This beautiful city is surrounded by lofty hills, covered with vineyards, olive groves, gardens, country seats and palaces. Everything around it is beautiful: the landscape is fresh, verdant and smiling; the buildings are neat and picturesque, and all looks thriving and comfortable. “Florence the fair” deserves her title. From the summit of one of the surrounding hills, you look down upon the white walls of the city, crowned with domes and towers, and trace the windings of the Arno into the rich green valley below. The interior does not disappoint these favorable impressions. The houses are all well built, and the streets neatly paved with flat stones, as smooth as a floor. This feature is characteristic of all the old Etruscan cities. Fellows with little donkey carts, brooms and shovels, are constantly going up and down the streets, picking up every particle of dust, so that the streets are kept perfectly clean. The smooth pavements make it impossible for horses to run fast over them, but so much the better for foot-passengers. Florence is full of old palaces, with immense thick walls, and heavy, massive architecture. They are, in fact, so many castles, and were built in turbulent times, when the city was disturbed by civil wars and factions, and the nobles intrenched themselves in their castles. The eaves of the houses project six or eight feet; and during showers you have little need of an umbrella, as the water shoots from the roofs into the middle of the street. All the buildings are of stone: a brick is never seen, except occasionally for a hearth, or in the tiling of a floor. The fine buildings are for the most part of _macigno_, a stone much like Quincy granite in color, but not so hard. The common houses are of rough stone, stuccoed and painted. The Duomo or cathedral, is cased with panels of black and white marble. It is a stupendous and imposing edifice, but, though begun five or six hundred years ago, it is not yet finished. The front, which was designed to be the most splendid part of the edifice, is a mere plastered wall, because the builders could not decide upon anything rich enough at first, and so left it to their posterity to finish.