The collection is vast and comprises much foreign work; but Cosimo I introducing tapestry weaving into Florence, many of the examples come from the city's looms.

The finest, or at any rate most interesting, series is that depicting the court of France under Catherine de' Medici, with portraits: very sumptuous and gay examples of Flemish work.
The trouble at Florence is that one wants the days to be ten times as long in order that one may see its wonderful possessions properly.

Here is this dry-looking archaeological museum, with antipathetic custodians at the door who refuse to get change for twenty-lira pieces: nothing could be more unpromising than they or their building; and yet you find yourself instantly among countless vestiges of a past people who had risen to power and crumbled again before Christ was born--but at a time when man was so vastly more sensitive to beauty than he now is that every appliance for daily life was the work of an artist.

Well, a collection like this demands days and days of patient examination, and one has only a few hours.

Were I Joshua--had I his curious gift--it is to Florence I would straightway fare.