f
the race, Cosmo il Vecchio, who deserves any healthy admiration,
although he was the real assassin of Florentine and Italian freedom,
and has thus earned the nickname of _Pater Patriae,_ is not buried
here. The series of mighty dead begins with the infamous Cosmo, first
grand duke, the contemporary of Philip II. of Spain, and his
counterpart in character and crime. Then there is Ferdinando I., whose
most signal achievement was not eating the poisoned pie prepared by
the fair hands of Bianca Capello. There are other Ferdinandos, and
other Cosmos,--all grand-ducal and _pater-patrial,_ as Medici
should be.

The chapel is a vast lump of Florentine mosaic, octagonal, a hundred
feet or so in diameter, and about twice as high. The cupola has some
brand-new frescos, by Benvenuto. "Anthropophagi, whose heads do grow
beneath their shoulders," may enjoy these pictures upon domes. For
common mortals it is not agreeable to remain very long upside down,
even to contemplate masterpieces, which these certainly are not.

The walls of the chapel are all incrusted with gorgeous marbles and
precious stones, from malachite, porphyry, lapis-lazuli, chalcedony,
agate, to all the finer and more expensive gems which shone in Aaron's
ephod. When one considers that an ear-ring or a brooch, half an inch
long, of Florentine mosaic work, costs five or six dollars, and that
here is a great church of the same material and workmanship as a
breastpin, one may imagine it to have been somewhat expensive.

The Sagrestia Nuova was built by Michel Angelo, to hold his monuments
to Lorenzo de' Medici, duke of Urbino, and grandson of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, and to Julian de' Medici, son of Lorenzo Magnifico.

It is not edifying to think of the creative soul and plastic hands of
Buonarotti employed in rendering worship to such creatures. This
Lorenzo is chiefly known as having married Madeleine de Boulogne, and
as having died, as well as his wife, of a nameless disorder,
immediately after they had engendered the renowned Catharine de'
Medici, whose hideous life was worthy of its corrupt and poisoned
source.

Did Michel Angelo look upon his subject as a purely imaginary one?
Surely he must have had some definite form before his mental vision;
for although sculpture cannot, like painting, tell an elaborate story,
still each figure must have a moral and a meaning, must show cause for
its existence, and indicate a possible function, or the mind of the
spec