Indeed, the press is so outspoken, and is allowed such latitude, that it is difficult to understand for what purpose the Government maintains a censorship. Nevertheless, such is the case. It is not a very effective one. Every paper is bound to be laid before the Reggio procurator twenty-four hours before it is published; but that official is so little able to peruse them all within the specified time, that it has frequently happened that a paper has been sequestrated when it was a day old, and had been already read and forgotten. The right of sequestration, however, has been used pretty freely. The ‘Censor’ was sequestrated more than sixty times in the course of last year, and the ‘New Europe’ has been treated even more severely: on one occasion it was sequestrated for three days running. It is, however, high time to turn from the ideal to the material world; that is, to leave the tobacconist and his newspapers, and dive into the recesses of some very dirty and narrow little lanes where the market is being held, in order to see whether the prices given and the business done prove any decline in the prosperity of Florence since the days of the Grand-duke. Passing by the mountains of vegetables piled up ornamentally against the huge stones of the Strozzi Palace, the reader must pick his way carefully amidst the accumulated masses of cabbage-stalks, children, and other dirt beneath, avoiding at the same time the carcasses that hang out from the butchers’ stalls on either side, from poles projecting far into the passage, and stooping every now and then to avoid the festoons of sausages which hang down from above, garland-fashion, just low enough to come in contact with the nose of an average-sized mortal. If by strictly observing the above precautions he can make his way despite all these obstacles, he will on turning the next corner arrive safely in front of an old woman and a boy presiding over sundry emblems of purgatory in the shape of huge frying-pans fixed over charcoal fires. The boy is ladling a mass of tiny dainties out of a seething black liquid, which have an appearance as of whitebait being fished out of the Thames. It is, however, only an appearance; for these are nothing more than small cakes of chestnut-flour, by name “sommomoli,” fried in oil, from which they emerge copper-coloured, sweet, nourishing, and tasteless, costing half a centesimo, or the twentieth part of a penny, a-piece. The old woman is in person superintending a still larger frying-pan, in which are frizzling square cut cakes, resembling Yorkshire pudding, sometimes interspersed with small slices of meat. These, by name “ignochchi,” consist of nothing less than Indian corn savoured with hogs-lard. A penny (ten centesimi) will purchase ten of them—a larger quantity than most English, or any Italian stomach would find it convenient to dispose of at one sitting. A step farther on slices will be offered to the passer-by off a huge flat cake the colour