from the privations of Lent, were fresh in their festivity. I sat down on the brow of the hill, and measured with my enraptured eye half the Val d'Arno. Palaces, villas, convents, towns, and farms, were seated on the hills, or diffused through the vale, in the very points and combinations where a Claude would have placed them:”— Monti superbi, la cui fronte Alpina Fa di se contro i venti argine e sponda! L'Arno con passo signoril cammina! The splendour of an Italian sunset has been remarked upon by many travellers; and Mathews has given us the following vivid description of one which he witnessed from the top of Fesolé. “The sun had just gone down, leaving the whole sky dyed with the richest tints of crimson -while the virgin snows of the distant mountains were suffused with blushes of celestial rosy red;' when, from an opposite quarter of the heavens, there seemed to rise another sun, as large, as bright, and as glowing as that which had just departed. It was the moon at full: and so complete was the illusion, that it required a few moments to convince me that I was not in Fairy Land. "An evening, or night, in an Italian villa, at this season of nightingales and moonlight (the month of May) is a most delicious treat*. How could Shakspeare write * According to Sismondi, an evening in autumn is scarcely less attractive. C'est dans une soirée d'automne, lorsque les lumières qui as he has done without having been in Italy? Some of his garden scenes breathe the very life of reality. And yet if he had been here, he would hardly have omitted all allusion to the fire-fly, a little flitting insect that adds greatly to the charm of the scene, and is sprinkled about with as much profusion as spangles on a lady's gown:" An insect that, when evening comes, Small tho' he be, and scarce distinguishable, Like Evening clad in soberest livery, Unsheaths his wings*, and thro' the woods and glades Soaring, descending from dusk till dawn -ROGERS. These lucciole, as the Italians call them, are in greatest abundance in the month of June. Their flitting motion, and the momentary light which they emit and conceal by turns, almost dazzle the eye. nated with myriads of them; and the valleys, to use the strong expression of Sismondi, "look like so many lakes The hills are illumi brillent de toutes parts, décèlent les maisons modestes des cultivateurs, cachées sous des treilles, ou des groupes d'arbres fruitiers et d'oliviers; lorsque des flambeaux de paille errans sur tous les sentiers, font rémarquer les paysans qui vont gaîment se réunir chez leur voisins, et passer les veillées ensemble, lorsque les croupes arrondies des montagnes, que les oliviers semblent velouter, se dessinent dans le ciel le plus pur, que le spectacle des collines rappelle les idées les plus romanesques.-Agriculture Toscane. * The fire-fly is of the beetle tribe. of fire." Indeed, the whole country seems as if it were covered with electric sparks*. * From the following lines, taken from a short poem in Heber's Indian Journals, intitled "An Evening Walk in Bengal," these insects appear to be equally abundant in the eastern hemisphere:Yet mark! as fade the upper skies, Each thicket opes ten thousand eyes. Before, beside us, and above, The fire-fly lights his lamp of love, Retreating, chasing, sinking, soaring, The darkness of the copse exploring. SIENA. Empty lodgings and unfurnished walls, Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones.-SHAKSPEARE. THE road from Florence to Siena is hilly and tedious. The views between the former place and Poggibonsi are agreeably diversified, but they are hardly fine enough to account for the fame of Tuscan scenery. The vales and lower declivities of the hills are covered with cornfields and vineyards; the upper slopes, with olive-groves. But this country, abounding with corn, wine, and oil, may be said to be pretty rather than picturesque. If the orange-tree is thought to be too round and formal in its appearance to constitute a picturesque object, what shall we say of the olive, the mulberry, the poplar, and the elm?-the first of these being, from the paleness and scantiness of its foliage, scarcely more beautiful than the common willow; and the others, to which the vine is here invariably married, being on that account pruned after the fashion of an English filbert. Such, however-with the exception of a few cypresses scattered here and there are the only trees that cover the somewhat arid hills of this part of Tuscany; for here the Englishman will look in vain for the thick-matted herbage, and umbrageous masses of wood, that distinguish the landscapes of Britain. Between Poggibonsi and Siena, the country wears a less pleasing aspect, but it does not degenerate into down right deformity: in fact, the scenery between Florence and Poggibonsi seems to have been too much eulogized; between Poggibonsi and Siena, to have been too unsparingly condemned. Siena, which once reckoned a hundred-and-fifty thousand inhabitants, now scarcely contains an eighth of the number. It stands on the summit of a bleak hill. On entering by the Florentine gate, you pass through a long irregular street, which nearly bisects this depopulated town; but you must strike off among the less frequented streets, before you meet with the objects of principal interest the Lizza, the Citadel, the Cathedral, and the Piazza del Campo. It is only here that you meet with tiles laid in that fish-bone manner, supposed to be the 66 spicata testacea❞ of Pliny. In the "master-line," and some others of the principal streets, the pavement, though formed of smaller stones, may compare with that of Flo rence. The term palace is everywhere prostituted in Italy, but nowhere more so than at Siena, where every gentleman's house—though few of them include courts, the distinctive feature of a palace-is dignified with that high-sounding name. Some of these old mansions are in a mixed, demi-gothic style-a style which characterizes all the public works of their two most distinguished architects, Agostino and Agnolo. The Piazza del Campo is sloped, like an ancient theatre, for public games; and, like that, forms the segment of a circle, in the chord of which stands the Palazzo Pubblico a work of different dates and designs, and |