"It is an admirable piece of work crowded with keen descriptions of Nature in the Casentino, and of life in the streets of Florence. And every piece of description is so filled with the character of the 'Italian person of quality' who describes them--a petulant, humorous, easily angered, happy, observant, ignorant, poor gentleman--that Browning entirely disappears. The poem retains for us in its verse, and indeed in its light rhythm, the childlikeness, the naivete, the simple pleasures, the ignorance and the honest boredom with the solitudes of Nature--of a whole class of Italians, not only of the time when it was written, but of the present day. It is a delightful, inventive piece of gay and pictorial humor." (Stopford Brooke, _The Poetry of Browning_, p. 322.) 33. _Corn._ In Great Britain the word is generally applied to wheat, rye, oats, and barley, not to maize as in America. 34. _Stinking hemp._ In Chapter I of James Lane Allen's _The Reign of Law_ is the following passage on the odor of the hemp-field: "And now borne far through the steaming air floats an odor, balsamic, startling: the odor of those plumes and stalks and blossoms from which is exuding freely the narcotic resin of the great nettle." When the long swaths of cut hemp lies across the field, the smell is represented as strongest, "impregnating the clothing of the men, spreading far throughout the air." To many this odor is essentially unpleasant. 42. _Pulcinello-trumpet._ Pulcinello was originally the clown in the Neapolitan comedy. Later he became the Punch in Punch and Judy shows. The trumpet announces that one of these puppet plays is to be given in the public square. 43. _Scene-picture._ A picture advertising the new play. 44. _Liberal thieves._ Members of the liberal party, the party striving for Italian independence. The Person of Quality is, of course, of the aristocratic party. 47. _A sonnet._ Laudatory poetical tributes with ornamental borders were posted in public places as a method of doing homage. In this case the unknown "Reverend Don So-and-so" is ranked by his admirer with Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, the greatest Italian poets; with St. Jerome, one of the most celebrated Fathers of the Latin Church; with Cicero, one of the greatest of Roman orators; and with St. Paul, the greatest of Christian preachers. 51. _Our Lady._ The seven swords represent symbolically the seven sorrows of the Virgin Mary, but this Person of Quality regards the gilt swords and the smart pink gowns merely as gay decorations. Religious processions of the sort described here and in lines 60-64 are frequent in European countries. 55. _It's dear._ According to the system of taxation in Italy, town dues must be paid on all provisions brought into the city. 60. _Yellow candles._ Used at funerals and in penitential processions in the Roman Church. A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S