re evinced) "and keep your
shoes clean!"

I may find room further on to say a few words of what I remember of
the revolution which dethroned poor _gran ciuco_. But I may as well
conclude here what I have to say of him by relating the manner of his
final exit from the soil of Tuscany, of which the malicious among the
few who knew the circumstances were wont to say--very unjustly--that
nothing in his reign became him like the leaving of it. I saw him pass
out from the Porta San Gallo on his way to Bologna among a crowd of
his late subjects, who all lifted their hats, though not without some
satirical cries of "_Addio, sai" "Buon viaggio_!" But a few, a very
few, friends accompanied his carriage to the papal frontier, an
invisible line on the bleak Apennines, unmarked by any habitation.
There he descended from his carriage to receive their last adieus, and
there was much lowly bowing as they stood on the highway. The Duke,
not unmoved, bowed lowly in return, but unfortunately backing as
he did so, tripped himself up with characteristic awkwardness, and
tumbled backwards on a heap of broken stones prepared for the road,
with his heels in the air, and exhibiting to his unfaithful Tuscans
and ungrateful Duchy, as a last remembrance of him, a full view of a
part of his person rarely put forward on such occasions.

And so _exeunt_ from the sight of men and from history a Grand Duke
and a Grand Duchy.

CHAPTER VII.

It was not long after the flood in Florence--it seems to me, as I
write, that I might almost leave out the two last words!--that I saw
Dickens for the first time. One morning in Casa Berti my mother was
most agreeably surprised by a card brought in to her with "Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Dickens" on it. We had been among his heartiest admirers
from the early days of _Pickwick_. I don't think we had happened to
see the _Sketches by Boz_. But my uncle Milton used to come to
Hadley full of "the last _Pickwick_," and swearing that each number
out-Pickwicked Pickwick. And it was with the greatest curiosity and
interest that we saw the creator of all this enjoyment enter in the
flesh.

We were at first disappointed, and disposed to imagine there must be
some mistake! No! _that_ is not the man who wrote _Pickwick_! What we
saw was a dandified, pretty-boy-looking sort of figure, singularly
young looking, I thought, with a slight flavour of the whipper-snapper
genus of humanity.

Here is Carlyle's description of hi