Our hotel has a small court, and, I believe, a garden; though I have not had access to the latter. By the side of the great gate is a small hole in the wall, closed in general by a shutter. At eleven o’clock every day, people come to this shutter and rap, and it is opened by a steward of the family. The applicant puts in an empty flask and a paul (ten cents), receiving in return a flask filled with wine. In this manner, I understand, most of the great families of Florence now dispose of the products of their vines! It would be curious to learn if the Medici carried on this trade. The wine of our palace is among the best of Tuscany, and I drink it with great satisfaction; the more so because its cost is about four cents the bottle. It is positively much better wine than half the claret that is drunk in Paris. Twice a week, a donkey appears in the court, dragging a little cart filled with flasks from the estate, and carrying away the “dead soldiers.” We are, however, a little above the market, as our wine commands fully a cent a flask, or about four mills a bottle, more than most of the Tuscan liquor. We burn in our lamps oil that you would be happy to get on your lobsters and salads. In other respects the market is good, and cloths are both fine and cheap, finer and cheaper than I remember to have seen them any where else, and yet they are imported! The shop-keepers are moderate in their wishes, preferring the _dolce far niente_ to the more terrible _energies_ of trade. There is a sleepy indolence in these Italians, that singularly suits my humour. They seem too gentlemanlike to work, or to be fussy, but appear disposed to make a _siesta_ of life, and to enjoy the passing moment. The Tuscans seem full of sentiment, and though the poor, as is the case all over the continent of Europe, are very poor, the class immediately above them have as much satisfaction, I fancy, as they who dream dollars and talk dollars from “the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same.” If you ask me if I would exchange populations and habits, I shall answer, we cannot afford it. It would check our career short of perfect civilisation. We have arts to acquire, and tastes to form, before we could enter at all into the enjoyments of these people; one half of their pleasures depending on recollections that possibly may have had their origin in the _energies_ of the first of the Medici; and there are things that must be created, but which give more satisfaction in after ages than during the period of their formation. For myself, I begin to feel I could be well content to vegetate here for one half my life, to say nothing of the remainder. All who travel know that the greatest pleasure is in the recollections; and I fancy that nations in their decline enjoy more true happiness than nations in their advance.