[5] Cacus, the son of Vulcan and Medusa, was a famous robber who breathed fire and smoke and laid waste Italy.  He made the mistake, however, of robbing Hercules of some cows, and for this Hercules strangled him.

[6] “Thick as leaves in Vallombrosa” has come to be the form of words as most people quote them.  But Milton wrote ("Paradise Lost,” Book I. 300-304):—­

            “He called
    His legions, angel-forms, who lay entranced
    Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
    In Vallombrosa where the Etrurian shades,
    High over-arched, embower.”

Wordsworth, by the way, when he visited Vallombrosa with Crabb Robinson in 1837, wrote an inferior poem there, in a rather common metre, in honour of Milton’s association with it.

[7] 27 April, 1859, the day that the war with Austria was proclaimed.

[8] In “A Dictionary of Saintly Women”.

[9] The position of easel pictures in the Florentine galleries often changes.