y has shown itself by destroying beautiful work of earlier times, or
selling it to the Kensington Museum, setting up a barbarously gilt
gingerbread high altar, and daubing the handsome Gothic sacristy with
gaudy colours." To which the author of Murray's "Guide-Book for Central
Italy" adds, that "perhaps on the whole list of ecclesiastical
restorations there does not exist a more deplorable instance of monastic
vandalism than has been perpetrated here by the architect Romoli"--a
remark which falls unfortunately very far short of the truth. Such ruin
is wrought _everywhere_ at present; witness the beautiful Fonte Gaja,
"the masterpiece of Jacopo della Quercia in Siena (1402), which, since
the change of Government, was not 'restored,' but _totally destroyed and
carted away_, a miserable modern copy having been recently set up in its
place" (Hare, "Cities of Central Italy"), all of which was probably done
to "make a job" for a favoured builder. "But what can you expect," adds
a friend, "in a country where it is common to cover a beautiful dry stone
wall with plaster, and then paint it over to resemble the original
stone," because, as I was naively told, "the rough stone itself looks
_too cheap_"? Anybody who has lived long in Italy can add infinitely to
such instances. The Palazzo Feroni has, however, suffered so little, for
a wonder, from restoration, and still really looks so genuinely old, that
it deserves special mention, and may serve as an excuse for my remarks on
the manner in which ancient works are destroyed so _con amore_ by monks
and modern municipalities. I may here note that this building is, in a
sense, the common rendezvous for all the visitors to Florence, chiefly
English and Americans, since in it are the very large circulating library
and reading-rooms of Vieusseux. {212}

There is, of course, a legend attached to the Palazzo Feroni, and it is
as follows:

IL PALAZZO FERONI.

"The Signore Pietro, who afterwards received the name Feroni, was a very
rich man, and yet hated by the poor, on whom he bestowed nothing, and not
much liked by his equals, though he gave them costly entertainments; for
there was in all the man and in his character something inconsistent and
contradictory, or of _corna contra croce_--'the horns against the cross,'
as the proverb hath it, which made it so that one never knew where to
have him:

"'Un, al monte, e l'altro al pian,
Quel che, e