Fancy yourself lifted to the summit of a high hill, whose base slopes down to the valley of the Arno, and looking northward.  Behind you is a confusion of hill and valley, growing gradually dimmer away to the horizon.  Before and below you is a vale, with Florence and her great domes and towers in its lap, and across its breadth of five miles the mountain of Fiesole.  To the west it stretches away unbroken for twenty miles, covered thickly with white villas—­like a meadow of daisies, magnified.  A few miles to the east the plain is rounded with mountains, between whose interlocking bases we can see the brown current of the Arno.  Some of their peaks, as well as the mountain of Vallombrosa, along the eastern sky, are tipped with snow.  Imagine the air filled with a thick blue mist, like a semi-transparent veil, which softens every thing into dreamy indistinctness, the sunshine falling slantingly through this in spots, touching the landscape here and there as with a sudden blaze of fire, and you will complete the picture.  Does it not repay your mental flight across the Atlantic.

One evening, on coming out of the cafe, the moon was shining so brightly and clearly, that I involuntarily bent my steps towards the river; I walked along the Lung’Arno, enjoying the heavenly moonlight—­“the night of cloudless climes and starry skies!” A purer silver light never kissed the brow of Endymion.  The brown Arno took into his breast “the redundant glory,” and rolled down his pebbly bed with a more musical ripple; opposite stretched the long mass of buildings—­the deep arches that rose from the water were filled with black shadow, and the irregular fronts of the houses touched with a mellow glow.  The arches of the upper bridge were in shadow, cutting their dark outline on the silvery sweep of the Appenines, far up the stream.  A veil of luminous gray covered the hill of San Miniato, with its towers and cypress groves, and there was a crystal depth in the atmosphere, as if it shone with its own light.  The whole scene affected me as something too glorious to be real—­painful from the very intensity of its beauty.  Three moons ago, at the foot of Vallombrosa, I saw the Appenines flooded with the same silvery gush, and thought also, then, that I had seen the same moon amid far dearer scenes, but never before the same dreamy and sublime glory showered down from her pale orb.  Some solitary lights were burning along the river, and occasionally a few Italians passed by, wrapped in their mantles.  I went home to the Piazza del Granduca as the light, pouring into the square from behind the old palace, fell over the fountain of Neptune and sheathed in silver the back of the colossal god.