NEIGHBOURHOOD OF SIENNA.

185

They have no notion of the convenience of our water companies; but what they lose in convenience, they gain in elegance and purity.

The women are very pretty; and wine, bread, and meat very cheap. We left Sienna early, and reached Pozzibensi for the siesta. About three miles from the road, on the left, is the town of Colle, on a very high hill. It is environed by the rivers Elsa and Stella. Another road leads to Massa, and another to Volterra, the walls of which shew their Etruscan origin; and the district abounds with alabaster. Many Etruscan vases are found in the neighbourhood. At Volterra, the air is unwholesome; it is a mean and lonely place, although it has twenty-five churches and twenty convents! Entire villages lie in ruin and uninhabited near it; the surrounding country is overrun with weeds and bushes; and the rich copper in its mines remains unworked. Such is the effect of the sad combination of malaria and monasticism falling on one devoted region! This spot is only twenty-nine miles from Leghorn, where all is life and commerce.

On the further side of the new bridge over the Pesa, and on the right of that river, is the road of the Sambuca, or Castellina, of the Chianti Passignano: an abbey, once belonging to the Vallombrosians, may be reached from this point. The road is now skirted by vines and olives, and beautifully varied with hill and valley. At some distance. on the right, in the midst of lofty Apennines, is the sanctuary of the Madonna dell' Imprunata. We now descended the hill of the Scopeti, following the sinuosities of a mountain torrent through masses of limestone and the richest foliage, every turn presenting a very fine landscape. On the left, is the monastery of the Chartreux-a very large

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building; but, thanks to the French! very thinly inhabited. Fancy could not image any thing more beautiful in way of rock and water than this entrance to Florence, seen on the Arno.

the

"In pomp the shady Apennines arise,

And lift th' aspiring nation to the skies;
No land like Italy erects the sight

By such a vast ascent, or swells to such a height.
Her numerous states the tow'ring hills divide,
And see the billows rise on either side;

At Pisa, near, the range of mountains ends,
And there to high Ancona's shores extends.
In their dark womb a thousand rivers lie
That with continual streams the double sea supply."

CHAPTER XIV.

Florence-The Academia Florentina-Museo di Fisica-DialectsValombrosa-Tregia-Ombrosian Storehouse, &c. &c.

On our former visit to Florence, the Academia Florentina, which unites the academies of Crusca and Apatisca, was shut. It is fitted up with every thing necessary for young artists. We now hastened to the Laurentian library; not, I confess, to look at its books, but at the dried finger of that great man whose thoughts dwelt amongst the stars— Galileo!

The "Bibliotheca Mediceo Laurentiana" is close to the church of San Lorenzo. We were shewn the Decameron; the Pandects of Justinian, of the sixth century; a Virgil of the fourth; and prodigious stores of Greek, Latin, and Italian manuscripts-all treasures for the erudite. But the glass case, containing the poor finger pointing upwards, riveted my attention, and almost made me forget the architecture of Buonarotti. The arrangement of the books I did not admire; they stood all in pews, and most of them chained.

The observation of Paley, that the examination of an eye is a cure for atheism, came with great force to my mind at the "Museo di Fisica," where there are the most skilful anatomical preparations, in wax, representing every part of the human system. It is chiefly the work of Clemente

Susini. One stands astonished before this mere imitation

of the divine skill, demonstrated in man's formation, and one shudders in perceiving how soon this goodly frame may be horribly disfigured and destroyed, particularly in the awful change which the plague rapidly makes on the human body. This dreadful disease, in every stage, is wonderfully represented in coloured wax-the most appalling sight I ever beheld. I think the originals must have been found in the deep human deposits in the Campo Santo, at Naples.

The Museo had a choice selection of all the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. The shells are more numerous and better arranged than I have seen them elsewhere. I noticed a number of fossil bones of elephants, from the Val d' Arno. Query-Did Hannibal or the Deluge leave them there? We longed to see the telescope of Galileo in the Observatory, but this we could not effect. We are told that its case bears this inscription-“ Tubum opticum vides Galileii, inventum et opus, quo maculas solis, et extimos lunæ montes et Jovis satellites, et novam quasi rerum universitatem primus dispexit. A. MDCIX.” The specimens of grapes in wax, including all the sorts mentioned by Virgil, amused us much.

"Of golden some, and some of purple rind,
How shall I praise the Rhætian grape divine,
Which yet contends not with Falernian wine?
Th' Aminian many a consulship survives,
And longer than the Lydian vintage lives;
Or high Phanaus, king of Chian growth;
But, for large quantities, and lasting both,
The less Argitis bears the prize away;
Nor must Bumastus his old honours lose,
In length and largeness like the dugs of cows.
I pass the rest, whose various race and name,
Which who would learn as soon may tell the sands
Driven by the western winds on Libyan lands.”

ENVIRONS OF FLORENCE.

189

The Bumastus we had had presented to us, as we made our first entrance into Florence: its size and shape were too remarkable to be forgotten. The imitations of seeds, and woods, and resins, are very curious. I never saw similar imitations elsewhere.

The environs of Florence were now beautiful. The

farms of the Grand Duke, named the " Casini," and pronounced here, in the guttural manner of the Tuscan dialect, "Cashini," offered very agreeable drives, lofty shaded walks, and parterres covered with roses; to the right, a peep of Monte Murello and other Apennines, and to the left the Arno. What has been so often affirmed is certainly true, that the phraseology of the mere peasantry in Tuscany is beautiful, whilst their enunciation partakes somewhat of the harshness of German. Rome is the place for hearing the music of the Italian tongue. At Milan and in Naples, it was nearly impossible to recognise its delicious harmony. But I never heard any thing like the variety of the intonation of our best speakers at home: the best in Rome too often caricatured expression, but in Naples the cavalieri appeared to me monotonous. Our Italian servant spoke a patois that was irresistibly ludicrous. On the road, we thought the lower orders generally spoke slowly, many of their words being prodigiously lengthened; and in the different provinces, they are continually leaving out consonants and adding vowels. The dialects are strikingly different-even more so, I think, than our Cumberland, Yorkshire, and Devonshire; but the language is always deliciously soft compared with others, owing to the infrequency of clashing consonants, and the words of more than one syllable being all terminated by a vowel: the vowels are generally open, and I observed no nasal sounds.