r so well.

Whether any of the other cities of Italy have in any degree ceased to
merit the traditional epithets which so many successive generations
assigned to them--how far Genoa is still _la Superba_, Bologna _la
Grassa_, Padua _la Dotta_, Lucca _la Industriosa_--I cannot say.
Venezia is unquestionably still _la Bella_. And as for old Rome, she
vindicates more than ever her title to the epithet _Eterna_, by her
similitude to those nursery toys which, throw them about as you will,
still with infallible certitude come down heads uppermost.

As for the Florence of my old recollections, there were in the early
days of them many little old-world sights and sounds which are to be
seen and heard no longer, and which differentiated the place from
other social centres.

I remember a striking incident of this sort which happened to my
mother and myself "in the days before the flood," therefore very
shortly after our arrival there.

It was the practice in those days to carry the bodies of the dead on
open biers, with uncovered faces, to their burial. It had doubtless
been customary in old times so to carry all the dead; but the custom
was retained at the time of which I am writing only in the case
of distinguished persons, and very generally of the priesthood. I
remember, for instance, a poor little humpbacked Grand Duchess being
so carried through the street magnificently bedecked as if she were
going to a ball, and with painted cheeks. She had been a beneficent
little body, and the people, as far as they knew anything about
her, revered her, and looked on her last presentation to them with
sympathetic feelings. But it was a sorry sight to see the poor little
body, looking much like a bedizened monkey, so paraded.

Well, my mother and I were, aimlessly but much admiringly, wandering
about the vast spaces of the cathedral when we became aware of a
_funzione_ of some sort--a service as we should say--being conducted
in a far part of the building. There was no great crowd, but a score
or two of spectators, mainly belonging to the _gamin_ category, were
standing around the officiating priests and curiously looking on. We
went towards the spot, and found that the burial service was being
performed over the body of a young priest. The body lay on its back on
the open bier, clad in full canonicals and with the long tasselled cap
of the secular clergy on his head. We stood and gazed with the others,
when suddenly I saw the dead