JUNE 345 



and the Lavender and Eosemary, a huge flourishing Deo- 

 dar. No doubt this tree is beautiful enough on the high, 

 steep sides of the Lower Himalayas, but with its symmet- 

 rical growth, and the size to which it has already attained, 

 it is a most unsightly and inappropriate object in the 

 restricted eortile of Savonarola's monastery. It puts 

 everything out of all proportion, and is such an anach- 

 ronism ! Deodars are quite modern trees in Europe, and 

 are not pretty, even in villa gardens. I do wish it could 

 be cut down ; plain, daisy -spangled turf would be much 

 better. Nothing is so striking or so general as the want 

 of imagination in planting. Sometimes plants are put 

 in entirely out of character with the rest of a garden ; 

 another time trees are planted which, when they grow 

 well, entirely obscure the view or shut out the summer 

 sunset. One curious anachronism I have noticed is that 

 an artist, in painting a scene for the background of a 

 Greek or Roman play, introduces American plants in his 

 foreground ! So many places are merely spoilt in an 

 effort to improve them, and this is especially the case all 

 around Florence. 



Of all that I have read about Florence since my 

 return, I think nothing is more attractively clever or 

 more full of character, both of the place and of the 

 writer, than a chapter called 'A Florentine Mosaic * in 

 ' Tuscan Cities,' a little volume by W. D. Howells, the 

 American. It is published in the 'English Library' 

 series at Leipzig. Half the book is about Florence. It 

 is a perfectly charming mixture of humour and history, 

 bewildered tourist and most cultivated man of letters. 

 It takes one so instantly into the very heart and core of 

 the Middle Ages that one purrs with a delightful feel- 

 ing of 'Oh, certainly ! Yes, I always did know all about 

 it.' Popes and parties, blacks and whites, the ins 

 and outs, etc. Art, which generally forms such a large 



