. Men and manners of old Florence. rium and entrance to the Baptisteryof San Giovanni ; the church itself was surroundedby arches, partly of marble and partly of stone,beneath which idlers and ragged philosophers of allsorts were accustomed to congregate. The porphyrycolumns and the pillar commemorating the dead treewhich blossomed anew at the funeral of San Zanobiuswere in the same places where they are seen to-day,but between the Baptistery and the church of SantaReparata, to the left of which was a tower, stood theHospital of St. John the Evangelist, a refuge for thepoor and for pilgrims. T
. Men and manners of old Florence. rium and entrance to the Baptisteryof San Giovanni ; the church itself was surroundedby arches, partly of marble and partly of stone,beneath which idlers and ragged philosophers of allsorts were accustomed to congregate. The porphyrycolumns and the pillar commemorating the dead treewhich blossomed anew at the funeral of San Zanobiuswere in the same places where they are seen to-day,but between the Baptistery and the church of SantaReparata, to the left of which was a tower, stood theHospital of St. John the Evangelist, a refuge for thepoor and for pilgrims. The people crowded into the narrow spaces betweenthese various buildings and overflowed into thechurchyard of Santa Reparata, ground afterwardscovered by the great transepts of Santa Maria delFiore. Their business and their gossip was mostlycarried on in the Mercato Vecchio, the old market-place which possessed four churches at its fourcorners, amongst the labyrinth of lanes and alleysround Or San Michele, in the Piazza del Comune,. 2 5 I 282 MEN AND MANNERS OF OLD FLORENCE letters to Alessandri are a good deal more racy thanany of the epigrams which he published. As to theuniformity of the life which you lead there, believe methat here in Vienna it is exactly the same thing ; withthis difFerence, that there everything is done in a smalland ugly, and everything here in a gigantic andmagnificent style. There you play at cards and youlose at most five pauls a night, here also we playand lose four or five hundred sequins. I am speakingof games of society, hombre, whist, &c. When theNeapolitan Ambassador gives dinners, every dinnercosts three or four hundred sequins. Whence itcomes that the great personages here are gouty andunhealthy, and shorten their lives and render themuncomfortable by over-eating and drinking, and allsorts of other vices. It is just the same, I know, inFlorence, but at all events, they dont spend too dont talk of luxury in the way of horses, carriages,l
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