ful
study and long labor. Finally the appointment was conceded to him.

The greatest difficulty with which he had to contend was a strike of his
workmen, of whom, however, there being no trades' unions in those days,
the imperious master made short work. And thus, day by day, the great
dome swelled out over the shining marble walls and rose against the
beautiful Italian sky. Nothing like it had been seen before by living
eyes. The solemn grandeur of the Pantheon at Rome was indeed known to
many, and San Giovanni[34] was in some sort an imitation of that; but
the immense structure of the cupola, so justly poised, springing with
such majestic grace from the familiar walls to which it gave new
dignity, flattered the pride of the Florentines as something unique,
besides delighting the eyes and imagination of so beauty-loving a race.

With that veiled and subtle pride which takes the shape of pious fear,
some even pretended to tremble, lest it should be supposed to be too
near an emulation of the blue vault above, and that Florence was
competing with heaven; others, with the delightful magniloquence of the
time, declared that the hills around the city were scarcely higher than
the beautiful Duomo; and Vasari himself has a doubt that the heavens
were envious, so persistent were the storms amid which the cupola arose.

Yet there it stands to this day, firm and splendid, uninjured by
celestial envy, more harmonious than St. Peter's, the crown of the
beautiful city. Its measurements and size and the secrets of its
formation we do not pretend to set forth; the reader will find them in
every guide-book. But the keen, impetuous, rapid figure of the
architect, impatient, and justly impatient, of all rivalry, the murmurs
and comments of the workmen; the troubled minds of the city authorities,
not knowing how to hold their ground between that gnome of majestic
genius who had fathomed all the secrets of construction and built a
hundred Duomos in his mind, while they were pottering over the
preliminaries of one; have all the interest of life for us.

Through the calm fields of art he goes like a whirlwind, keen, certain,
unfailing in his aim, unsparing in means, carried forward by such an
impulse of will and self-confidence that nothing can withstand him. Sure
of his own powers, as he was when he carved in secret the crucifix which
was to cover poor Donatello with confusion, he saw before him, over his
carvings, as he worked for the