I must not try to describe the great places of Florence, the Cathedral with its dome second only to that of St. Peter, Giotto's Tower, and the famous Baptistery, nor the treasures of art in the picture galleries. I may be able to say something about them if I revisit Florence. One other Church, however, Santa Croce, the chief shrine of the great Franciscan order, must not be passed by. Dean Stanley, I think, calls it the Westminster Abbey of Italy. Its architecture is a specimen of Tuscan Gothic, and its fresco paintings by Giotto are a great attraction, but much more so the memorials of the mighty dead who lie there or are commemorated by monuments,—Michael Angelo, Galileo, Dante, Donatello, the sculptor, Machiavelli, Alfieri, Rossini, and amongst them an English Bishop, John Catrick, of Exeter, who was Ambassador from Henry V in Florence, and died there. The Franciscans were a preaching order, drawing immense congregations in the vast nave, which measures three hundred and eighty-four feet by sixty-five feet.
Leaving Florence, with a day or two in Padua, the famous university city in mediæval days, we went to Ferrara, on our way to Venice, a quiet, half-deserted place, once a great commercial centre, not far from the river Po, which is crossed by a bridge of boats, a wide, rapid stream, banked on either side by high grass-grown dykes of earth. The early morning market was worth a visit. In Italy the people seem to depend on the daily market for all their needs; there were women of all ranks, priests, soldiers, labourers, well-dressed men, bargaining for their rolls, eggs, butter, and meat. In most of these towns one notices some peculiar costume; the Ferrarese ladies wear, in place of any sort of hat or bonnet, bright
