FLORENCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 206, 16 March 1877, Page 1

FLORENCE.

fLOEENCE, the chief town of Tuscany, and some time capital of the Kingdom of Italy, lies in the valley of the Arnoj and upon that river. It is a beautiful city, remarkable for architectural triumphs as well as for the wealth of its galleries of art. Of the immortal artists of Italy, some of the principal were Florentines. Giotto laboured here in the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, and here were produced by him works in which

truth to nature replaced the Creek style which had prevailed for some two hundred years, and which was noted for its stiffness; but j to the everlasting shame of the town, the chief productions of his ; pencil were permitted to suffer irreparable injury, and amongst them that which existed as a fresco on the chapel wall* cf tbo '

Podesia's palace, famous by including a portrait of the poet of the " Divine Comedy," and which was coated over with whitewash to suit the altered circumstances of the building where it had been placed, when this was transformed into a prison. Florence likewise boasts itself to have been the birthplace of Michael Angelo,a« prior to his time it had been of Dante, author of the " mystic unfathomable song "—" — " Who from the human reached to things dirine, And, still in time, attained eternity." la ancient days the city had been placed under the protection of Mars, the god of war, and it was not until tb.3 year 1333 of the Christian era that his statue was removed from its position at the

head of the Ponte Vecchio, or old bridge ; its removal then being due, not to intention, but to a flood of the river Arno, which overthrew the sculptured deity. During the irruptions of the barbarians into Italy, Florence was destioyed by Totila ; and in more modern times tb.3 mediaeval factions of the Gruelphsaud. Ghibellines,

long were the occasion there of contests more aggravated than those which ordinarily distinguish civil war. These parties had arisen In Germany, and from a most trivial cause had sprung up feuds that occasioned onriles» blood-»li«d. and confusion. Neighbouring lords, named respectively Guelfo and Ghibellino, who had all their lives previously lived on the best terms with each other, were one day returning from a hunt, when a dispute arose between them concerning the merits of a certain hound. The quarrel did not long remain within its original limits, but waxed warmer and warmer, until in a little time a large body of adherents was attached to either side. An appeal to tbe Emperor, Frederick 1,, and to Pope Honorius 11. by the disputants spread the affair further, and an insult which a gentleman of Florence, named Buondelmonte, offered to the family of the Amidei, and which resulted in his murder, was the cause of the introduction of the feud into the town we speak of. Hence this squabble of German barons over their dog, incredible as it may seem, led to the dire effect of a civil war, unexampled in cruelty and obstinacy, and occurring in a distant country ; for the quarrel between the two families might have been reconciled, notwithstanding its seal of blood, but having been made the pretence by which the foreign feud was introduced amongst the townsmen, it became involved in the greater evils thus occasioned, and the whole State was divided for, possibly, it knew not what. The moralist and philosopher might find much in this history upon which to dwell ; the one in inculcating the necessity that exists for repressing the passions in their most trivial outburst, lest they become uncontrollable and productive of endless evils ; the other in speculating upon the wonderful connection of all things human, so that it is impossible to discern in what the chain of relationship begins or terminates, if, indeed, it does not embrace mankind in the widest sense.