Quite indescribably strange is the effect on my mind of looking back at my three Thespian avatars--Falstaff at Cincinnati, Acres and Sir Anthony in Grand Ducal Florence, and Sir Anthony again in a liberated Tuscany! I seem to myself like some old mail-coach guard, who goes through the whole long journey, while successive coachmen "Leave you here, sir!" But then in my case the passengers are all changed too; and I arrive at the end of the journey without one "inside" or "outside" of those who started with me! I can still blow my horn cheerily, however, and chat with the passengers, who joined the coach when my journey was half done, as if they were quite old fellow travellers! It must not be imagined, however, that that pleasant life at Florence was all cakes and ale. I was upon the whole a hard worker. I wrote a series of volumes on various portions of Italian, and especially Florentine, history, beginning with _The Girlhood of Catherine de Medici_. They were all fairly well received, the _Life of Filippo Strozzi_ perhaps the most so. But the volume on the story of the great quarrel between the Papacy and Venice, entitled _Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar_, was, I think, the best. The volumes entitled _A Decade of Italian Women_, and dealing with ten typical historic female figures, has attained, I believe, to some share of public favour. I see it not unfrequently quoted by writers on Italian subjects. Then I made a more ambitious attempt, and produced a _History of the Commonwealth of Florence_, in four volumes. Such a work appeals, of course, to a comparatively limited audience. But that it was recognised to have some value among certain Anglo-Saxons whose favourable judgment in the matter was worth having, may be gathered from the fact that it has been a text-book in our own and in transatlantic universities; while a verdict perhaps still more flattering (though I will not say more gratifying) was given by Professor Pasquale Villari (now senator of the kingdom of Italy), who, in a letter in my possession, pronounces my history of Florence to be in his opinion the best work on the subject extant.