Letter II.

A Journey to Florence.

Florence, Sept 27, 1834.

I have now been in this city a fortnight, and have established myself in a suite of apartments lately occupied, as the landlord told me, in hopes I presume of getting a higher rent, by a Russian prince.  The Arno flows, or rather stands still, under my windows, for the water is low, and near the western wall of the city is frugally dammed up to preserve it for the public baths.  Beyond, this stream so renowned in history and poetry, is at this season but a feeble rill, almost lost among the pebbles of its bed, and scarcely sufficing to give drink to the pheasants and hares of the Grand Duke’s Cascine on its banks.  Opposite my lodgings, at the south end of the Ponte alla Carraia, is a little oratory, before the door of which every good Catholic who passes takes off his hat with a gesture of homage; and at this moment a swarthy, weasel-faced man, with a tin box in his hand, is gathering contributions to pay for the services of the chapel, rattling his coin to attract the attention of the pedestrians, and calling out to those who seem disposed to pass without paying.  To the north and west, the peaks of the Appenines are in full sight, rising over the spires of the city and the groves of the Cascine.  Every evening I see them through the soft, delicately-colored haze of an Italian sunset, looking as if they had caught something of the transparency of the sky, and appearing like mountains of fairy-land, instead of the bleak and barren ridges of rock which they really are.  The weather since my arrival in Tuscany has been continually serene, the sky wholly cloudless, and the temperature uniform—­oppressively warm in the streets at noon, delightful at morning and evening, with a long, beautiful, golden twilight, occasioned by the reflection of light from the orange-colored haze which invests the atmosphere.  Every night I am reminded that I am in the land of song, for until two o’clock in the morning I hear “all manner of tunes” chanted by people in the streets in all manner of voices.

I believe I have given you no account of our journey from Paris to this place.  That part of it which lay between Paris and Chalons, on the Saone, may be described in a very few words.  Monotonous plains, covered with vineyards and wheat-fields, with very few trees, and those spoiled by being lopped for fuel—­sunburnt women driving carts or at work in the fields—­gloomy, cheerless-looking towns, with narrow, filthy streets—­troops of beggars surrounding your carriage whenever you stop, or whenever the nature of the roads obliges the horses to walk, and chanting their requests in the most doleful whine imaginable—­such are the sights and sounds that meet you for the greater part of two hundred and fifty miles.  There are, however, some exceptions as to the aspect of the country.  Autun, one of the most ancient towns of France, and yet retaining