he Via San Gallo, No. 74. The Palazzo we are now admiring for
its blend of massiveness and beauty is the Uguccione, and anybody
who wishes may probably have a whole floor of it to-day for a few
shillings a week. The building which completes the piazza on the
right of us, with coats of arms on its facade, is now given to the
Board of Agriculture and has been recently restored. It was once
a Court of Justice. The great building at the opposite side of the
piazza, where the trams start, is a good example of modern Florentine
architecture based on the old: the Palazzo Landi, built in 1871 and
now chiefly an insurance office. In London we have a more attractive
though smaller derivative of the great days of Florentine building,
in Standen's wool shop in Jermyn Street.

The Piazza della Signoria has such riches that one is in danger of
neglecting some. The Palazzo Vecchio, for example, so overpowers
the Loggia de' Lanzi in size as to draw the eye from that perfect
structure. One should not allow this to happen; one should let
the Palazzo Vecchio's solid nobility wait awhile and concentrate
on the beauty of Orcagna's three arches. Coming so freshly from his
tabernacle in Or San Michele we are again reminded of the versatility
of the early artists.

This structure, originally called the Loggia de' Priori or Loggia
d'Orcagna, was built in the fourteenth century as an open place for
the delivery of proclamations and for other ceremonies, and also as
a shelter from the rain, the last being a purpose it still serves. It
was here that Savonarola's ordeal by fire would have had place had it
not been frustrated. Vasari also gives Orcagna the four symbolical
figures in the recesses in the spandrels of the arches. The Loggia,
which took its new name from the Swiss lancers, or lanzi, that Cosimo
I kept there--he being a fearful ruler and never comfortable without a
bodyguard--is now a recognized place of siesta; and hither many people
carry their poste-restante correspondence from the neighbouring post
office in the Uffizi to read in comfort. A barometer and thermometer
are almost the only novelties that a visitor from the sixteenth
century would notice.

The statuary is both old and new; for here are genuine antiques once
in Ferdinand I's Villa Medici at Rome, and such modern masterpieces
as Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, Cellini's Perseus, and Gian
Bologna's two muscular and restless groups. The best of the antiques
is the Woma