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The poor things! How glad they would feel could they again grow in the cool wet moss of the woodlands, waving their little bells to the wholesome, fresh wind! Would they revive now, think you, for your great Prince de Majano if he told them they were fair?

"Ah! and some one has told you so." She blushed and laughed a little consciously. "Yes; the great Prince de Majano. And he is too noble to say what is not true, so I MUST be 'la piu bella donzella, as he said, must I not?" I touched the snow-drops that she wore in a white cluster at her breast. "Look at your flowers, child," I said, earnestly. "See how they begin to droop in this heated air.

The most beautiful of all Florentine dwelling-houses designed at this period is that which Benedetto da Majano built for Filippo Strozzi. Combining the burgher-like austerity of antecedent ages with a grandeur and a breadth of style peculiar to the Renaissance, the Palazzo Strozzi may be chosen as the perfect type of Florentine domestic architecture.

We may hazard the opinion that, besides Bernardo Ciuffagni, of whom Vasari speaks, some pupils of Donatello and Benedetto da Majano worked at it. The influence of the sculptors of Florence is everywhere perceptible. Whatever be the merit of these reliefs, there is no doubt that they fairly represent one of the most interesting moments in the history of modern art.

An artist who claims a third place beside Mino and his friend, "il bravo Desider si dolce e bello," is Benedetto da Majano. In Benedetto's bas-reliefs at San Gemignano, carved for the altars of those unlovely Tuscan worthies, S. Fina and S. Bartolo, we find a pictorial treatment of legendary subjects, proving that he had studied Ghirlandajo's frescoes.

I looked at her, and laughed abruptly and harshly. "I forgot," I said; "the lady is my wife I should have thought of that! I was speaking of another whom you do not know. Pardon me! when I am fatigued my memory wanders. Pay no attention to my foolish remarks. Enjoy yourself, my child, but do not believe all the pretty speeches of the Prince de Majano. A rivederci!"

A small, delicate-faced, spiritual-eyed boy of nine years, known as Baccio della Porta, who came with a roll of drawings under his arm and high hopes in his soul, no doubt trotting along manfully beside Cosimo's old friend, Benedetto da Majano, the sculptor, who had recommended his being placed in the studio.

The first examples of the sonnet, by Dante da Majano, were written in that language. But such poetry was little more than a rhetorical exercise. It was the revival of learning and the Universities, in particular that of Bologna, which inspired the dolce stil nuovo, of which the first exponent was Guido Giunicelli.

After Brunelleschi and Alberti came Michellozzo, the favourite architect of Cosimo de' Medici; Benedetto da Majano; Giuliano and Antonio di San Gallo; and Il Cronaca. Cosimo de' Medici, having said that "envy is a plant no man should water," denied himself the monumental house designed by Brunelleschi, and chose instead the modest plan of Michellozzo.

Good arrangement, variety of character and expression in the heads, unity and harmony in the whole, make this an exceptional work of its kind. As a composition, worthy of the fourteenth century, Ghirlandajo and Benedetto da Majano both imitated, without being able to improve it.