302 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



In the notes which Mr. Shaler kept while in Italy is ample 

 record of his outdoor experiences. His scientific observations 

 and those concerned with human nature are closely interwoven, 

 for here as everywhere the scientist and the humanist marched 

 together. Since the lack of space compels a choice between the 

 two, we shall give extracts dealing more particularly with men 

 and the picturesque aspects of Italian life; for these subjects 

 seem in a way to be nearer to him. 



The first walk he describes was that which led to Impruneta. 



Most travellers in Italy know Florence, but few are sagacious enough to 

 give time for journeys in its environs. . . . Within twenty miles around 

 there is the Italy of the middle ages with its face unchanged, as unlike the 

 Haussmannized city as the fourteenth century is unlike our own. There are 

 roads that look as they did when they bore the armies of Rome, and villages 

 that Dante would find in nothing different from what they were when he 

 saw hell beneath their pavements and a better flame in the blue sky above. 

 . . . Let me premise that these journeys should be made afoot, or if that 

 is not possible, in the little native two-wheeled gigs. If the stranger goes 

 in a city carriage he carries with him an atmosphere of disenchantment 

 a sort of cock-crow that sends the mystery away from his path. The beggar 

 and the innkeeper mark him for their own. Every group of peasants dis- 

 solves and the people face about to gape at the English milor and speculate 

 on him. Even the hills and walls look unnatural. The people are always 

 sensitive to anything like obtrusive observation, for among this singularly 

 sensitive folk the least onlooking freezes them into stolidity. . . . 



I left Florence before sunrise of a winter's morning when the snow-clad 

 hills were still sending their tides of nipping air into the green valleys below. 

 The streets and roads of the town were white with hoar frost, and at the 

 Porta Romana the peasants, waiting with their loads of wine and oil for 

 the slow process of the octroi officers, were crowded around a fire of straw 

 or dancing with antic gyres to keep their slow blood in motion. These 

 Italian skies light wonderfully at dawn. At evening there is want of cloud 

 to enrich the vault, but in the coming of day the light floods the upper air, 

 which though transparent is vaporous, and seems to set it afire. This gold 

 of the heavens came lower and lower until it caught the hilltops at Certosa 

 two miles out; the dawn was just catching the spires and roofs in its glory 

 while the river Arno held the night in its vapors. I have never seen this effect 

 of sun-bathed hilltops so perfect in any other place. It turned the ancient 

 monastery into something favored of heaven, and despite the want of favor 



