The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

SCENES OF CONFLICT AND BLOOD.

535

It was difficult to quit Rome, the fallen mistress of the
world, the enthralling city of one's heart, when not a hundredth of its wonders had been explored, when we had only
begun to comprehend the lessons it is forever teaching the
world, when our acquaintance with it was so fascinating,
but so brief. But after one more lingering walk through
St. Peter's, one more moonlight ride round the Colosseum,
one more drive at sunset over the Appian Way, between its
massive tombs and superb mausoleums, one more drink from
the fountain of Trevi,- for it is a "1philtre of return," and
you will come back to Rome, if you drink from this fountain
before leaving,- we went to Florence.
Beautiful Florence! This is the exclamation that bursts
from all lips, when this city is beheld from a distant height.
But the beauty disappears as you enter Florence, and you
are enraptured no more. You are walled in between buildings of great height, built of very dark stone, - massive iron
gratings protect the windows at the lower stories,---the
palaces look as if they might be inquisitions, - the convents
and monasteries as if they were penitentiaries. And well
they may, for almost every palace, apartment, and window
has its history of conflict and blood.
Florence is the Athens of Italy,--art constitutes its existence. Its three great galleries of art almost rival those
of the Louvre in Paris,-- the Uffizzi and Pitti galleries, and
the Academy of Fine Arts. The Pitti gallery contains
about six hundred works of art, pronounced by experts as
unsurpassable of their kind. They are exhibited in about
twenty regal halls, each sumptuously decorated with painted
ceilings, costly furniture, and mosaic floors.
The dome of its famous cathedral was built in the tenth
century, before that of St. Peter's, and served Michael Angelo as a model. "Like thee I will not build, and better I