This collection possesses also the celebrated statue of Venus, by Canova.  She stands in the centre of a little apartment, filled with the most delicate and graceful works of painting.  Although undoubtedly a figure of great beauty, it by no means struck me as possessing that exquisite and classic perfection which has been ascribed to it.  The Venus de Medici far surpasses it.  The head is larger in proportion to the size of the body, than that of the latter, but has not the same modest, virgin expression.  The arm wrapped in the robe which she is pressing to her breast, is finely executed, but the fingers of the other hand are bad—­looking, as my friend said, as if the ends were whittled off!  The body is, however, of fine proportions, though, taken as a whole, the statue is inferior to many other of Canova’s works.

Occupying all the hill back of the Pitti Palace, are the Boboli Gardens, three times a week the great resort of the Florentines.  They are said to be the most beautiful gardens in Italy.  Numberless paths, diverging from a magnificent amphitheatre in the old Roman style, opposite the court-yard, lend either in long flights of steps and terraces, or gentle windings among beds sweet with roses, to the summit.  Long avenues, entirely arched and interwoven with the thick foliage of the laurel, which here grows to a tree, stretch along the slopes or wind in the woods through thickets of the fragrant bay.  Parterres, rich with flowers and shrubbery, alternate with delightful groves of the Italian pine, acacia and laurel-leaved oak, and along the hillside, gleaming among the foliage, are placed statues of marble, some of which are from the chisels of Michael Angelo and Bandinelli.  In one part there is a little sheet of water, with an island of orange-trees in the centre, from which a broad avenue of cypresses and statues leads to the very summit of the hill.

We often go there to watch the sun set over Florence and the vale of the Arno.  The palace lies directly below, and a clump of pine-trees on the hillside, that stand out in bold relief on the glowing sky, makes the foreground to one of the loveliest pictures this side of the Atlantic.  I saw one afternoon the Grand Duke and his family get into their carriage to drive out.  One of the little dukes, who seemed a mischievous imp, ran out on a projection of the portico, where considerable persuasion had to be used to induce him to jump into the arms of his royal papa.  I turned from these titled infants to watch a group of beautiful American children playing, for my attention was drawn to them by the sound of familiar words, and I learned afterwards they were the children of the sculptor Powers.  I contrasted involuntarily the destinies of each;—­one to the enjoyment and proud energy of freedom, and one to the confining and vitiating atmosphere of a court.  The merry voices of the latter, as they played on the grass, came to my ears most gratefully.  There is nothing so sweet as to hear one’s native tongue in a foreign land from the lips of children!