s and towers," may be seen. Of their many attractions
the guide-book remarks poetically in very nearly the following words:--

"Its long-embowered walks, like lengthened arbours,
Are well adapted to the summer's sun;
While statues, terraces, and vases add
Still more unto its splendour. All around
We see attractive statues, and of these
A number really are restored antiques,
And many by good artists; best of all
Are four by mighty Michel Angelo,
Made for the second Julius, and meant
To decorate his tomb. You see them at
The angles of the grotto opposite
The entrance to the gardens. Of this grot
The famous Redi sang in verse grotesque:

"Ye satyrs, in a trice
Leave your low jests and verses rough and hobbly,
And bring me a good fragment of the ice
Kept in the grotto of the Garden Boboli.
With nicks and picks
Of hammers and sticks,
Disintegrate it
And separate it,
Break it and split it,
Splinter and slit it!
Till at the end 'tis fairly ground and rolled
Into the finest powder, freezing cold."

There are also, among the things worth seeing, the Venus by Giovanni of
Boulogne (called di Bologna); the Apollo and Ceres by Baccio Bandinelli;
the group of Paris carrying off Helen by V. de' Rossi, and the old Roman
fountain-bath and obelisk. The trees and flowers, shrubbery and
_boschetti_, are charming; and if the reader often visits them, long
sitting in the sylvan shade on sunny days, he will not fail to feel that
strange enchantment which seems to haunt certain places, and people them
with dreams, if not with elves.

The fascination of these dark arbours old, and of the antique gardens,
has been recognised by many authors, and there are, I suppose, few
visitors to Florence who have not felt it and recalled it years after in
distant lands as one recalls a dream. Therefore, I read with interest or
sympathy the following, which, though amounting to nothing as a legend,
is still valuable as setting forth the fascination of the place, and how
it dates even from him who gave the Boboli Gardens their name:

IL GIARDINO BOBOLI.

"The Boboli Garden is the most beautiful in Europe.

"Boboli was the name of the farmer who cultivated the land before it was
bought by Cosimo de' Medici and his wife Eleanora.

"After