uth, we left Verona that
afternoon for Florence, by way of Padua and Bologna. The ride to Padua
was through a plain, at this season dreary enough, were it not, here and
there, for the abrupt little hills and the snowy Alps, which were always
in sight, and towards sundown and between showers transcendently lovely
in a purple and rosy light. But nothing now could be more desolate than
the rows of unending mulberry-trees, pruned down to the stumps, through
which we rode all the afternoon. I suppose they look better when the
branches grow out with the tender leaves for the silk-worms, and when
they are clothed with grapevines. Padua was only to us a name. There we
turned south, lost mountains and the near hills, and had nothing but the
mulberry flats and ditches of water, and chilly rain and mist. It grew
unpleasant as we went south. At dark we were riding slowly, very slowly,
for miles through a country overflowed with water, out of which trees
and houses loomed up in a ghastly show. At all the stations soldiers
were getting on board, shouting and singing discordantly choruses from
the operas; for there was a rising at Padua, and one feared at Bologna
the populace getting up insurrections against the enforcement of the
grist-tax,--a tax which has made the government very unpopular, as it
falls principally upon the poor.

Creeping along at such a slow rate, we reached Bologna too late for the
Florence train, It was eight o'clock, and still raining. The next train
went at two o'clock in the morning, and was the best one for us to take.
We had supper in an inn near by, and a fair attempt at a fire in our
parlor. I sat before it, and kept it as lively as possible, as the
hours wore away, and tried to make believe that I was ruminating on the
ancient greatness of Bologna and its famous university, some of whose
chairs had been occupied by women, and upon the fact that it was on a
little island in the Reno, just below here, that Octavius and Lepidus
and Mark Antony formed the second Triumvirate, which put an end to
what little liberty Rome had left; but in reality I was thinking of the
draught on my back, and the comforts of a sunny clime. But the time came
at length for starting; and in luxurious cars we finished the night very
comfortably, and rode into Florence at eight in the morning to find, as
we had hoped, on the other side of the Apennines, a sunny sky and balmy
air.

As this is strictly a chapter of travel and weather,