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Travel Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton: Europe, Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857
	intensely interesting to survey these works of the old masters and of more recent artists. The dome of the Cathedral is more ample than that of St. Peter’s at Rome and was greatly admired by Michael Angelo. Two of the bronze doors of the Baptistery, covered with exquisite bas-reliefs, occupied the artist for years. The church of Santa Croce, the Westminster Abbey of Florence, contains the remains of Michael Angelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and others, with their massive marble monuments, adorned with emblematic sculpture. A fine cenotaph of Dante, who lived in Florence, but died in Regvenna, stands with them. The church of San Lorenzo, and the Medecian Chapel connected with it, contain the remains, tombs and cenotaphs of the celebrated Medici family. The chapel alone cost $17,000,000 and is yet unfinished. Its interior walls are of variegated marbles and precious stones, and its dome is covered with frescoes. It is a monument of folly. We passed an hour very pleasantly in the studio of our countryman, Hiram Powers. We found him exceedingly agreeable and entertaining; and the specimens of his chisel, including a bust of Franklin and Proscripine and a full length figure, California, which he kindly showed us, are certainly among the finest sculptures we have seen. It is pleasant to turn away from the decorated churches, where unintelligible mummeries are being constantly repeated, and enter a humbler place of Protestant worship, and listen to the simple preaching of the Gospel of Christ. There are two such places of worship in this city, at both of which are attended on the Sabbath. One is an English Episcopal church and the other a Scotch Presbyterian. They both have excellent evangelical chaplains. Happy with it be for Italy when the day shall come that the Gospel, in its purity and power, is preached to the people and practiced in their lives. Heaven speed that day, and it seems to at hand.
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