s all about, saying mass; and of course did not
venture to put our hands into a hive where the bees were buzzing and on
the wing. Pistoia we only coasted. A little on one side of it, there is
a Hill, the first on the road from Florence; which we walked up, and
had a very lively and brilliant prospect over the road we had just
travelled, and the town of Pistoia. Thence to this place the whole land
is beautiful, and in the highest degree prosperous,--in short, to speak
metaphorically, all dotted with Leghorn bonnets, and streaming with
olive-oil. The girls here are said to employ themselves chiefly in
platting straw, which is a profitable employment; and the slightness and
quiet of the work are said to be much more favorable to beauty than the
coarser kinds of labor performed by the country-women elsewhere. Certain
it is that I saw more pretty women in Pescia, in the hour I spent there,
than I ever before met with among the same numbers of the 'phare sect.'
Wherefore, as a memorial of them, I bought there several Legends of
Female Saints and Martyrs, and of other Ladies quite the reverse, and
held up as warnings; all of which are written in _ottava rima_, and sold
for three halfpence apiece. But unhappily I have not yet had time to
read them. This Town has 30,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by
Walls, laid out as walks, and evidently not at present intended to be
besieged,--for which reason, this morning, I merely walked on them round
the Town, and did not besiege them....

"The Cathedral [of Lucca] contains some Relics; which have undoubtedly
worked miracles on the imagination of the people hereabouts. The
Grandfather of all Relics (as the Arabs would say) in the place is the
_Volto Santo_, which is a Face of the Saviour appertaining to a wooden
Crucifix. Now you must know that, after the ascension of Christ,
Nicodemus was ordered by an Angel to carve an image of him; and went
accordingly with a hatchet, and cut down a cedar for that purpose. He
then proceeded to carve the figure; and being tired, fell asleep before
he had done the face; which however, on awaking, he found completed by
celestial aid. This image was brought to Lucca, from Leghorn, I think,
where it had arrived in a ship, 'more than a thousand years ago,'
and has ever since been kept, in purple and fine linen and gold and
diamonds, quietly working miracles. I saw the gilt Shrine of it; and
also a Hatchet which refused to cut off the head of an innocent ma