moment through a rent in the curtain, presents
a singular and truly Italian spectacle--a huge black iron lamp,
suspended by a chain from the rafters, throws a flaring and shifting
light around. Some trusses of hay have been shaken down upon the
floor, to supply the place of beds, chairs, and tables; and there,
reclining in various attitudes, I see a number of dark looking
figures, some eating and drinking, some sleeping; some playing at
cards, some telling stories with all the Italian variety of
gesticulation and intonation; some silently looking on, or listening.
Two or three common looking fellows began to smoke their segars, but
when it was suggested that this might incommode the ladies on the
other side of the curtain, they with genuine politeness ceased
directly. Through this motley and picturesque assemblage I have to
make my way to my bed-room in a few minutes--I will take another look
at them, and then--andiamo!

_Florence, Nov. 8._--"La bellisema e famosissima figlia di Roma," as
Dante calls her in some relenting moment. Last night we slept in a
blood-stained hovel--and to-night we are lodged in a palace. So much
for the vicissitudes of travelling.

I am not subject to idle fears, and least of all to superstitious
fears--but last night, at Covigliajo, I could not sleep--I could not
even lie down for more than a few minutes together. The whispered
voices and hard breathing of the men who slept in the corridor, from
whom only a slight door divided me, disturbed and fevered my nerves;
horrible imaginings were all around me: and gladly did I throw open my
window at the first glimpse of the dawn, and gladly did I hear the
first well-known voice which summoned me to a hasty breakfast. How
reviving was the breath of the early morning, after leaving that
close, suffocating, ill-omened inn! how beautiful the blush of light
stealing downwards from the illumined summits to the valleys, tinting
the fleecy mists, as they rose from the earth, till all the landscape
was flooded with sunshine: and when at length we passed the mountains,
and began to descend into the rich vales of Tuscany--when from the
heights above Fesole we beheld the city of Florence, and above it the
young moon and the evening star suspended side by side; and floating
over the whole of the Val d'Arno, and the lovely hills which enclose
it, a mist, or rather a suffusion of the richest rose colour, which
gradually, as the day declined, faded, or rather dee