearied with the vast whole. The hue, black and white marbles, like the
Baptistery, turned also yellow and brown, is greatly preferable to the
buff travertine of St. Peter's.
From the Duomo it is but a moderate street's length to the Piazza del
Gran Duca, the principal square of Florence.


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