r twice in all that length of years. At last the time
came when the successful artist felt that his position enabled and
justified him in moving from his old quarters to more commodious and
luxurious ones. He had been but a tenant in the Via Romana: he was now
to inhabit a house of his own.

It was the time when Florence was for a few short years enjoying the
fallacious and fatal honor of being the capital of Italy. There were
some who from the first were fully convinced that that honor would be a
transitory one. The greater number thought that the will of France and
of her emperor, and the difficulties attending the simultaneous
residence of the king of Italy and the pope within the walls of the same
city, would avail to make Florence the capital of the new kingdom for at
least as many years as human prudence could look forward to. The
earthquake-like events which shook down the bases of all such
calculations, and enabled Italy to realize her longing desire to see
Rome the capital of the nation, are too well known to need even
referring to. Florence suddenly ceased to be the metropolis of Italy,
and the amount of financial ruin in the case of those who had invested
money in building to supply the wants of the capital was very widespread
indeed. And there can be no doubt that the houses built by Powers are at
the present day worth much less than they were at the time he built
them, and still less than they would have been worth had Florence
remained the capital. Nevertheless, I do not think that he would have
abstained from building from any considerations of this kind. He built
solely with a view to residence, and in that respect he could hardly
have done better than he did.

He did not move very far. His old lodging and studio were, as has been
said, a little way within the Porta Romana, and the villa residence
which he built is but two or three minutes' walk on the outside of it.
Immediately outside this Porta Romana, sloping off a little to the left
from the road to Rome, is a magnificent avenue of ilex and cypress
conducting to a grand-ducal villa called the "Poggio Imperiale." To the
left again of this avenue, which is perhaps a mile or somewhat more in
length, and between it and the city wall, which in that part of its
course encloses the Boboli Gardens attached to the Palazzo Pitti, is a
large extent of hillside, rapidly rising to the heights crowned by the
ancient and storied church of San Miniato, and by the