As the day begins to decline, the number of carriages in the streets, filled with gaily drest people attended by servants in livery, increases. The Grand Duke's equipage, an elegant carriage drawn by six horses, with coachmen, footmen, and outriders in drab-colored livery, comes from the Pitti Palace, and crosses the Arno, either by the bridge close to my lodgings, or by that called Alla Santa Trinita, which is in full sight from the windows. The Florentine nobility, with their families, and the English residents now throng to the Cascine, to drive at a slow pace through its thickly planted walks of elms, oaks and ilexes. As the sun is sinking I perceive the quay on the other side of the Arno filled with a moving crowd of well-drest people walking to and fro and enjoying the beauty of the evening. Travelers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashes, in the shabby vettura, and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postilions in the tightest possible deerskin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the crackling of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postilions, couriers, and travelers. Night at length arrives--the time of spectacles and funerals. The carriages rattle toward the opera-houses. Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin, pass through the streets chanting the service for the dead. The Brethren of Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. The rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their eyes through their masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of supernatural appearance. I return to bed and fall asleep amidst the shouts of people returning from the opera, singing as they go snatches of the music with which they had been entertained during the evening. WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT Born in Salem, Mass., in 1796; died in Boston in 1859; studied at Harvard, where, through an accident to his eyes, he became nearly blind; devoted himself to the study of Spanish history, employing a reader and using a specially constructed writing apparatus; published his "Ferdinand and Isabella" in 1838; "Conquest of Mexico" in 1843, "Conquest of Peru" in 1847, and "Philip II" in 1855-58. I THE FATE OF EGMONT AND HOORNE[67] On the second of June, 1568, a body of three thousand men was ordered to Ghent to escort the Counts Egmont and Hoorne to Brussels. No resistance was offered, altho the presence of the Spaniards caused a great sensation among the inhabitants of the place, who too well foreboded the fate of their beloved lord. [Footnote 67: From Book III, Chapter V, of the "History of the Reign of Philip II, King of Spain."]