gives name to
the street, without looking up at the weather-beaten _casa_ dedicated to
the memory of that wonderfully subtile Tuscan, Niccolo Macchiavelli; and
by dint of much looking we fancied ourselves drawn nearer to the
Florence of 1500, and read "The Prince," with a gusto and an
apprehension which nothing but the old house could have inspired. This,
at least, we believed, and our faith in the fancy remains unshaken, now
that Mr. Denton, the geologist, has expounded the theory of
"Psychometry," which he tells us is the divination of soul through the
contact of matter with a psychometrical mind. Had we in those days been
better versed in this theory of "the soul of things," we should have
made a gentle application of forehead to the door-step of Macchiavelli's
mundane residence, and doubtless have arisen thoroughly pervaded with
the true spirit of the man whose feet were familiar to a stone now
desecrated by wine-flasks, onions, cabbages, and _contadini_.

Mrs. Somerville, to whom the world is indebted for several developments
in physical geography, is almost as fixed a Florentine celebrity as the
Palazzo Vecchio; and Villino Trollope has become endeared to many
_forestieri_ from the culture and hospitality of its inmates. It is the
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Adolphus Trollope, earnest contributors
to the literature of England, and active friends of Cavour's Italy.
Justice prompts us to say that no other foreigner of the present day has
done so much as Mr. Trollope to familiarize the Anglo-Saxon mind with
the genius and aspirations of Italy. A constant writer for the liberal
press of London, Mr. Trollope is also the author of several historical
works that have taken their place in a long-neglected niche. "A Decade
of Italian Women" has woven new interest around ten females of renown,
while his later works of "Filippo Strozzi" and "Paul the Pope and Paul
the Friar," have thrown additional light upon three vigorous historical
characters, as well as upon much Romish iniquity. "Tuscany in '48 and
'59" is the most satisfactory book of the kind that has been published,
Mr. Trollope's constant residence in Florence having made him perfectly
familiar with the actual _status_ of Tuscany during these important eras
in her history. The old saying, "Merit is its own reward," to which it
is usually necessary to give a Pre-Raphaelite interpretation, has had a
broader signification to Mr. Trollope, whose efforts in Italy's b