The young conscripts, however, become rapidly imbued with the professional pride of their older comrades; and it often happens that lads, who have parted from their home in tears, astonish their quiet parents a few weeks after with letters full of enthusiasm for the Italian army. Enthusiasm on any subject is a rare virtue in Tuscany; and if a military life for six years could infuse into the rising generation some energy and some habits of discipline, the army would prove a more important means of education than all the new schools which are to be introduced. But how is it that throughout this perambulation of the town of Florence we have not come across a single sign of that touching affection for the late Grand-duke which has been so vividly and so often described in England? The truth is, that although there is a good deal of discontent with the present Government, there is no regret for the last. Of all the weak sentiments which exist in Tuscan breasts, loyalty towards the late Grand-duke is certainly the very weakest. In order, however, that the reader may catch a glimpse of the “Codini” (or “party of the tail,” as the following of the late Grand-duke are called) before they are all numbered among the antiquities of Italy, it will be advisable to take one turn on the banks of the Arno in the “Cascine,” the fashionable walk, or “the world,” of the Florentines. It is sunset, and the evening chill is making itself felt—in fact, to lay aside all romance about the Italian climate, it is very cold. The upper five hundred come out at dew-fall, when everybody else goes in, apparently for no better reason than because everybody else does go in. There are Russians driving in handsome droschkes, and Americans in livery-stable barouches of an unwieldy magnificence. But our business is not with these; the native gentility of Florence is just arriving—ladies in closely-shut broughams, and young gentlemen, some in open carriages, half dog-carts half phaetons; others, less fortunate, in open fiacres. They drive down to the end of the Cascine, where old beggar women attend upon them with “scaldine” to warm their fingers over. There men and women alight and promenade at a foot’s pace, despite the cold, after which they all drive home again.