Florence is like a lily in the midst of a garden gay with wild-flowers; a broken lily that we have tied up and watered and nursed into a semblance of life, an image of ancient beauty—­as it were the memento mori of that Latin spirit which contrived the Renaissance of mankind.  As of old, so to-day, she stands in the plain at the foot of the Apennines, that in their sweetness and strength lend her still something of their nobility.  Around her are the hills covered with olive gardens where the corn and the wine and the oil grow together between the iris and the rose; and everywhere on those beautiful hills there are villas among the flowers, real villas such as Alberti describes for us, full of coolness and rest, where a fountain splashes in an old courtyard, and the grapes hang from the pergolas, and the corn is spread in July and beaten with the flail.  And since the vista of every street in Florence ends in the country, it is to these hills you find your way very often if your stay be long, fleeing from the city herself, perhaps to hide your disappointment, in the simple joy of country life.  More and more as you live in Florence that country life becomes your consolation and your delight:  for there abide the old ways and the ancient songs, which you will not find in the city.  And indeed the great treasure of Florence is this bright and smiling country in which she lies:  the old road to Fiesole, the ways that lead from Settignano to Compiobbi, the path through the woods from S. Martino a Mensola, that smiling church by the wayside, to Vincigliata, to Castel di Poggio, the pilgrimage from Bagno a Ripoli to the Incontro.  There, on all those beautiful gay roads, you will pass numberless villas whispering with summer, laughing with flowers; you will see the contadini at work in the poderi, you will hear the rispetti and stornelli of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries sung perhaps by some love-sick peasant girl among the olives from sunrise till evening falls.  And the ancient ways are not forgotten there, for they still reap with the sickle and sing to the beat of the flail; while the land itself, those places “full of nimble air, in a laughing country of sweet and lovely views, where there is always fresh water, and everything is healthy and pure,” of which Leon Alberti tells us, are still held and cultivated in the old way under the old laws by the contadino and his padrone.  This ancient order, quietness, and beauty, which you may find everywhere in the country round about Florence, is the true Tuscany.  The vulgarity of the city, for even in Italy the city life has become insincere, blatant, and for the most part a life of the middle class, seldom reaches an hundred yards beyond the barriera:  and this is a charm in Florence, for you may so easily look on her from afar.  And so, if one comes to her from the country, or returns to her from her own hills, it is ever with a sense of loss, of sadness, of regret:  she has lost her soul for the sake of the stranger, she has forgotten the splendid past for an ignoble present, a strangely wearying dream of the future.