han those in the
direct line; but there are architectural drawings from the wonderful
hand, colour drawings of a Madonna, a few studies, and two early pieces
of sculpture--the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs, a relief marked
by tremendous vigour and full of movement, and a Madonna and Child,
also in relief, with many marks of greatness upon it. In a recess
in Room IV are some personal relics of the artist, which his great
nephew, the poet, who was named after him, began to collect early in
the seventeenth century. As a whole the house is disappointing.

Upstairs have been arranged a quantity of prints and drawings
illustrating the history of Florence.

The S. Lorenzo cloisters may be entered either from a side door in
the church close to the Old Sacristy or from the piazza. Although an
official in uniform keeps the piazza door, they are free. Brunelleschi
is again the architect, and from the loggia at the entrance to the
library you see most acceptably the whole of his cathedral dome and
half of Giotto's tower. It is impossible for Florentine cloisters--or
indeed any cloisters--not to have a certain beauty, and these are
unusually charming and light, seen both from the loggia and the ground.

Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana, which leads from them,
is one of the most perfect of sombre buildings, the very home of
well-ordered scholarship. The staircase is impressive, although perhaps
a little too severe; the long room could not be more satisfying to
the eye. Michelangelo died before it was finished, but it is his in
design, even to the ceiling and cases for MSS. in which the library
is so rich, and the rich red wood ceiling. Vasari, Michelangelo's
pupil and friend and the biographer to whom we are so much indebted,
carried on the work. His scheme of windows has been upset on the
side opposite the cloisters by the recent addition of a rotunda
leading from the main room. If ever rectangular windows were more
exquisitely and nobly proportioned I should like to see them. The
library is free for students, and the attendants are very good in
calling stray visitors' attention to illuminated missals, old MSS.,
early books and so forth. One of Galileo's fingers, stolen from his
body, used to be kept here, in a glass case, and may be here still;
but I did not see it. I saw, however, the portraits, in an old volume,
of Petrarch and his Laura.

This wonderful collection was begun by Cosimo de' Medici; others
added to i