stood talking with her maid. By and by, we discovered her to be Miss
Howorth. There was a misty light, streaming down on the hither side of
the ridge of hills, that was rather peculiar; but the most remarkable
thing was the shape into which the clouds gathered themselves, after the
disappearance of the sun. It was like a tree, with a broad and heavy
mass of foliage, spreading high upward on the sky, and a dark and
well-defined trunk, which rooted itself on the verge of the horizon.

This morning we went to the Pitti Palace. The air was very sultry, and
the pavements, already heated with the sun, made the space between the
buildings seem like a close room. The earth, I think, is too much stoned
out of the streets of an Italian city,--paved, like those of Florence,
quite across, with broad flagstones, to the line where the stones of the
houses on each side are piled up. Thunder rumbled over our heads,
however, and the clouds were so dark that we scarcely hoped to reach the
palace without feeling the first drops of the shower. The air still
darkened and darkened, so that by the time we arrived at the suite of
picture-rooms the pictures seemed all to be changed to Rembrandts; the
shadows as black as midnight, with only some highly illuminated portions
gleaming out. The obscurity of the atmosphere made us sensible how
splendid is the adornment of these saloons. For the gilded cornices
shone out, as did the gilding of the arches and wreathed circles that
divide the ceiling into compartments, within which the frescos are
painted, and whence the figures looked dimly down, like gods out of a
mysterious sky. The white marble sculptures also gleamed from their
height, where winged cupids or cherubs gambolled aloft in bas-reliefs; or
allegoric shapes reclined along the cornices, hardly noticed, when the
daylight comes brightly into the window. On the walls, all the rich
picture-frames glimmered in gold, as did the framework of the chairs, and
the heavy gilded pedestals of the marble, alabaster, and mosaic tables.