FLORENCE THE FAIR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 177, 18 August 1876, Page 13

FLORENCE THE FAIR.

The radient loveliness of the country immediately around Florence renders it the most delightful of all Italian cities for a spring residence, and no one who has once seen the glorious luxuriance of the flowers which cover its fields and gardens, and lie in masses for sale, on the broad gray basements of its old palaces can ever forget them. 'May is perhaps the most'perfect month for Florence. In winter the ice laden winds from the Appenines blow bitterly down the valley of the Arno. Forsyth mentions that they can scarcely conceive how people can live at Florence in the winter, or how they can die there in summer. Florence has been far less modernised than Rome since the change of government ; and though during the short residence there of the Sardinian Court, the magnificent old walls were destroyed, to the great injury of the place, with the towers which Varchie describes as " encircling the city like a garland," several beneficial additions were introduced. Conservatism is a natural part of the Florentine character, and there is scarcely the site of an old building or a house once inhabited by any eminent person which is not marked by an inscription. The galleries and museums, due for the most part to the Medici, and after them to the Austrian Grand-dukes, are nobly kept up, and liberally thrown open. Their treasures are inexhaustible, and almost every taste may be satisfied there. In the galleries of Uffizi and Pitti alone a walk of several miles may be taken on a wet day entirely under cover, and through an avenue of art treasures the whole way. When we add to these attractions the proverbially charming, genial, honest, simple character of the Tuscan people, we feel that it ti ould be impossible to find a pleasanter residence than Florence in autumn and spring. "Every line, every road, every gable, every tower, has some story of the past present in it. Every tocsin that sounds is a chronicle ; every bridge that unites the two banks of the river unites the crowds of the living with the heroism of the dead." To those who have not beenSmuch abroad it will be sufficient amusement to sit for a time in the beautiful Loggia de' Lauzi, if it is only for the sake of watching the variations of the fluctuating crowd in the Piazza beneath. The predominance of males is striking. Hundreds of men stand here for hours as if they had nothing else to do, talking ceaselessly in deep Tuscan tones. Many who are wrapped in long cloaks, thrown over one shoulder and lined with green, look as if they had stepped out of the old pictures in the palace above. Sitting here we should meditate on the various strange phases of Florentine history of which, this Piazzi has been the scene.