of a poor widow, and turn her out at midnight into the streets to die, than to plunder for gain the richest altar in the world.
From these and various other similar causes, it happened that, in the middle ages,—that is, from five hundred to a thousand years ago,—almost all the great expenditures of money, in all the great cities and towns of Europe, were made for churches. Sometimes these churches were so large that they were several hundred years in building. One generation would begin, another would continue, and a third would finish the work; that is, provided the finishing work was ever done. Great numbers of them remain unfinished to the present day, and always will remain so.
It is generally, however, the exterior which remains incomplete. Within they are magnificent beyond description. They are so profusely adorned with altars, chapels, crucifixes, paintings, vessels of gold and silver, and with sculptures and monuments of every kind, that on entering them one is quite bewildered with the magnificence of the scene.
There are a great many different altars where divine service may be performed, some arranged along the sides of the church, in the recesses between the pillars, and others in the transepts, and in various little chapels opening here and there from the transepts and the aisles; and so extensive and vast is the interior that sometimes four or five different congregations are engaged in worship in different parts of the church at the same time, without at all disturbing one another.
One of the most celebrated of these great churches is the cathedral at Florence, where Mr. George and Rollo were now staying. There is a representation of it on the next page, which will give you some idea of its form, though it can convey no conception of its immense magnitude.
The dome that surmounts the centre of the building is the largest in the world. It was a hundred years after the church was commenced before the dome was put on. The dome is about a hundred and forty feet wide from side to side, and almost as high as it is wide. It is more than a hundred and thirty feet high, which is enough for twelve or fifteen stories of a good-sized house. And this is the dome alone. The whole height of the church, from the ground to the top of the cross, is nearly four hundred feet. You will get a better idea of how high this is, if you ask of your father, or of some one that knows, what the height is of some tall steeple near where you live.
When the architect who conceived the idea of finishing the church by putting this dome upon it first proposed it, the other architects of the town declared that it could not be done. It was impossible, they said, to build so large a dome on the top of so lofty a building. But he insisted that it was not impossible. He could not only build the dome at that height, but he could first build an octagonal lantern, he said, on the top of the church, and then build the dome upon that, which would carry the dome up a great deal higher. At last they consented to let him make the attempt; and he succeeded. You see the dome in the engraving, and the octagonal lantern beneath it, on which it rests. The lantern is the part which has the round windows.
You see to the left of the church, at the farther end, a tall, square tower. This is the bell tower. There are six bells in it. It was designed to have a spire upon it, but the spire has not yet been built, and perhaps it never will be.
This bell tower alone cost an enormous sum of money. It is faced on every side, as indeed the church itself is, with different colored marbles, and the four walls of it, on the outside, are so profusely adorned with sculptures, statues, and other costly and elaborate architectural decorations, that it would take a week to examine them fully in detail.
The part of the church which is presented to view in the engraving is the end. The front proper is on a line with the farther side of the bell tower. The engraving does not show us the length of the edifice at all, except so far as we gain an idea of it by the long procession which we see at the side. As I have already said, the length is more than five hundred feet, which is nearly half a quarter of a mile.
The putting on of the dome was considered the greatest achievement in the building of the church; and the architect who planned and superintended the work gained for himself immortal honor. After his death a statue of him was made, and placed in a niche in the wall of the houses on one side of the square, opposite the dome. He is represented as sitting in a chair, holding a plan of the work in his hand, and looking up to see it as it appeared completed. We can just see this statue in the foreground of the picture, on the left.
And now I must return to the story.
While Mr. George and Rollo were in Florence, Rollo was occupied mainly, as I have already said, in rambling about the town, and observing the scenes of real and active life, which every where met his view in the streets and squares, while Mr. George spent his time chiefly in the churches, and in the galleries of painting and sculpture, studying the works of art. One morning after breakfast, Mr. George was going to the great gallery in the palace of the grand duke, to spend the day there. Rollo said that he would walk with him a little way. So they walked together along the street which led by the bank of the river.
"Uncle George," said Rollo, "how much longer is it going to take for you to study these paintings and statues till you are satisfied?"
"Five or ten years," said Mr. George.
"O uncle George!" exclaimed Rollo; "I have seen as much of them as I want to see already."
"You have not seen one of them yet," said Mr. George.
"Not seen one of them!" repeated Rollo.
"No, not one of them," replied Mr. George.
"I don't know what you mean by that," said Rollo.
"I'll show you what I mean some time or other," said Mr. George, "when you are in one of the galleries with me."
"I should like to have you," said Rollo; "but now I really want to know when you are going to be ready to go on towards Naples. I'd rather see Mount Vesuvius than all the paintings in the world, especially if there is a good blazing eruption coming out of it, and plenty of red-hot stones."
"The first question to be settled," said Mr. George, "is, how we shall go."
"Are there more ways than one?" asked Rollo.
"Yes," said Mr. George; "there are three or four ways. We are here at Florence, in the interior of the country, and Rome is also in the interior; but there is a seaport on the coast for each city. So we can go from here to Leghorn, which is the seaport for Florence, by the railroad, and there we can take a steamboat and go to Civita Vecchia, which is the seaport for Rome. There we can land and go up to Rome in some sort of a carriage."
"I like that way," said Rollo. "I like that best of all. There are a railroad and a steamboat both in it."
"Another way," continued Mr. George, "is, we can go by the malle post."1
"I should like to go by the malle post," said Rollo; "they keep the horses on the gallop almost all the way."
"Then again," continued Mr. George, "if we choose we can engage a vetturino."
"Yes," said Rollo; "there are plenty of them always standing out here by the bridge. They ask me almost, every day, when I go by, whether I want a carriage. 'Want a carriage, sir,' they say, 'to go to Rome, to Naples, to Venice, to Genoa?'"
Here Rollo repeated the words of the vetturini, imitating the peculiar intonations with which they spoke, in quite a skilful manner: "To Rome! Naples! Venice! Nice! Genoa!"
"Yes," said Mr. George, "those are the men."
"And, come to think of it," said Rollo, "I believe, after all, I would rather go with a vetturino. We ride along
The malle post is a sort of despatch carriage, that takes the mails. It can take also two or three passengers. They change horses very often with the malle post, and drive very fast.
