JUNE 333 



the isle of Cyprus for it to grow in. The early botanists 

 supposed that the upright and spreading Cypresses were 

 male and female of the same plant C. horizontalis the 

 male, C. stricta the female. This is not the case. The 

 horizontal Cypress is quite a distinct species, which comes 

 from the Levant. The evergreen Cypress is a flame-shaped, 

 tapering, and cone-like tree. The male catkins are yellow- 

 ish, about three inches long, and very numerous. The 

 female catkins are much fewer and of a roundish-oblong 

 form ; but both grow on the same tree. I have a sentiment 

 for Cypresses that amounts to a passion. All my life they 

 have remained in my mind as emblems of the fairest land 

 I have ever known. 



June 5th. To-day being warm, I went down to 

 Florence ; and dropping my companion who had to call 

 on a sick friend I went on alone to the ' Cascine,' the well- 

 known public park, which I had not seen for over forty 

 years. The ghost of my youth sat beside me in the little 

 shabby carriage ; and as I drove along the well-remembered 

 alley, with the racecourse on the right, and the shaded 

 roads where I used to ride, the past all came back to my 

 mind. To the outward eye all seemed very much the same 

 a little smartened up and modernised perhaps. As I drew 

 up on the Piazzone there was another carriage with a mother 

 and three young daughters, as we used to be. It was a 

 strange, lonely, sepulchral sort of feeling that in all that 

 gay crowd very few were even born when we lived in 

 Florence and I used to go daily to the ' Cascine ' and dance 

 half the night through at balls. That winter at Florence 

 seemed to me at the time to be the last of rny youth, and 

 it altered all my life. 



How strange are the depressions of youth ! Life seems 

 over when really it has scarce begun ! It was in such a 

 mood I left Florence at twenty. De Musset has ex- 

 pressed this sadness of youth with concentrated pathos : 



