e Saturnalia to the briefest span, with the
sure prospect of its being very shortly altogether prohibited. But at
Florence on the first occasion, now several years ago, of an attempt
to imitate the Roman practice, the conduct of the populace was such as
to demand imperatively the immediate suppression of it. The carriages
and the occupants of them were attacked by such volleys of stones and
mud, and the animus of the people was so evidently malevolent and
dangerous, that they were at once driven from the scene, and any
repetition of the practice was forbidden.

It is so remarkable as to be, at all events, worth noting, that
contemporaneously with this singular deterioration in respect to
crime, another social change has taken place in Florence. _La
Gentile Firenze_ has of late years become very markedly the home of
clericalism of a high and aggressive type. This is an entirely new
feature in the Florentine social world. In the old time clerical views
were sufficiently supported by the Government to give rise to the
famous Madiai incident, which has been before alluded to. But
clericalism in its more aggressive aspects was not in the ascendant
either bureaucratically or socially. The spirit which had informed
the policy and government of the famous Leopoldine laws was still
sufficiently alive in the mental habitudes of both governors and
governed to render Tuscany a rather suspected and disliked region
in the mind of the Vatican and of the secular governments which
sympathised with the Vatican's views and sentiments. The change that
has taken place is therefore a very notable one. I have no such
sufficiently intimate knowledge of the subject as would justify me in
linking together the two changes I have noticed in the connection of
cause and effect. I only note the synchronism.

On the other hand there are not wanting sociologists who maintain
that the cause of the outburst of lawlessness and crime which has
undeniably characterised Florence of late years is to be sought for
exactly in that old-time, easy-going tolerance in religious matters,
which they say is now producing a tardy but sure crop from seeds
that, however long in disclosing the true nature of the harvest to
be expected from them, ought never to have been expected by wise
legislators to produce any other.

_Non nostrum est tantas componere lites!_ But Florence is certainly no
longer _Firenze la Gentile_ as she so eminently was in the days when I
knew he