Almost every day some of us made an incursion into Florence. The town itself seemed to me more agreeable than Rome; but the Boboli Gardens could not rival the Borghese, and the Pitti and Uffizi galleries were not so captivating as the Vatican and the Capitol. However, the Cascine and the Lung' Arno were delightful, and the Arno, shallow and placid, flowing through the midst of the city, was a fairer object than the muddy and turbulent Tiber. Men and boys bathed along the banks in the afternoons and evenings; and the Ponte Vecchio, crowded with grotesque little houses, was a favorite promenade of mine. There was also a large marketplace, where the peasant women sold the produce of their farms. My insatiable appetite for such things prompted me often to go thither and eat everything I had money to buy. One day I consumed so many fresh tomatoes that I had a giddiness in the back of my head, and ate no more tomatoes for some years. But the place I best liked was the great open square of the Palazzo Vecchio, with the statues of David and of Perseus under the Loggia dei Lanzi, a retreat from sun and rain; and the Duomo and Giotto's Campanile, hard by. The pavements of Florence, smooth as the surface of stone canals, were most soothing and comfortable after the relentless, sharp cobble-stones of Rome; the low houses that bordered them seemed to slumber in the hot, still sunshine. What a sunshine was that! Not fierce and feverish, as in the tropics, but soft and intense and white. Who would not live in Florence if he could? I think my father would have settled there but for his children, to whom he wished to give an American education. The thought was often in his mind; and he perhaps cherished some hope of returning thither later in life, and letting old age steal gently upon him and his wife in the delicious city. But the Celestial City was nearer to him than he suspected.