conveying some sick or wounded person to the hospital. As the day begins
to decline, the numbers of carriages in the streets, filled with
gaily-dressed people attended by servants in livery, increases. The Grand
Duke's equipage, an elegant carriage drawn by six horses, with coachmen,
footmen, and outriders in drab-colored livery, comes from the Pitti
Palace, and crosses the Arno, either by the bridge close to my lodgings,
or by that called _Alla Santa Trinità_, which is in full sight from the
windows. The Florentine nobility, with their families, and the English
residents, now throng to the Cascine, to drive at a slow pace through its
thickly-planted walks of elms, oaks, and ilexes. As the sun is sinking I
perceive the Quay, on the other side of the Arno, filled with a moving
crowd of well-dressed people, walking to and fro, and enjoying the beauty
of the evening. Travellers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in
calashes, in the shabby _vettura_, and in the elegant private carriage
drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible
deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The
streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips
and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of
baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travellers. Night at length
arrives--the time of spectacles and funerals. The carriages rattle towards
the opera-houses. Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes
in black, carrying blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole
before a coffin, pass through the streets chanting the service for the
dead. The Brethren of Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. The
rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their
eyes through their masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of
supernatural appearance. I return to bed, and fall asleep amidst the
shouts of people returning from the opera, singing as they go snatches of
the music with which they had been entertained during the evening.