University of Virginia Library

LOCALITIES.

The prevalence of broad-sweeping vales, thickly
studded with olive trees, and relieved by a background
of snow-covered mountains, uniquely embosoming
a picturesque city, through the midst of
which a river courses, spanned by several finely
arched bridges—these are local circumstances which
clearly assure us that we are in the delightful capital
of the garden of Italy, as Tuscany is appropriately
called. A merely conventional view of Florence
inspired me with a strong predilection for it
as a residence. It possesses that medium character

as regards extent, population, and activity, which is
essential to the comfort of those who would find in
their place of abode a moderate degree of liveliness
combined with something of quietude and beauty.
Its compactness and broadly-paved streets, and the
general magnitude and antique cast of its buildings,
are features which almost immediately prepossess
the visitor.

One cannot wander long in Florence without
coming out upon the Piazza Grand Duca. This
square seems to possess something of the local interest
of the Edinburgh grass-market, as described by
Sir Walter Scott; not that peculiar events transpire
there, but the place is a kind of central resort, the
post office and custom house being there situated,
and that curious specimen of Tuscan architecture
called the Palazzo Vecchio. There, too, stand the
colossal and time-hallowed figures, sculptured by
Buonarotti; seen at night how mystic their snowy
distinctness! The illuminated figures upon the old
tower designate, at that season, the hour, and a solitary
sentinel standing in the shade of the buildings,
with the equestrian statue of Cosmo in the centre,
complete the romanticity of the scene. In the daytime
a far more bustling appearance is presented—
groups awaiting the sorting of the mails, venders
crying at their scattered booths, and, most unique of
all, a quack mounted upon his càleche, eulogizing his
nostrums most eloquently.

The view from the Boboli gardens attached to
the ducal palace, is thus graphically described by a
celebrated English poet:

`You see below Florence, a smokeless city, with
its domes and spires occupying the vale, and beyond,
to the right, the Apennines, whose base extends
even to the walls, and whose summits are intersected
by ashen-coloured clouds. The green valleys of
these mountains, which gently unfold themselves
upon the plains, and the intervening hills, covered
with vineyards and olive plantations, are occupied
by the villas, which are, as it were, another city—a
Babylon of palaces and gardens. In the midst of
the picture rolls the Arno, through woods bounded
by aerial snowy summits of the Apennines. On the
right, a magnificent buttress of lofty craggy hills,
overgrown with wilderness, juts out into many
shapes over a lonely valley, and approaches the
walls of the city.

`Cascini and other villages occupy the pinnacles
and abutments of these hills, over which is seen, at
intervals, the ethereal mountain line, hoary with
snow and intersected by clouds. The valley below
is covered with cypress groves, whose obeliskine
forms of intense green pierce the gray shadow of
the wintry hills that overhang them. The cypresses,
too, of the garden, form a magnificent foreground
of accumulated verdure: pyramids of dark
green shining cones, rising out of a mass, between

which are cut, like caverns, recesses conducting into
walks.'

At no great distance we find the Museum of Natural
History, the anatomical preparations of which
are probably unsurpassed for their complete and
scientific exhibition of the several parts and processes
of the human system. Here the body seems
literally laid open, its nerves, glands and muscles
represented in their natural positions, relations, hues
and functions; and all with a regularity of arrangement,
and displaying a perfection in the execution
truly admirable. Means of studying nature, in so
important a department, more comprehensive, and
withal commodious, can scarcely be imagined. Admiration
of the skill of the artist and an agitating
sense of the wonderful delicacy and mysterious
science involved in our physical being alternately
occupy the beholder.

The Mausoleum and Chapel Tomb of the Medici
are remarkable objects of attention. The latter is
hallowed by the immortal work of M. Angelo,
which it contains; and the former is yet in the progress
of construction, and although very rich in
marbles and precious stones, possesses too sombre a
hue, with its present incumbrances, to show these to
much advantage.