Alone as I was in Florence, cultivating only the acquaintance of Italians, yet was I never troubled with _ennui_. I read much at Vieussieux's, and when I grew tired of that and of music, I made long sables on the Lung Arno to the Cascine, through the charming Boboli gardens, or out to Fiesole. Fiesole is some two miles from Florence, and once on my way there I stopped at the Protestant burying-ground and pilfered a little wildflower from Theodore Parker's grave to send home to one of his romantic admirers. Fiesole must be a very ancient town, for there is a ruined amphitheatre there, and the remains of walls so old that they are called Pelasgic in their origin; which is, I take it, sufficiently vague. The high hill is composed of the most solid marble; so the guidebooks say, at least. This is five hundred and seventy-five feet above the sea, and on its summit stands the cathedral, very old indeed, and built in the form of a basilica, like that of San Miniato. From this hill you look down upon the plain beneath, with the Arno winding through it, and upon Florence and the Apennine chain, above which rise the high mountains of Carrara. Here, on the highest available point of the rock, I used to sit reading, and looking upon the panorama beneath, until the sinking sun warned me that I had only time to reach the city before its setting. I used to love to look also at works of art in this way, for by so doing I fixed them in my mind for future reference. I never passed the Piazza della Signoria without standing some minutes before the Loggia dei Lanzi and the old ducal palace with its marvelous tower. Before this palace, exposed to the weather for three hundred and fifty years, stands Michael Angelo's David; to the left, the fountain on the spot where Savonarola was burnt alive by the order of Alexander VI.; and immediately facing this is the post-office. I never could pass the post-office without thinking of the poet Shelley, who was there brutally felled to the earth by an Englishman, who accused him of being an infidel, struck his blow and escaped.