phere of Italy hangs like a curse on
her beautiful soil, weakening the sympathies of citizens of freer lands
with her fallen condition. I often feel vividly the sentiment which
Percival puts into the mouth of a Greek in slavery:

"The spring may here with autumn twine
And both combined may rule the year,
And fresh-blown flowers and racy wine
In frosted clusters still be near--
Dearer the wild and snowy hills
Where hale and ruddy Freedom smiles."

No people can ever become truly great or free, who are not virtuous. If
the soul aspires for liberty--pure and perfect liberty--it also aspires
for everything that is noble in Truth, everything that is holy in
Virtue. It is greatly to be feared that all those nervous and impatient
efforts which have been made and are still being made by the Italian
people to better their condition, will be of little avail, until they
set up a better standard of principle and make their private actions
more conformable with their ideas of political independence.

_Oct. 22._--I attended to-day the fall races at the _Cascine_. This is a
dairy farm of the Grand Duke on the Arno, below the city; part of it,
shaded with magnificent trees, has been made into a public promenade and
drive, which extends for three miles down the river. Towards the lower
end, on a smooth green lawn, is the race-course. To-day was the last of
the season, for which the best trials had been reserved; on passing out
the gate at noon, we found a number of carriages and pedestrians going
the same way. It was the very perfection of autumn temperature, and I do
not remember to have ever seen so blue hills, so green meadows, so fresh
air and so bright sunshine combined in one scene before. All that gloom
and coldness of which I lately complained has vanished.

Traveling increases very much one's capacity for admiration. Every
beautiful scene appears as beautiful as if it had been the first; and
although I may have seen a hundred times as lovely a combination of sky
and landscape, the pleasure which it awakens is never diminished. This
is one of the greatest blessings we enjoy--the freshness and glory which
Nature wears to our eyes forever. It shows that the soul never grows
old--that the eye of age can take in the impression of beauty with the
same enthusiastic joy that leaped through the heart of childhood.

We found the crowd around the race-course but thin; half the people
there, and _all_ the hors