We could hardly leave Florence without giving some reference to Raphael, one of our world’s greatest painters. Though not born in Florence, he spent a good deal of his life in the city. His education in the art was completed in Florence. He was born in the year 1483. Michael Angelo was to him an attraction and an inspiration. It is said that so fine was his genius, that in his time of tuition he could surpass his tutors. His most famous pictures are “Christ in the attitude of prayer on the Mount of Olives,” and “St. Michael and St. George,” which are now in the Louvre, at Paris. The Pope gave him a grand reception on his entering Rome; and, while there, he executed some very fine pieces for his Holiness, which so pleased him that he ordered Raphael to give him other proofs of his artistic skill. He then painted on the Vatican walls figures of “Poetry,” “Theology,” “Justice,” and “Philosophy”; also “The fall of Adam,” “Astronomy,” “Apollo,” and “Philosophy.” On another wall he painted “Fortitude,” “Prudence,” “Temperance”; and on another place “The Emperor Justinian delivering the Roman law,” “Peter’s deliverance from prison,” “Moses viewing the burning bush,” “Jacob’s dream,” etc. It is said he turned the Vatican into a picture gallery. His pictures are in many countries and in many cities. He died at the early age of thirty-seven, on the same date he was born, and his body was conveyed to the Pantheon, in Rome, where it now rests. It is said of him, he was most affable, kind, and generous to a fault. He had an open manly countenance which inspired all who met him. Florence, fair city, must be credited with the training and making of this bright gem of the painter’s art. Indeed, this city has given to the world some of the finest men of mind and soul the world has ever known. We felt proud to walk its streets and to know we were on ground that should be reverenced for the purity and greatness of the lives of the men we have referred to. We could not readily say good-bye, but time presses, and after a visit to the old Protestant Cemetery outside the Porta Pinta, which to Britishers is hallowed ground, as there are here the graves of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poetess to whom we have already referred our readers; also “Theodore Parker,” and “Arthur Hugh Clough.” This “city of the dead” was closed in 1870, and a new cemetery has been opened for Protestants about a mile outside the city. To try to describe the beauties of all the suburbs of Florence would require an abler pen than mine. So we must close our account at the “Minerva,” take our last night’s repose and leave for Venice.