Determined to feast our fill of fine art, we also visited the Academy of Fine Arts—an interesting collection of beautiful pictures, ancient and modern, forming in itself one of the great attractions of Florence, to say nothing of the interesting antiquities of the Egyptian Museum, the literary curiosities of the Laurentian Library, or the wonders of the great Museum of Natural History.
Of course we wandered through the streets of Florence, visited Doney's celebrated café in a broad street, which at five in the afternoon is nearly shielded from the sun by the shade from the tall buildings; and then it is that the young men, the young bloods of the city, begin to come down to the cafés for their daily lounge, and ladies and gentlemen to eat the luxurious ices and delicious confectionery, and watch the strollers. Out-of-door life becomes quite brisk at from five to six, and everybody seems riding and walking, and they keep up the latter, as we found, till a late hour of the night; for the windows of the room of our hotel, looking upon one of the great streets, gave us the full benefit of that unceasing clatter of feet, that lasts in these places till long after the noise of vehicles has ceased, and the Campanile bells begin to chime the first hours of morning.
We found the Cascine a delightful resort of a pleasant September afternoon. This is a beautifully laid out park along the banks of the River Arno, where a pleasant ramble may be had beneath the deep shade of forest trees and on velvety-green turf. But the chief attraction in the afternoon is the drive along its great carriage roads, to view the numerous equipages of every nationality and description that frequent them. It is really an interesting study to view the solid old establishments of English residents, with driver and footmen, the young English bloods driving those heavily-timbered vehicles of theirs, which they seem to have invented for the purpose of taking their valets out to ride, and showing the neatness of their livery, the length of their whips, and the points of the horse attached to the clumsy gundalow. Then there were beautiful coroneted barouches, of great taste and elegance, officers in rich uniforms on horseback, and crowds of pedestrians—an ever-shifting, ever-changing scene. To get views of enchanting beauty, pictures in Italian sunshine, ride up the hill, and past the beautiful private residences, till you reach Fiesole Fortress, a thousand feet above Florence, where you may look down upon its roofs and spires, the surrounding country, the luxuriant gardens of the private villas upon the hill-side, the winding Arno, and the peaks of the Apennines in the distance.
The grounds of private residences and villas just out of Florence were invisible from the road, by reason of the high walls which surround them; and it is only after we really leave the city behind that we get fair eye-sweep of these delightful places, which add so much to the attractiveness of the outskirts. We chanced to be in Florence in the grape season, and the heaps of this luxurious fruit that were piled up in the market-places were pleasant to look upon—Muscats, sweetwaters, black Hamburgs—great, luscious bunches! Half a dozen cents would buy a lapful of them. Then there were peaches, piles of figs and pomegranates, and other fruits. The Italian flower girls, whom we have read of so often, and seen so romantically represented in pictures, are, in reality, bold, hard-featured women, with nothing picturesque or pretty about them, persistent in their importunities, and often with gaunt want written in their features. They are most numerous on the Cascine, when the band plays, offering their bouquets at the carriage windows and to passers by.
But we must leave Florence and its attractions, not, however, without a kind hand-grasp with Hiram Powers, the American sculptor, who, although he has lived in Italy thirty years, is as loyal and true an American as one new come to Florence. His beautiful statues of California, Faith, Hope, Charity, the Greek Slave, &c., in various stages of work, from the rough ashler to the perfectly developed figure, and all the departments of the sculptor's work-shop, were shown to us by the great artist in working cap and apron, for he delights to meet his fellow-countrymen, though I fear they must make sad inroads upon his time during the travelling season; this, however, may be compensated for, in a degree, by orders received for copies of his works from visitors. The beautiful busts of the Faith, Hope, and Charity figures are popular with those who wish to preserve a specimen of the great sculptor's work, and can afford one hundred guineas to gratify their taste in that direction.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
One of the earliest pictures of scenes in foreign lands that I remember to have looked upon, was the Leaning Tower at Pisa; this and the renowned Porcelain Tower at Pekin always came in for a good share of wonder and speculation; the latter, when a boy, I firmly believed to be built of precisely similar material as that of the tea set of a certain aunt in the country, which she only paraded on state occasions, and which being thin, delicate, and translucent, no piece was intrusted to my juvenile fingers, which were only permitted to embrace a china mug that appeared amazingly cheap in comparison.
That old picture, in the geography of the Leaning Tower, which awakened a desire to see it never to be extinguished, is like dozens of other similar wood-cuts, which make an indelible impression upon the mind of youth, and you feel, when gazing upon the reality for the first time, like greeting an old acquaintance; or rather the impression is like the first personal introduction to a correspondent whom you have known many years only by letter.