some sick or wounded person to the hospital.

As the day begins to decline, the number of carriages in the streets,
filled with gaily drest people attended by servants in livery,
increases. The Grand Duke's equipage, an elegant carriage drawn by six
horses, with coachmen, footmen, and outriders in drab-colored livery,
comes from the Pitti Palace, and crosses the Arno, either by the
bridge close to my lodgings, or by that called Alla Santa Trinita,
which is in full sight from the windows. The Florentine nobility, with
their families, and the English residents now throng to the Cascine,
to drive at a slow pace through its thickly planted walks of elms,
oaks and ilexes. As the sun is sinking I perceive the quay on the
other side of the Arno filled with a moving crowd of well-drest people
walking to and fro and enjoying the beauty of the evening.

Travelers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashes, in
the shabby vettura, and in the elegant private carriage drawn by
post-horses, and driven by postilions in the tightest possible
deerskin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots.
The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the crackling
of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with
carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postilions, couriers, and
travelers. Night at length arrives--the time of spectacles and
funerals. The carriages rattle toward the opera-houses. Trains of
people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying
blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin,
pass through the streets chanting the service for the dead. The
Brethren of Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. The
rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their
eyes through their masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of
supernatural appearance. I return to bed and fall asleep amidst the
shouts of people returning from the opera, singing as they go snatches
of the music with which they had been entertained during the evening.

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT

Born in Salem, Mass., in 1796; died in Boston in 1859;
studied at Harvard, where, through an accident to his eyes,
he became nearly blind; devoted himself to the study of
Spanish history, employing a reader and using a specially
constructed writing apparatus; published his "Ferdinand and
Isabella" in 1838; "Conquest of Mexico" in 1843, "C