The sight of Florence recalls its history, previous to the Medicean sway. The palaces of its best families are built like fortresses: without, are still seen the iron rings, to which the standards of each party were attached. All things seem to have been more arranged for the support of individual powers, than for their union in a common cause. The city appears formed for civil war. There are towers attached to the Hall of Justice, whence the approach of the enemy could be discerned. Such were the feuds between certain houses, that you find dwellings inconveniently constructed, because their lords would not let them extend to the ground on which that of some foe had been pulled down. Here the Pazzi conspired against the De Medici; there the Guelfs assassinated the Ghibellines. The marks of struggling rivalry are everywhere visible, though but in senseless stones. Nothing is now left for any pretenders but an inglorious state, not worth disputing. The life led in Florence has become singularly monotonous: its natives walk every afternoon on the banks of the Arno, and every evening ask one another if they _have_ been there. Corinne settled at a little distance from the town; and let Prince Castel Forte know this, in the only letter she had strength to write: such was her horror of all habitual actions, that even the fatigue of giving the slightest order redoubled her distress. She sometimes passed her day in complete inactivity, retired to her pillow, rose again, opened a book, without the power to comprehend a line of it. Oft did she remain whole hours at her window; then would walk rapidly in her garden, cull its flowers, and seek to deaden her senses in their perfume; but the consciousness of life pursued her, like an unrelenting host: she strove in vain to calm the devouring faculty of thought, which no longer presented her with varied images; but one lone idea, armed with a thousand stings, that pierced her heart.
An hour passed in St. Peter's had been wont to compose her; and Corinne hoped to find the same effect from visiting the churches of fair Florence. She walked beneath the fine trees of the river's bank, in a lovely eve of June. Roses embalmed the air, and every face expressed the general felicity from which she felt herself excluded; yet she unenvyingly blessed her God for his kind care of man. "I am an exception to universal order," she said; "there is happiness for every one but me: this power of suffering, beneath which I die, is then peculiar to myself. My God! wherefore was I selected for such a doom? May I not say, like thy Divine Son, 'Father, let this cup be taken from me?'" The active air of the inhabitants astonished her: since she had lost all interest in life, she knew not why others seemed occupied; and, slowly pacing the large stoned pavement of Florence, she forgot where she had designed to go. At last, she found herself before the far-famed gate of brass, sculptured by Ghiberti, for the front of St. John's, which stands beside the cathedral. For some time she examined this stupendous work; where, wrought in bronze, the divers nations, though of minute proportions, are distinctly marked by their varied physiognomies; all of which express some thought of their artist. "What patience!" cried Corinne; "what respect for posterity! yet how few scrutinize these doors, through which so many daily pass, in heedlessness, ignorance, or disdain! How difficult it is to escape oblivion! how vast the power of death!"