MAY 323 



Where the lost lark wildly sings, 

 Hard by the sun.' 



Everyone takes with him to Florence Mr. Hare's 

 ' Cities of Central Italy.' In his introduction to the 

 ' Cities of Northern Italy ' he puts it well as regards the 

 changes that have in my life-time come over travelling. 

 I can remember things as he describes them : 



' The old days of Italian travel are beginning to pass 

 out of recollection the happy old days, when with slow- 

 trotting horses and jangling bells we lived for weeks in 

 our vetturino carriage as in a house, and made ourselves 

 thoroughly comfortable there ; halting at midday for 

 luncheon, with pleasant hours for wandering over unknown 

 towns and gathering flowers and making discoveries in 

 the churches and convents near our resting-place. All 

 that we then saw remains impressed on our recollection 

 as a series of beautiful pictures set in a framework of 

 the home-like associations of a quiet life, which was 

 gilded by all that Italian loveliness alone can bestow 

 of its own tender beauty. The slow approach to each 

 long-heard-of but unseen city gradually leading up, 

 as the surroundings of all cities do, to its own peculiar 

 characteristics gave a very different feeling towards 

 it from that which is produced by rushing into a railway 

 station.' 



This is all perfectly true ; but when we think that 

 hundreds can now see and enjoy the great cities of Italy, 

 which in old days was only the privilege of the idle, the 

 rich, and the few, we can without regret give up the more 

 romantic methods of travelling of bygone days. 



The only book I had with me, given me before I left 

 for Florence, was called ' Earthwork out of Tuscany,' 

 being ' impressions and translations ' of Maurice Hewlett 

 (J. M. Dent & Co., 1895). It describes Florence, not as 

 I saw it, but in autumn and early winter, the usual 



