from the ramparts of the fortress.

For my part, in this foreign country, I have no objection to policemen or
any other minister of authority; though I remember, in America, I had an
innate antipathy to constables, and always sided with the mob against
law. This was very wrong and foolish, considering that I was one of
the sovereigns; but a sovereign, or any number of sovereigns, or the
twenty-millionth part of a sovereign, does not love to find himself, as
an American must, included within the delegated authority of his own
servants.

There is a sheet of water somewhere in the Boboli Gardens, inhabited by
swans; but this we did not see. We found a smaller pond, however, set
in marble, and surrounded by a parapet, and alive with a multitude of
fish. There were minnows by the thousand, and a good many gold-fish; and
J-----, who had brought some bread to feed the swans, threw in handfuls
of crumbs for the benefit of these finny people. They seemed to be
accustomed to such courtesies on the part of visitors; and immediately
the surface of the water was blackened, at the spot where each crumb
fell, with shoals of minnows, thrusting one another even above the
surface in their eagerness to snatch it. Within the depths of the pond,
the yellowish-green water--its hue being precisely that of the Arno--
would be reddened duskily with the larger bulk of two or three
gold-fishes, who finally poked their great snouts up among the minnows,
but generally missed the crumb. Beneath the circular margin of the pond,
there are little arches, into the shelter of which the fish retire, when
the noonday sun burns straight down into their dark waters. We went on
through the garden-paths, shadowed quite across by the high walls of box,
and reached an esplanade, whence we had a good view of Florence, with the
bare brown ridges on the northern side of the Arno, and glimpses of the