ters were present at a state dinner given to General Grant by King Humbert. The banquet, a magnificent one, was a distinguishing honor paid to the Ex-President of the United States.

April 20th, we are in Florence, the fairest of the Italian cities, and a favorite residence of Americans. We are surprised, in fact, at the number of our republicans who live in Florence, all of whom vie with one another in welcoming the General. The climate we find delightful. It is early spring, occasionally there is a cold day, and the Arno runs yellow and turbid from rainstorms in the mountains; still there are many hours of delightful sun, and the flowers are beginning to bloom. Florence enchants us all. It has not the austerity of Rome, and perhaps this is more satisfactory to the General; who, being no longer trammeled by ceremony, is enabled to do rather more as he likes. Stately, well-meant courtesies, accompanied by black coats and white neckties, are the penalties of distinction, and the Ex-President being wherever he goes considered as representing the United States, has more receptions inflicted upon him than he perhaps wishes. Nevertheless, the General takes it all in good part, and when a little relaxation comes, and official visiting is dismissed for the day or the hour, he is the life of the party.

We arrange the usual programme for sight-seeing, for if the General is of the party there must be method about it. Our first visit is to the Ufizzi Gallery, and we are amazed at its magnificence and variety. We understand now how it was in Florence that art had a new birth, that here first started the Renaissance. To the Medicean princes, the great merchants of the world, is due the awakening of art. If Rome treasured ecclesiastical lore, and in a certain measure looked at the keeping of men's souls, Florence was the city of pleasure, and of the more refined arts. Its streets reflect the gayety of the people. Italy may be passing through the throes of travail, and Florence. may be burdened with many debts, but there is an insouciance, a jollity about Florence, which is most pleasant to witness.

But for the Ufizzi Gallery. I suppose the best known statue in the world is that of the Medicean Venus. It was Cosmo III.

THE ART GALLERIES.

367

who found this paragon of a marble woman and set her up in place, and mutilated as she was, it was Bernini who restored her. For long years this Greek beauty held dainty sway-until to the Venus of Milo, the grandest physical woman of antiquity, was awarded the palm of beauty. In this Ufizzi Gallery are pictures whose excellence has been extolled ever since they left the painters' hands-as they will be in all time to come.

Veronese's St. John, with Titian's Venus, Carracci's Cupid, Volterra's Massacre of the Innocents, with Guercino's Endymion and Guido's Virgin. Here are a dozen pictures, which beyond price are the grandest in the world. Would you see antiquity once more in its most pathetic mood? Here in this hall is Niobe and her children. We spend hours in this gallery, and pass from wonder to wonder. The Pitti Palace and its collection is on our books for that day, and the General, who has no tire in him, pays it a long visit. The architecture is a

masterpiece of Brunelleschi, built originally for a rival of the Medici, and a fitting residence for the late king of Italy. The ceilings of most of the rooms in the gallery are commemorative of Cosimo de Medici, and on the walls hang the works of Raphael, Tintoretto, Rubens, Del Sarto, Veronese, Carlo Dolce, and Salvator Rosa. It was with unfeigned pleasure that we found that Italians and especially Florentines treasured the memory of Hiram Powers. As for Americans engaged in art

studies, we hardly

speare is with us.

know through a

some one from the United States busy with brush and pal

ette, diligently working away, and studying the grand old

masters.

Florence is indeed sacred ground, hallowed by the

memories of the greatest of painters, sculptors, and authors. It was here Dante and Boccaccio wrote their poems, their romances.

Dante to-day is in

the mouth of the Florentine as Shake

These names which we as Americans only transmitted influence, through translations, take palpable form and speech in the city where they lived. One ponders over politics, one cannot help it, when we are forced to go back to the Medici and to a Macchiavelli. But

FLORENCE.

369 this is the palace a Cosmo built, and up those steps may have tripped the most subtle thinker of his time. A traveler who is not narrow in his judgment of men and things, who can in his mind compare the past with the present, gradually accepts these personages, sympathizes with their ends and aims, and is forced to believe that human nature in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not differ so much from that of to-day. There have been Guelphs and Ghibellines, who fought and wrangled five hundred years ago, and to-day there are just such men to be found in other countries.

There are delightful drives near Florence, and now the Cacine is commencing to bloom. It is the Bois de Boulogne of Florence. It is yet a little too cool for open carriages, but the equipages are very fine and in good taste. As the General drives modestly and unostentatiously along the Cacine he is surprised at the number of acquaintances he has made, as hats are touched by gentlemen, and ladies bow, bestowing their sweetest smiles on the chief of our party. We get a better view of the Arno from the Cacine. We wish it were bluer; we are told it is so sometimes, but that the rains have given it a golden gleam. This This "golden gleam" may be poetical, in keeping with Italian skies, which are blue enough, but we all call the Arno muddy. In fact, some of us long to see a decent river, something that swells in great voluminous floods, like the Hudson, the Potomac, or the Mississippi. For all Italian rivers are except in time of floods insignificant. All churches in Italy are memorable, and none the less so is the Duomo or the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore. Here is the grandest cupola in the world-even rivaling that of St. Peter's. It is another masterpiece of the great Brunelleschi. Who goes to Florence and does not see the gates of Ghiberti on the baptismal church of San Giovanni? These are the gates which the great Michael Angelo declared were fitting to become the portals of Paradise. Easter now was fast approaching, and with it the religious festivals which are so carefully kept in Italian cities. The General might have wished to have been present at St. Peter's during Easter week, but the necessity of reaching Paris at a

fixed date prevented a long delay in Rome. He was, however, fortunate enough to witness the commencement of the Easter festival at the Duomo with all its grand impressiveness.

While in Florence some of the more enthusiastic of the party made an excursion to Pisa. I do not think any town in Italy

can show more plainly than Pisa the era of modern decadence. Could it be possible that this city was once the rival of Florence? But so it was; but its greatness, its majesty, and its power have crumbled away; it has, in fact, suffered absolute dry-rot. Now people can understand why some of the towns in Holland have almost passed out of existence. The reason is that the ocean which brought them trade and commerce has absolutely receded