From Leghorn to Florence is sixty-three miles, or, in the Italian style, eight posts, for each of which, with a pair of horses, you pay four shillings, and the driver is entitled to a fifth, which custom has increased to eighteen pence. The Italian miles being near a fourth shorter than the English, you generally go a post in an hour and a few minutes; but this depends very much upon what you give the postilions, who always take care to enquire from those they relieve. The road is good and level, and remarkably pleasant, the whole of it being in the populous and fertile vale of Arno, and almost constantly close to the river. In the barbarous ages, after the subversion of the Roman empire, Tuscany underwent many revolutions, and remained in a state of subjection till the time of the Guelphs and Gibbelines, when the feuds of those factions, and the contests between the Pope and the Emperor, enabled the Tuscans to shake off the yoke. They were again subdued by Charles V. who, having married his natural daughter to Alexander of Medicis, he gave him the Dukedom of Tuscany: but Alexander, being a tyrant, was soon assassinated, and Cosmo, son of John of Medicis set up in his place, and formally crowned Grand Duke of Tuscany by Pope Pius V.--A. D. 1570. It is to this immortal Prince that we are indebted for the revival of the fine arts, and for the foundation of the Gallery of Florence, which each of his descendants increased and improved. The dukedom remained in their line for the space of near two centuries, when the Medicis being extinct by Duke Gaston dying without issue, it revolved to the Emperor, and is now governed by his brother. The arts and sciences suffered no loss from this change. Peter Leopold is their most distinguished patron; and the Gallery is as much indebted to him as to the most elegant of his predecessors. Formerly, people of humble fortunes were secluded from the view of these treasures, by the extortion of the attendants; but their salaries have been lately increased, and they are prohibited from accepting presents, on pain of losing their places. The poorest peasant has now a right to amuse himself at his leisure in every part of the Gallery, and admittance is refused to nobody but servants. It affords matter of surprise to an Englishman, that valets de chambres, and footmen, who have so much influence every where else, are here excluded from places that are open to the lowest of every other tribe.