shoulders a litter covered with black cloth?  These are the Brethren of Mercy, who have assembled at the sound of the cathedral bell, and are conveying some sick or wounded person to the hospital.  As the day begins to decline, the numbers of carriages in the streets, filled with gaily-dressed people attended by servants in livery, increases.  The Grand Duke’s equipage, an elegant carriage drawn by six horses, with coachmen, footmen, and outriders in drab-colored livery, comes from the Pitti Palace, and crosses the Arno, either by the bridge close to my lodgings, or by that called Alla Santa Trinita, which is in full sight from the windows.  The Florentine nobility, with their families, and the English residents, now throng to the Cascine, to drive at a slow pace through its thickly-planted walks of elms, oaks, and ilexes.  As the sun is sinking I perceive the Quay, on the other side of the Arno, filled with a moving crowd of well-dressed people, walking to and fro, and enjoying the beauty of the evening.  Travellers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashes, in the shabby vettura, and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots.  The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travellers.  Night at length arrives—­the time of spectacles and funerals.  The carriages rattle towards the opera-houses.  Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin, pass through the streets chanting the service for the dead.  The Brethren of Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office.  The rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their eyes through their masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of supernatural appearance.  I return to bed, and fall asleep amidst the shouts of people returning from the opera, singing as they go snatches of the music with which they had been entertained during the evening.

Such is a picture of what passes every day at Florence—­in Pisa, on the contrary, all is stagnation and repose—­even the presence of the sovereign, who usually passes a part of the winter here, is incompetent to give a momentary liveliness to the place.  The city is nearly as large as Florence, with not a third of its population; the number of strangers is few; most of them are invalids, and the rest are the quietest people in the world.  The rattle of carriages is rarely heard in the streets; in some of which there prevails a stillness so complete that you might imagine them deserted of their inhabitants.  I have now been here three weeks, and on one occasion only have I seen the people of the place awakened to something like animation.  It was the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin; the Lung’ Arno was strewn with boughs of laurel and myrtle, and the Pisan gentry promenaded for an hour under my window.