Florence is like a lily in the midst of a garden gay with wild-flowers;
a broken lily that we have tied up and watered and nursed into a
semblance of life, an image of ancient beauty--as it were the _memento
mori_ of that Latin spirit which contrived the Renaissance of mankind.
As of old, so to-day, she stands in the plain at the foot of the
Apennines, that in their sweetness and strength lend her still something
of their nobility. Around her are the hills covered with olive gardens
where the corn and the wine and the oil grow together between the iris
and the rose; and everywhere on those beautiful hills there are villas
among the flowers, real villas such as Alberti describes for us, full of
coolness and rest, where a fountain splashes in an old courtyard, and
the grapes hang from the pergolas, and the corn is spread in July and
beaten with the flail. And since the vista of every street in Florence
ends in the country, it is to these hills you find your way very often
if your stay be long, fleeing from the city herself, perhaps to hide
your disappointment, in the simple joy of country life. More and more as
you live in Florence that country life becomes your consolation and your
delight: for there abide the old ways and the ancient songs, which you
will not find in the city. And indeed the great treasure of Florence is
this bright and smiling country in which she lies: the old road to
Fiesole, the ways that lead from Settignano to Compiobbi, the path
through the woods from S. Martino a Mensola, that smiling church by the
wayside, to Vincigliata, to Castel di Poggio, the pilgrimage from Bagno
a Ripoli to the Incontro. There, on all those beautiful gay roads, you
will pass numberless villas whispering with summer, laughing with
flowers; you will see the _contadini_ at work in the _poderi_, you will
hear the _rispetti_ and _stornelli_ of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries sung perhaps by some love-sick peasant girl among the olives
from sunrise till evening falls. And the ancient ways are not forgotten
there, for they still reap with the sickle and sing to the beat of the
flail; while the land itself, those places "full of nimble air, in a
laughing country of sweet and lovely views, where there is always fresh
water, and everything is healthy and pure," of which Leon Alberti tells
us, are still held and cultivated in the old way under the old laws by
the _contadino_ and his _padrone_. This ancient order, quietness,