Let me tell (quite parenthetically) a really good story of that matchless building, which yet however will hardly be appreciated at its full value by those who have never yet seen it.  When the Austrian troops were occupying Florence, one of the white-coated officers had planted himself in the Piazza in front of the tower, and was gazing at it earnestly, lost in admiration of its perfect beauty. “Si svita, signore,” said a little street urchin, coming up behind him—­“It unscrews, sir!” As much as to say, “Wouldn’t you like just to take it off bodily and carry it away?” But, as I said, to apprehend the aptitude of the gamin’s sneer, one must have oneself looked on the absolute perfection of proportion and harmony of its every part, which really does suggest the idea that the whole might be lifted bodily in one piece from its place on the soil Whether the Austrian had the wit to answer “You are blundering, boy! you are taking me for a Frenchman,” I don’t know!

But I was saying, when the mention of the celebrated tower led me into telling, before I forgot it, the above story, that Florence was of all the cities of Europe, that in which one might be likely to see the greatest number of old, and make the greatest number of new acquaintances.  I lived there for more than thirty years, and the number of persons, chiefly English, American, and Italian, whom I knew during that period is astonishing.  The number of them was of course all the greater from the fact that the society, at least so far as English and Americans were concerned, was to a very great degree a floating one.  They come back to my memory, when I think of those times, like a long procession of ghosts!  Most of them, I suppose, are ghosts by this time.  They pass away out of one’s ken, and are lost!

Some, thank Heaven, are not lost; and some though lost, will never pass out of ken!  If I were writing only for myself, I should like to send my memory roving among all that crowd of phantoms, catch them one after another as they dodge about half eluding one when just on the point of recovering them, and, fixing them in memory’s camera, photograph them one after another.  But I cannot hope that such a gallery would be as interesting to the reader as it certainly would to me.  And I must content myself with recording my recollections of those among them in whom the world may be supposed to take an interest.

Theodosia Garrow, when living with her parents at “The Braddons,” at Torquay, had known Elizabeth Barrett.  The latter was very much of an invalid at the time; so much so, as I think I have gathered from my wife’s talk about those times, as to have prevented her from being a visitor to “The Braddons.”  But Theodosia was, I take it, to be very frequently found by the side of the sofa to which her friend was more or less confined.  I fancy that Mr. Kenyon, who was an old friend and family connection of Elizabeth Barrett’s family,