Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/362

320 The church of San Croce is the Pantheon of Florence. There I saw the tomb of Galileo with a statue of that luminary of science, holding the telescope in his hand and contemplating the heavens. There too I saw the tomb of Michael Angelo with the statues of three females over it, representing painting, sculpture and architecture. The poet Alfieri also sleeps there, and there too reposes Machiaveli's dust. But "Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar." Dante was banished by his fellow-citizens and is buried in Revenna. The modern Florentines have done all that they could to wipe out the ingratitude of their fathers. The church, though it does not contain the tomb of Dante, has a magnificent monument of marble,—the finest in the church,—dedicated to the memory of the poet. And outside the church in the centre of the square there is a still finer marble statue of the great poet, 18 feet high, standing on a pedestal 22 feet high, and seeming, with his frowning meditating brow, to contemplate those scenes of the Inferno which are among the grandest and most terrible productions of the human imagination.

One may spend months in Rome and yet not see all the sight of that wonderful place,—and I stopped there only for four days! One may write a volume without exhausting the ancient and mediæval remains of Rome, and I proposed to write a few pages only! My readers need not therefore expect in these pages anything but the barest summary of those sights which most interest tourists by