. . . . The streets were thronged and
vociferative with more life and outcry than usual. It must have been
market-day in Florence, for the commerce of the streets was in great
vigor, narrow tables being set out in them, and in the squares, burdened
with all kinds of small merchandise, such as cheap jewelry, glistening as
brightly as what we had just seen in the gem-room of the Uffizi; crockery
ware; toys, books, Italian and French; silks; slippers; old iron; all
advertised by the dealers with terribly loud and high voices, that
reverberated harshly from side to side of the narrow streets. Italian
street-cries go through the head; not that they are so very sharp, but
exceedingly hard, like a blunt iron bar.
We stood at the base of the Campanile, and looked at the bas-reliefs
which wreathe it round; and, above them, a row of statues; and from
bottom to top a marvellous minuteness of inlaid marbles, filling up the
vast and beautiful design of this heaven-aspiring tower. Looking upward
to its lofty summit,--where angels might alight, lapsing downward from
heaven, and gaze curiously at the bustle of men below,--I could not but
feel that there is a moral charm in this faithful minuteness of Gothic
architecture, filling up its outline with a million of beauties that
perhaps may never be studied out by a single spectator.
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