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Statues by Michael Angelo, John of
Bologna, and Bandinello, as well historic as ideal, stand round the hall,
and it is really a fit theatre for the historic scenes of a country to be
acted in. It was built, moreover, with the idea of its being the
council-hall of a free people; but our own little Faneuil, which was
meant, in all simplicity, to be merely a spot where the townspeople
should meet to choose their selectmen, has served the world better in
that respect. I wish I had more room to speak of this vast, dusky,
historic hall. [This volume of journal closes here.]

July 4th 1858.--Yesterday forenoon we went to see the Church of Santa
Maria Novella. We found the piazza, on one side of which the church
stands, encumbered with the amphitheatrical ranges of wooden seats that
had been erected to accommodate the spectators of the chariot-races, at
the recent Feast of St. John. The front of the church is composed of
black and white marble, which, in the course of the five centuries that
it has been built, has turned brown and yellow.


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