Our present scene is laid at Mr. Trover's villa near Florence. It stands on the sunny slope of Fiezole, and with a lovely landscape of the Val d' Arno at its feet. O ye gentles, who love to live at ease, to inhale an air odorous with the jasmine and the orange-flower,--to gaze on scenes more beautiful than Claude ever painted,--to enjoy days of cloudless brightness, and nights gorgeous in starry brilliancy, why do ye not all come and live at Fiezole? Mr. Trover's villa is now to let, though this announcement is not inserted as an advertisement. There was a rumor that it was once Boccaccio's villa. Be that as it may, it was a pretty, coquettish little place, with a long terrace in front, under which ran an orangery, a sweet, cool, shady retreat in the hot noon-time, with a gushing little fountain always rippling and hissing among rock-work. The garden sloped away steeply. It was a sort of wilderness of flowers and fruit-trees, little cared for or tended, but beautiful in the wild luxuriance of its varied foliage, and almost oppressive in its wealth of perfume. Looking over this garden, and beyond it again, catching the distant domes of Florence, the tall tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the massive block of the Pitti, was a small but well-proportioned room whose frescos were carried from wall to ceiling by a gentle arch of the building, in which were now seated three gentlemen over their dessert. Mr. Trover's guests were our acquaintances Stocmar and Ludlow Paten. The banker and the “Impresario” were very old friends; they had done “no end of shrewd things” together. Paten was a new acquaintance. Introduced however by Stocmar, he was at once admitted to all the intimacy of his host, and they sat there, in the free indulgence of confidence, discussing people, characters, events, and probabilities, as three such men, long case-hardened with the world's trials, well versed in its wiles, may be supposed to do. Beneath the great broad surface of this life of ours, with its apparent impulses and motives, there is another stratum of hard stern realities, in which selfish motives and interested actions have their sphere. These gentlemen lived entirely in this layer, and never condescended to allude to what went on elsewhere. If they took a very disparaging view of life, it was not so much the admiration they bestowed on knavery as the hearty contempt they entertained for whatever was generous or trustful. Oh, how they did laugh at the poor “muffs” who believed in anything or any one! To listen to them was to declare that there was not a good trait in the heart, nor an honest sentiment which had not its origin in folly. And the stupid dog who paid his father's debts, and the idiot that beggared himself to portion his sisters, and the wretched creature who was ruined by giving security for his friend, all figured in a category despised and ridiculed!