THKOUGH CONTINENTAL EUKOPE. 
341 
U. S. Consul then at Genoa also president of a 'Western state university, 
was a college classmate of other years and found pleasure in making my stay 
at once happy and profitable. 
From Genoa, by steamer, along the coast of the Mediterranean to Spezia, 
where I took rail for Pisa,—also a rural republic during the middle ages, now 
chiefly interesting for its magnificent cathedral, frescoed by Michael Angelo 
and other great masters, for its leaning tower, which, as a campanile, stands 
near by the cathedral, and as being the principal centre of artistic work in 
alabaster,—and thence up the rich and beautiful valley of the Arno, clothed 
with luxuriant crops of grass and^rain, its fields divided by rows of fruit 
and timber trees connected by graceful festoons of the vine just in blossom, 
and made yet more sensibly foreign by occasional orchards of the fig and by 
more distant olive groves on the slopes of the mountains, to peerless Florence, 
home of the fine arts and present capital of the new kingdom of Italy. 
“ And did you pass Rome ?” you naturally ask. Yes. A short ride from 
Pisa would have brought me to the gates of the Eternal City ; but my mis¬ 
sion was industrial and educational, not of pleasure, and there was nothing 
at Rome, in that line, to call me there. The Tiber, the antiquities of the no 
longer imperial city, its glorious works of art, its matchless St. Peter’s, and 
the Pope, must wait until the next time. 
At Florence an American gentleman finds himself at once among firiend'=’. 
Certainly this was my experience ; for here I was privileged to make the 
acquaintance of half a score of American artists, some of them foremost in 
the world* including Hiram Powers, Hart, Jackson and Meade; gentlemen 
also of high repute in the dental and medical professions; numerous Ameri¬ 
can families sojourning there; our distinguished, able and popular minister 
at the Italian Court, Hon. Geo. P. Marsh; Professor and Senator Matteucci, 
late Minister of Public Instruction for Italy, and one of the most learned, 
able and liberal of Italian statesmen (to whom I am greatly indebted not 
only for much valuable information concerning the educational movements 
in Italy, and for valuable documents, but likewise for many unexpected per¬ 
sonal attentions); and last of all, but by no means least of all, to see the 
great Garibaldi, though on his sick bed at Signa, and to make the acquaint¬ 
ance and enjoy the hospitality of his heroic son. General Menotti Garibaldi. 
The limits of this hurried outline of my tour will not admit of more than a 
bare mention of the score of incidents that tended to make my five days’ stay 
at Florence as delightful to me as it was memorable, nor of my repeated 
visits to the great art galleries, and the studios of our own distinguished 
sculptors, my visits to the respective homes of Gallileo, Dante and Michael 
Angelo, to Casa Guidi, where died the gifted Mrs. Browning, my early 
morning pilgrimage to her grave and that of our own Theodore Parker, nor 
of the memorable circumstances attending my special visit to the neighboring 
town of Signa to look upon the face of the hero of Italian liberty, unity and 
independence. 
Though her political affairs are yet in a serious ferment, owing to the fact 
