Early the next morning we were on our way, and wound down into the narrow pass between the lake and the hill, as the sun rose. We crossed the _Sanguinetto_, a little stream which took its name from the battle. The principal slaughter was just on its banks, and the hills are so steep above it, that everybody who fell near must have rolled into its bed. It crawls on very quietly across the road, its clear stream scarce interrupted by the wheels of the vetturino, which in crossing it, passes from the Roman states into Tuscany. I ran a little up the stream, knelt and drank at a small gurgling fall. The blood of the old Flaminian Cohort spoiled very delicious water, when it mingled with that brook. We were six days and a half accomplishing the hundred and eighty miles from Rome to Florence--slow travelling--but not too slow in Italy, where every stone has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's eye could not imagine them. We looked down on the Eden-like valley of the Arno at sunrise, and again my heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence, and the hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces and bright in a sun that shines nowhere so kindly. If there is a spot in the world that could wean one from his native home, it is Florence! "Florence the fair," they call her! I have passed four of the seven months I have been in Italy, here--and I think I shall pass here as great a proportion of the rest of my life. There is nothing that can contribute to comfort and pleasure, that is not within the reach of the smallest means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth made less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in the world, are open to all comers. The palace of the monarch may be entered and visited, and enjoyed by all. The ducal gardens of the Boboli, rich in everything that can refine nature, and commanding views that no land can equal, cooled by fountains, haunted in every grove by statuary, are the property of the stranger and the citizen alike. Museums, laboratories, libraries, grounds, palaces, are all free as Utopia. You may take any pleasure that others can command, and have any means of instruction, as free as the common air. Where else would one live so pleasantly--so profitably--so wisely.