Of the Column.
Opposite to the graceful Palace of the Bartolini there had been erected a short time before, as a more stable and enduring ornament, not without singular ingenuity, that ancient and immense column of oriental granite which had been taken from the Baths of Antoninus in Rome, and granted by Pius IV to our glorious Duke, and by him conveyed, although at no little expense, to Florence, and magnanimously presented to her as a courteous gift for her public adornment. Upon that column, over its beautiful capital, which had, like the base, the appearance of bronze, and which is now being made of real bronze, there was placed a statue (of clay, indeed, but in the colour of porphyry, because even so it is to be), very large and very excellent, of a woman in full armour, with a helmet on the head, and representing, by the sword in the right hand and by the scales in the left, an incorruptible and most valorous Justice.