To inquire, however, more exactly into the thoughts of those amongst the Florentines who do think about politics, it will be as well to obtain at once rest and information by sitting down for a few moments in the tobacconist’s shop, which may be called the centre of the political world. To begin with, the tobacconist is always himself by profession a finished politician, and he, moreover, enjoys the confidence of several distinguished friends, who keep him accurately informed of every word that passes in the Cabinets of Europe. The general burden of his conversation, which is a fair type of the talk at shops and second-rate cafés, is as follows:—The Pope-king is the father of all mischief; and how should it be otherwise? are not priests and kings always the promoters of every evil? and this man is a combination of both. Then follows a complaint against the Emperor Napoleon and his creatures, the Ministers at Turin, who, like true Piedmontese, are in secret jealous of the greatness of Italy, and treacherously keep in pay reactionary employés in lieu of filling the offices, as they should, with enterprising liberals. This sentiment meets with loud and general applause, and the company, waxing warm on this topic, forthwith launch into various prophecies as to the immediate future. French wars, Polish revolutions, Austrian bankruptcies, are all considered, and it is weighed what each might do for Italy. What the Italians themselves might do is a less frequent theme. The Government, however, is blamed for its neglect of Garibaldi, which is only of a piece with its conduct in leaving the active and patriotic liberals of the country without employment while they are pensioning the reactionists—an opinion which usually serves as alpha and omega in the discussions of the Florentine liberals on the conduct of the Government. Having exhausted this topic, our friend the politico-tobacconist resumes his seat, taking his scaldino (an earthenware vessel shaped like a basket, and filled with hot ashes) on his lap for the comfort of his fingers, and proceeds to draw the attention of visitors to various piles of newspapers, the sale of which is part of his trade. And as Florence produces, for a country town, a very respectable number of papers (some dozen daily papers, not to count two tri-weekly papers and other periodicals), which, moreover, have something of a national, or rather of a provincial character, it will be worth while to look over them before leaving the tobacconist’s shop. It is not every paper that will be found: for instance, the three retrograde papers will not be forthcoming. These have so extremely small a circulation that it is very difficult to hunt them up. It is only by favour, for instance, that a copy of the ‘Contemporaneo’ can be got, for, there being no public demand, there is no sale; a limited number of copies only are distributed among subscribers.