n hills hot and sun-scorched,
where the brown foliage has no touch of freshness, but stands parched
and shrivelled by the hot glare of eternal noon. The white-walled villas
glisten in the dazzling heat, not tempered by the slightest shade, but
reflecting back the scorching glow from rocks cracked and fissured by
the sun!

How disappointing is all this! and how wearisome is the endeavour,
from the scattered objects here and there, to make any approach to
that Florence one has imagined to himself! To me the abstraction is
impossible. I carry about with me, even into the galleries, before
the triumphs of Raf-faelle and the wonders of Michael Angelo, the sad
discordant scenes through which I have passed. The jarred senses are
rendered incapable of properly appreciating and feeling those influences
that should diffuse their effect upon the mind; and even the sight of
the "Guardia Civica," strutting in solemn mockery beneath the archways
where the proud Medici have trod, are contrasts to suggest rather a
sense of sarcasm than of pleasure.

Here and there you do come upon some grand and imposing pile of
building, the very stones of which seem laid by giant hands; but even
these have the fortress character, the air of strongholds, rather
than of princely dwellings, as at Genoa. You see at once how much more
defence and safety were the guiding principles, than elegance of design
and beauty of proportion. No vestibule, peopled with its marble groups,
opens here to the passer-by a glimpse of a noble stair rising in
spacious amplitude between walls of marble. No gate of gilded fretwork
shews the terraced garden, with the plashing fountains, and the
orange-trees bending with their fruit.

Like all continental cities where the English congregate, the
inhabitants have a mongrel look, grafting English notions of dress and
equipage upon their own, and, like most imitators, only successful in
following the worst models. The Cascini, too, exhibits a very motley
assemblage of gaudy liveries and, dusky carriages, riding-grooms dressed
like footmen, their masters no bad resemblance to the "Jeunes Premiers"
of a vaudeville. The men are very inferior in appearance to the
Milanese; they are neither as well-built nor well-grown, and rarely
have any pretensions to a fashionable exterior. The women are mostly
ill-dressed, and, in no instance that I have seen, even well-looking.
They have the wearied look, without the seductive languor, of the S