ict perhaps still
more flattering (though I will not say more gratifying) was given by
Professor Pasquale Villari (now senator of the kingdom of Italy), who,
in a letter in my possession, pronounces my history of Florence to be
in his opinion the best work on the subject extant.

Professor Villari is not only an accomplished scholar of a wide
range of culture, but his praise of any work on Italian--and perhaps
especially on Tuscan--history comes from no "prentice han'." His
masterly _Life of Macchiavelli_ is as well known in our country as
in his own, through the translation of it into English by his gifted
wife, Linda Villari, whilom Linda White, and my very valued friend.
All these historical books were written _con amore_. The study of
bygone Florentines had an interest for me which was quickened by the
daily and hourly study of living Florentines. It was curious to mark
in them resemblances of character, temperament, idiosyncrasy, defects,
and merits, to those of their forefathers who move and breathe before
us in the pages of such old chroniclers as Villani, Segni, Varchi, and
the rest, and in sundry fire-graven strophes and lines of their mighty
poet. Dante's own local and limited characteristics, as distinguished
from the universality of his poetic genius, have always seemed to me
quintessentially Tuscan.

Of course it is among the lower orders that such traits are chiefly
found, and among the lower orders in the country more than those
in the towns. But there is, or was, for I speak of years ago, a
considerable conservative pride in their own inherited customs and
traditions common to all classes.

Especially this is perceived in the speech of the genuine Florentine.
Quaint proverbs, not always of scrupulous refinement, old-world
phrases, local allusions, are stuffed into the conversation of your
real citizen or citizeness of _Firenze la Gentile_ as thickly as the
beads in the _vezzo di corallo_ on the neck of a _contadina_. And
above all, the accent--the soft (not to say slobbering) _c_ and
_g_, and the guttural aspirate which turns _casa_ into _hasa_ and
_capitale_ into _hapitale_, and so forth--this is cherished with
peculiar fondness. I have heard a young, elegant, and accomplished
woman discourse in very choice Italian with the accent of a
market-woman, and on being remonstrated with for the use of some
very pungent proverbial illustration in her talk, she replied with
conviction, "That is the right way