It has been proposed (or at least it is so reported) that the church of La Spina should be destroyed in order to widen the quay.1

At Florence. One of its most important and characteristic streets, that in which stands the church of Or San Michele, has been within the last five years entirely destroyed and rebuilt in the French style; consisting now almost exclusively of shops of Bijouterie and Parfumerie. Owing to this direction of public funds, the fronts of the Duomo, Santa Croce, San Lorenzo, and half the others in Florence, remain in their original bricks.2

The old refectory of Santa Croce, containing an invaluable Cenacolo, if not firm may be seen in old editions of Murray's Handbooks. He was also a great admirer of Ruskin and afterwards of the Pre-Raphaelites: see Letters of D. G. Rossetti to William Allingham, edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, 1897, p. 25. Of the vandalism in putting up monuments in the Campo Santo, Ruskin writes (May 25):

"I saw some of the improvements going on in the Campo Santo yesterday. They were going to put up a monument to some apothecary, and so three workmen came and knocked a great hole in the wall; of course every blow of the hammer causing the fresco plaster, already loose, to detach itself more and more from the wall, and tearing down at the same time half of what remained of a head of Antonio Veneziano. Then they put up a slab with the apothecary's name upon it, and saying that it was a great pity he was dead (I think it's a pity that anybody here is left alive); and then they knocked down some more fresco to put up his bust. This they put up so as to conceal all that they had left of the Antonio head; and then they filled up the whole with wet plaster, and plastered away half a yard more of the old fresco decorated border on each side, to make the wall flat, and so they left it to damp all the painting above and prepare it for tumbling off next time. But they won't let me take tracings, not they! I shall certainly get into the habit of swearing in Italy. I am beginning to do so mentally to a considerable extent."]

1 [For the subsequent destruction of this church, see Fors Clavigera, Letters 18 and 20.]

2 [Of the rebuilding of Florence Ruskin also gave an account in a letter to his father (Florence, May 30, 1845) :

66

...

Do you recollect the street that used to run from the post office to the cathedral, or baptistery-very narrow and Italian, all full of crimson draperies and dark with old roofs? Judge of my horror, when on turning the corner, I beheld (as it seemed) the Rue St. Honoré at Paris, with a whole row of confectioners' shops fresh gilt, and barbers' between, and 'Parfumerie et Quincaillerie,' within ten yards of Brunelleschi's monument! They have actually pulled down the whole street and built a new one instead, and a fit one it is for these Italians as they are now, full of bonbons, segars, and pomatum. And actually when in total despair I was walking home with my eyes on the gutter, wishing I could wash the whole population of Florence down with it into the sewer, I was aroused by nearly tumbling over one of the parapet stones of the divine old church of Or San Michele, which they have got scaffolding on both sides of at once. I think verily the Devil is come down upon earth, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time [Rev. xii. 12]. And a short time he will have if he goes on at this rate, for in ten years more there will be nothing in the world but eatinghouses and gambling-houses and worse, and then he'll have nothing more to do. The French condemned the Convent of San Marco where I am just going, and all the pictures of Fra Angelico were only saved by their being driven out. If I ever write anything that this foul world will listen to (which, unless I get more wicked or more foolish, I suppose I never shall), and don't black those Frenchmen's faces for them to some purpose, I wish my tongue may cleave to the roof of my mouth."

The front of the Duomo has only now (1903) been entirely completed, though the

by Giotto, at least one of the finest works of his school, is used as a carpet manufactory. In order to see the fresco, I had to get on the top of a loom. The cenacolo (of Raffaelle?) recently discovered I saw when the refectory it adorns was used as a coach-house. The fresco which gave Raffaelle the idea of the Christ of the Transfiguration is in an old wood-shed at San Miniato, concealed behind a heap of faggots. In June, 1846, I saw Gentile da Fabriano's picture of the Adoration of the Magi, belonging to the Academy of Florence, put face upmost in a shower of rain in an open cart; on my suggesting the possibility of the rain's hurting it, an old piece of matting was thrown over its face, and it was wheeled away "per essere pulita." What fate this signified is best to be discovered from the large Perugino in the Academy; whose divine distant landscape is now almost concealed by the mass of French ultramarine painted over it, apparently with a common house-brush, by the picture-cleaner.

Not to detain the reader by going through the cities of Italy, I will only further mention, that at Padua the rain beats through the west window of the Arena chapel, and runs down over the frescoes; 2 that at Venice, in September, 1846, I saw three buckets set in the Scuola di San Rocco to catch the rain which came through the canvases of Tintoret on the roof; and that, while the old works of art are left thus unprotected, the palaces are being restored in the following modes: The English residents knock out bow windows to see

greater part was finished in 1887. The façade of S. Croce was cased in white and green marbles in 1863, from funds in large measure supplied by an Englishman, Mr. Sloane. The construction of the façade of San Lorenzo is now in contemplation.] 1 [It was the monks who let out the Great Refectory of S. Croce as a carpet manufactory; since the suppression of the Convent, the carpets have gone, and the Refectory is used for the exhibition of various fragments of sculpture, etc. Ruskin bought a piece of carpet there "partly for memory of the place, partly to keep me well up to the boilingpoint against the nation and its ways, for I will not forgive them" (letter to his father, June 7). The so-called "Last Supper of Raphael" is in the Refectory of the Convent of Sant' Onofrio, which now belongs to the Government and is well kept; on the other walls are reproductions of "Last Suppers" by other masters. The discovery of Raphael's name on the dress of St. Thomas led to the fresco being attributed to him; it is now generally assigned to "the School of Perugino." The fresco from which it has been suggested that Raphael derived the idea of his "Transfiguration" is in the vestibule that serves as an entrance to the church of San Miniato al Monte. It was in 1845 also that Ruskin saw the picture of Gentile da Fabriano being carted off; the incident is described in his Diary. The picture (No. 165 in the Accademia) is generally accounted the painter's masterpiece. The Perugino referred to is the "Assumption of the Virgin" (No. 57) for which see below, p. 84.]

2 * [Of Padua in 1845, Ruskin wrote to his father that it was unspoilt (Padua, Oct. 15) :

"This place is the only town in Italy in which I have found no important change, and there is in consequence still a sweet and feeling character about it; and it is associated moreover with all my childish pleasure in going to Venice, so that I shall always love it."]

3 [See the letter to Severn in Appendix iii., below, p. 395.]

[Of the state of things at Venice (where in 1845 the railway was approaching completion), he wrote (Sept. 10):—

"The afternoon was cloudless; the sun intensely bright-the gliding down the canal of the Brenta exquisite. We turned the corner of the bastion where Venice once appeared, and behold-the Greenwich railway, only with less arches and more dead walls, entirely cutting off the whole open sea and