Greeks, Turks, Armenians
were protected equally with English and Dutch, and infidel and heretic
were alike free in their worship. It was the great prison of the
galley-slaves, who were chiefly the pirates and corsairs taken on the
high seas by the duke's ships. These captives not only served as models
for the Moors at the base of his monument, but they must have been very
useful in the different public works which he and his successors carried
out. Now they and their like are gone, and though the Greeks, the
Armenians, the English, and the Scotch still have their churches, I do
not suppose there is a mosque in all Leghorn.
I do not speak very confidently, because my researches in that sort were
not exhaustive. I indeed visited the cathedral, not wholly because Inigo
Jones had something to do in planning it, but because I had formed the
habit of visiting churches in Rome, and I mechanically went into one
wherever I saw it. Generally speaking, I think that they were rather
bare in painting or sculpture, but they were such churches as in America
one would go a long way to see and think one's self well rewarded by
their objects of interest.
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