d. Feb. 1845.)
Emphatic confirmation of this remark has been lately given by the Naples
correspondent of the _Times_, writing under date of February 1872.

[100] The reader will perhaps think with me that what he noticed, on the
roads in Tuscany more than in any others, of wayside crosses and
religious memorials, may be worth preserving. . . . "You know that in the
streets and corners of roads, there are all sorts of crosses and similar
memorials to be seen in Italy. The most curious are, I think, in
Tuscany. There is very seldom a figure on the cross, though there is
sometimes a face; but they are remarkable for being garnished with
little models in wood of every possible object that can be connected
with the Saviour's death. The cock that crowed when Peter had denied his
master thrice, is generally perched on the tip-top; and an
ornithological phenomenon he always is. Under him is the inscription.
Then, hung on to the cross-beam, are the spear, the reed with the sponge
of vinegar and water at the end, the coat without seam for which the
soldiers cast lots, the dice-box with which they threw for it, the
hammer that drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the
ladder which was set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the
instrument of flagellation, the lantern with which Mary went to the
tomb--I suppose; I can think of no other--and the sword with which Peter
smote the high priest's servant. A perfect toyshop of little objects;
repeated at every four or five miles all along the highway."

[101] Of his visit to Fiesole I have spoken in my LIFE OF LANDOR. "Ten
years after Landor had lost this home, an Englishman travelling in
Italy, his friend and mine, visited the neighbourhood for his sake,
drove out from Florence to Fiesole, and asked his coachman which was the
villa in which the Landor family lived. 'He was a dull dog, and pointed
to Boccaccio's. I didn't believe him. He was so deuced ready that I knew
he lied. I went up to the convent, which is on a height, and was leaning
over a dwarf wall basking in the noble view over a vast range of hill
and valley, when a little peasant girl came up and began to point out
the localities. _Ecco la villa Landora!_ was one of the first half-dozen
sentences she spoke. My heart swelled as Landor's would have done when I
looked down upon it, nestling among its olive-trees and vines, and with
its upper windows (there are five above the door) open to the setting
sun. Ov