during several months of
the year an appearance of great bustle and animation. Four thousand
English, an American friend tells me, visit Florence every winter, to
say nothing of the occasional residents from France, Germany, and
Russia. The number of visitors from the latter country is every year
increasing, and the echoes of the Florence gallery have been taught to
repeat the strange accents of the Slavonic. Let me give you the history
of a fine day in October, passed at the window of my lodgings on the
Lung Arno, close to the bridge.

Waked by the jangling of all the bells in Florence and by the noise of
carriages departing loaded with travelers, for Rome and other places in
the south of Italy, I rise, dress myself, and take my place at the
window. I see crowds of men and women from the country, the former in
brown velvet jackets, and the latter in broad-brimmed straw hats,
driving donkeys loaded with panniers or trundling hand-carts before
them, heaped with grapes, figs, and all the fruits of the orchard, the
garden, and the field. They have hardly passed, when large flocks of
sheep and goats make their appearance, attended by shepherds and their
families, driven by the approach of winter from the Appenines, and
seeking the pastures of the Maremma, a rich, but, in the summer, an
unhealthy tract on the coast.

The men and the boys are drest in knee-breeches, the women in bodices,
and both sexes wear capotes with pointed hoods, and felt hats with
conical crowns; they carry long staves in their hands, and their arms
are loaded with kids and lambs too young to keep pace with their
mothers. After the long procession of sheep and goats and dogs and men
and women and children, come horses loaded with cloths and poles for
tents, kitchen utensils, and the rest of the younglings of the flock.

A little after sunrise I see well-fed donkeys, in coverings of red
cloth, driven over the bridge to be milked for invalids. Maid-servants,
bare-headed, with huge high carved combs in their hair, waiters of
coffee-houses carrying the morning cup of coffee or chocolate to their
customers, baker's boys with a dozen loaves on a board balanced on their
heads, milkmen with rush baskets filled with flasks of milk, are
crossing the streets in all directions. A little later the bell of the
small chapel opposite to my window rings furiously for a quarter of an
hour, and then I hear mass chanted in a deep strong nasal tone.

As the day advance