Florence!  I was there a month, and in a sense saw Florence:  that is to say, I took an inventory of what is to be seen there, and not without great intellectual profit.  There is too much that is really admirable in art,—­the nature of its growth lies before you too clearly to be evaded.  Of such things more elsewhere.

I do not like Florence as I do cities more purely Italian.  The natural character is ironed out here, and done up in a French pattern; yet there is no French vivacity, nor Italian either.  The Grand Duke—­more and more agitated by the position in which he finds himself between the influence of the Pope and that of Austria—­keeps imploring and commanding his people to keep still, and they are still and glum as death.  This is all on the outside; within, Tuscany burns.  Private culture has not been in vain, and there is, in a large circle, mental preparation for a very different state of things from the present, with an ardent desire to diffuse the same amid the people at large.  The sovereign has been obliged for the present to give more liberty to the press, and there is an immediate rush of thought to the new vent; if it is kept open a few months, the effect on the body of the people cannot fail to be great.  I intended to have translated some passages from the programme of the Patria, one of the papers newly started at Florence, but time fails.  One of the articles in the same number by Lambruschini, on the duties of the clergy at this juncture, contains views as liberal as can be found in print anywhere in the world.  More of these things when I return to Rome in the autumn, when I hope to find a little leisure to think over what I have seen, and, if found worthy, to put the result in writing.

I visited the studios of our sculptors; Greenough has in clay a David which promises high beauty and nobleness, a bass-relief, full of grace and tender expression; he is also modelling a head of Napoleon, and justly enthusiastic in the study.  His great group I did not see in such a state as to be secure of my impression.  The face of the Pioneer is very fine, the form of the woman graceful and expressive; but I was not satisfied with the Indian.  I shall see it more as a whole on my return to Florence.

As to the Eve and the Greek Slave, I could only join with the rest of the world in admiration of their beauty and the fine feeling of nature which they exhibit.  The statue of Calhoun is full of power, simple, and majestic in attitude and expression.  In busts Powers seems to me unrivalled; still, he ought not to spend his best years on an employment which cannot satisfy his ambition nor develop his powers.  If our country loves herself, she will order from him some great work before the prime of his genius has been frittered away, and his best years spent on lesser things.

I saw at Florence the festivals of St. John, but they are poor affairs to one who has seen the Neapolitan and Roman people on such occasions.