Vero come un specchio_--'True as a mirror,' we have the
same idea. And a poet has written, 'Mirrored as in a well,' and many
have re-echoed the same pretty fancy.

"Which reminds me that in the Oberpfalz or Upper Palatinate maidens were
wont to go to a well by moonlight, and if on looking therein they saw
their own faces, they believed that they would soon be happily married.
But if a cloud darkened the moon and they saw nothing, then they would
die old maids. But luckiest of all was it if they fancied they saw a
man's face, for this would be the future husband himself.

"Now it befell that a certain youth near Heidelberg fell into a well, or
put himself there, when a certain maid whom he loved, came and looked in,
and believing that she saw the face of her destined spouse, went away in
full faith that the fairy of the well had taken his form, and so she
married him. Which, if it be not true, is _ben trovato_.

"Truth is always represented, be it remembered, as holding a mirror.

"And note also that the hand-mirror and the well were strangely connected
in ancient times, as appears by Pausanias, who states that before a
certain temple of Ceres hung a _speculum_, which, after it had been
immersed in a neighbouring well or spring, showed invalids by reflection
whether they would live or die. And with all this, the holding a mirror
to the mouth of an insensible person to tell whether the breath was still
in the body, seemed also to make it an indicator of life."

"Thus in life all things do pass,
As it were, in magic glass."

THE STORY OF THE VIA DELLE SERVE SMARRITE

"We all do know the usual way
In which our handmaids go astray,
But in this tale the situation
Has a peculiar variation;
How an old wizard--strange occurrence!
Deluded all the girls in Florence,
(It needs no magic now to do it),
And how the maidens made him rue it,
For having seized on him and stripped him,
They tied him up and soundly whipped him."

The author of "The Cities of Central Italy," speaking of Siena, says that
"In its heart, where its different hill-promontories unite, is the Piazza
del Campo, lately--with the time-serving which disgraces every town in
Italy--called Vittorio Emanuele." And with the stupidity and bad taste
which seems to characterise all municipal governments in this respect all
the world over, that of Florence has changed most of the old names of
this kind, a