“There is absolutely nothing to see in Leghorn,” says Mr. Hare.  Well, but that depends on what you seek, does it not?  If you would see a Tuscan city that is absolutely free from the tourist, I think you must go to Livorno.  It is true, works of art are not many there; but the statue of Grand Duke Ferdinand, with four Moors in bronze chained to his feet, a work of Piero Jacopo Tacca, made in 1617-1625, is something; though I confess those chained robbers at the feet of a petty tyrant who was as great a robber, he and his forebears, as any among them, are in this age of sentimental liberalism, from which who can escape, a little disconcerting.  Ferdinand has his best monument in the city itself, which he founded to take the place of Porto Pisano, that in the course of centuries had silted up.  In order to populate the new port, he proclaimed there a religious liberty he denied to his Duchy at large.  His policy was splendidly successful.  Every sort of outcast made Livorno his home—­especially the Jews, for whom Ferdinando had a great respect; but there were there Greeks also, and nuovi christiani, Moors converted to Christianity.  These last, I think, indeed, must have been worth seeing; for no doubt Ferdinand’s politic grant of religious liberty did not include Moors who had not been “converted to Christianity.”

But the great days of Livorno are over; though who may say if a new prosperity does not await her in the near future, she is so busy a place.  Livorno la cara, they call her, and no doubt of old she endeared herself to her outcasts.  To-day, however, it is to the Italian summer visitor that she is dear.  There he comes for sea-bathing, and it is difficult to imagine a more delightful seaside.  For you may live on the hills and yet have the sea.  Beyond Livorno rises the first high ground of the Maremma, Montenero, holy long ago with its marvellous picture of the Madonna, which, as I know, still works wonders.  Here Byron lived, and not far away Shelley wrote the principal part of The Cenci.

Passing out by tramway by the Porta Maremmana, you come to Byron’s villa, almost at the foot of the hills, on a sloping ground on your right.  Entering by the great iron gates of what looks like a neglected park, you climb by a stony road up to the great villa itself, among the broken statues and the stone pines, where is one of the most beautiful views of the Pisan country and seashore, with the islands of Gorgona, Capraja, Elba, and Corsica in the distance.  Villa Dupoy, as it was called in Byron’s day, is now in the summer months used as a girls’ school:  and, indeed, it would be easy to house a regiment in its vast rooms, where here and there a seventeenth century fresco is still gorgeous on the walls, and the mirrors are dim with age.  From here the walk up to Our Lady of Montenero is delightful; and once there, on the hills above the church, the rolling downs towards Maremma lie before you without a single habitation, almost without a road, a country of heath and fierce rock, desolate and silent, splendid with the wind and the sun.