till Mr. Merry's sweet ode to summer here at Florence made one less discontented,
To hear the light cicala's ceaseless din,
That vibrates shrill; or the near-weeping brook
That feebly winds along,
And mourns his channel shrunk.
Merry.
This animal has four wings, four eyes, and two membranes like parchment under the hard scales he is covered with; and these, it is said, create the uncommon noise he makes, by blowing them somewhat like bellows, to sharpen the sound; which, whatever it proceeds from, is louder than can be guessed at by those who have not heard it in Tuscany. He is of the locust kind, an inch and
a half long, and wonderfully light in proportion; though no small feeder, I should imagine, by the total destruction his noisy tribe make amongst the leaves, which are now wholly stript by them of all their verdure, the fibres only being left; and I observed yesterday evening, as we returned from airing, another strange deprivation practised on the mulberry leaves round the city, which being all forcibly torn away for the use of the silk-worms, make an odd fort of artificial winter near the town walls; and remind one of the wretched geese in Lincolnshire, plucked once a year for their feathers by their truly unfeeling proprietors. I am told indeed, that both revegetate, though I trust neither tree nor bird can fail to experience fatal effects one day or other in consequence of so unnatural an operation. Here is some ivy of uncommon growth, but I have seen larger both at Beaumaris castle in North Wales, and at the abbey of Glastonbury in Somersetshire: but the great pines in the Caseine woods have, I suppose, no rival nearer than the Castagno a Cento Cavalli, mentioned by Mr. Brydone. They afford little shade or shelter from heat however, as their umbrella-like
covering is strangely small in proportion to their height and size; some of them being ten, and some twelve feet in diameter. These venerable, these glorious productions of nature are all now marked for destruction however; all going to be put in wicker baskets, and feed the Grand Duke's fires. I saw a fellow hewing one down to-day, and the rest are all to follow;—the feeble Florentines had much ado to master it;
Seemed the harmful hatchet to fear,
And to wound holy Eld would forbear,
as Spenser says: I did half hope they could not get it down; but the loyal Tuscans (evermore awed by the name principe) told us it was right to get rid of them, as one of the cones, of which they bore vast quantities, might chance to drop upon the head of a Principettino, or little Prince, as he passed along.
I was observing that restraint was necessary to man; I have now learned a notion that noise is necessary too. The clatter made here in the Piazza del Duomo, where you sit in your carriage at a coffee-house door, and chat with your friends according to Italian
custom, while one eats ice, and another calls for lemonade, to while away the time after dinner, the noise made then and there, I say, is beyond endurance.