The curious festival of the Car of Fire observed on Easter Eve every year at Florence carries us back to a remote period when fire was a sacred and mysterious thing. As is well known, in the Eastern Church, also in the Roman Catholic Church, all fires are extinguished before Easter; and in the Cathedral, the Bishop, on Easter morning, strikes new fire, blesses it, and all the hearths in the city receive the new fire from this blessed spark. It is vulgarly supposed that the old fire has got worn out, and has lost its full vigour by use throughout the year, and that the new fire is full of restless and youthful energy. There can be little doubt that this idea goes back to a remote and Pagan time, and the Church accepted what was a common custom, and gave it, or tried to give it, a new and Christian idea, connecting it with the resurrection of Him who is the Light of the World. The same custom of striking and blessing new fire exists in many parts of the West as well as the East, and is sanctioned by the Roman Church. But nowhere does this ancient usage assume so quaint and picturesque a form as at Florence. There, however, the primitive significance is completely forgotten, and the people have endeavoured to explain the ceremony which I will now describe in various mutually contradictory ways. On Easter Eve, four magnificent white oxen, their huge horns wreathed with flowers, and with garlands about them, as though they were being conveyed to sacrifice, draw a huge car, painted black, some twenty-five feet high, pyramidal in shape, and crowned with a mural coronet, into the piazza before the west doors of the white marble cathedral. The car is itself wreathed with flowers to its highest pinnacle, and with the flowers various fireworks are interspersed. As soon as this great trophy is in place, and the oxen unyoked, the west doors of the cathedral are thrown open, and a rope is strained from the top of the car to a pillar that is erected in front of the high altar, a distance of some two hundred yards. On this cord is seen perched a white dove, composed of some white substance, probably plaster. For two hours before the event of the day takes place the great piazza and the nave of the vast cathedral are crowded. Villagers from all the country round have arrived; but there are also present plenty of townsfolk, and strangers from foreign lands. At half-past eleven, the archbishop and all his clergy come in procession down the body of the church, pass out of the west doors, and make the circuit of the cathedral. Before twelve o’clock strikes they are again in their places in the choir. At the stroke of noon the newly-blessed fire is applied to a train of gunpowder at the foot of the pillar. In another moment the pigeon skims down the nave, pouring out a shower of fire, sweeps out of the west door of the cathedral, reaches the trophy in the square, sets fire to a fusee there, then turns and flies back along the rope, still