Florence and Pisa lost it seems among them from 200,000 to 300,000 souls! and this in a few months. Poor Siena has now hindrances of her own: not only has her riding-school been knocked on the head, - a measure which I was gravely assured had endangered the peace of the Tuscan States,- -but what is a far more serious matter, her criminal Court is reinoved to Florence. One awkward result of this is, that if one man stabs another in a street-brawl, every soul decamps for fear of being summoned fifty miles to the capital to give evidence, a trouble which no Italian would encounter on any consideration. This has twice occurred no very long time ago. In one instance the wounded man ran a mile, his blood marking the track, before he could get surgical aid, it being late in the evening. The abolishment in Tuscany of the punishment of death is supposed to have greatly diminished the number of cases of this sort: may it not rather have operated to keep back evidence? for an informer dreads the vengeance of the surviving culprit, whereas "dead men do not bite."

The favourite resort of the beau-monde here is a small green, or rather brown plot called the "Lizza:" hither come the carriages to drive round

the diminutive enclosure-hither also come the townspeople with the bonnes and children to tread the turf and loiter under the stunted trees. After the Cascine of Florence it looks like a doll's garden; still the scene is always cheerful, recalling ideas of home. A few yards further are the Fortezza and battlements, with a purple view at sunset of the country towards the Maremma.

We have had a hailstorm here of a kind seldom seen in England. The moment the black cloud appeared in front of our hall, we ran to close the outer shutters, but were too late by a few seconds to save our glass. Pieces of ice of the size of walnuts dashed through some fifty panes in a twinkling: one lump I picked up was as big as a hen's egg. This frozen artillery kept up a discharge of nearly five minutes' duration. In the evening we found the storm had driven in a multitude of mosquitoes from the vines. These creatures tease us here whenever the gauze-net is out of order: if it has a brack as large as your finger-nail you are sure to be woke in the dead of the night by a noise like that of fairy kettle-drums and fifes, with a sensation of poisonous heat on your face and hands. The bites are worse on the third day, and sometimes do not

disappear for a week: there is no remedy but cold water and a little vinegar, and this acts but feebly. The mosquito is just our English gnat, only blacker and humped at the shoulder: he is the only insect I care a straw about in Italy.

This city has one noble structure, the Duomo, a vast pile in the Italo-gothic style, so that you find round and pointed arches intermixed with many other eccentricities. It is unfinished, and must ever remain so now; had it been completed on the original plan it would have been by much the largest building I ever saw, as there is evidence on the spot that all which is now extant formed only an aisle in the architect's design. The façade, however, is finished, a rare thing in Italy, and very beautiful it is. Here are grotesque animals, sculp tured to represent the different cities of the League; Orvieto's goose, Pisa's hare, Perugia's stork, and many others which I don't at this moment remember. The she-wolf is for Siena, and an elephant and castle, I think, for Rome.

The figures of the two angels bending before the name of Jesus over the portal are very noble: and the idea is one of those ocular preachings which meet you at almost every step in Italy.

Indeed it is the Church emblems and pictures which mainly educate the people, who for the most part can neither read nor write. The interior of a Roman Catholic Church is an illustrated catechism, sometimes mingled with fable, but never suppressing fact.

It appears to me that a Roman Catholic as he is has one immense advantage over a Protestant as he is; supposing them both to be "good men and true," and determined not to go through the mockery of what is called in Ireland "a Conversion either way. It is this: the Catholic's Church is always open, his priest always at hand: go where you will, matins and vespers are thronged, in some one or more of the parish-churches. No one can estimate the effect of this till he visits a Catholic country and resides awhile. It ensures seasons of rest; it keeps alive the feeling of mercy; it yields time for reflection, and oftentimes opens a door to repentance, and crushes the wicked deed in the bud of the wicked thought. The feverish crowded struggle of a headlong world is abated from hour to hour; the counter and the bank do not become an imperious Moloch, absorbing the being of man and devouring his energies; but each and all, as they

bow the knee or drop the curtsey, and retire with the simple sign of the Cross, carry away with them the remembrance that they have a nobler part, and a higher calling than the thing we term "self" and the "fashion which passeth away."

An Englishman may object to so many pictures; he will think many of the rites overdone and burdensome on both ministers and people; he may even misdoubt some among the ordained priests; if he cherishes a kindly heart, he will meet with much to make him sad; but he can never for a moment doubt that he is walking in a Christian land, among a baptized people, who, however crushed by burdens, or " travestied" in human in. ventions, do nevertheless develope all the prominent features of the faith in Christ.

I remember in Florence seeing the artisans in the streets lift their caps when the " mezzo-giorno bell sounds; this is to thank God for his blessings in creation at the moment when the sun culminates on the meridian. On the Rhine or the Moselle the boatman rests on his oars, and the passengers bow the head and cross themselves as they hear the Ave Maria bell. In Britain, the opposite to all this obtains. Through a dread of conforming to Rome