lady, the Countess of ------. After all, there was nothing very
characteristic. The bridegroom is a young man of English birth, son of
the Countess of St. G------, who inhabits the third piano of this Casa
del Bello. The very curious part of the spectacle was the swarm of
beggars who haunted the street all day; the most wretched mob
conceivable, chiefly women, with a few blind people, and some old men and
boys. Among these the bridal party distributed their beneficence in the
shape of some handfuls of copper, with here and there a half-paul
intermixed; whereupon the whole wretched mob flung themselves in a heap
upon the pavement, struggling, lighting, tumbling one over another, and
then looking up to the windows with petitionary gestures for more and
more, and still for more. Doubtless, they had need enough, for they
looked thin, sickly, ill-fed, and the women ugly to the last degree. The
wedding party had a breakfast above stairs, which lasted till four
o'clock, and then the bridegroom took his bride in a barouche and pair,
which was already crammed with his own luggage and hers. . . . . He was a
well-looking young man enough, in a uniform of French gray with silver
epaulets; more agreeable in aspect than his bride, who, I think, will
have the upper hand in their domestic life. I observed that, on getting
into the barouche, he sat down on her dress, as he could not well help
doing, and received a slight reprimand in consequence. After their
departure, the wedding guests took their leave; the most noteworthy
person being the Pope's Nuncio (the young man being son of the Pope's
Chamberlain, and one of the Grand Duke's Noble Guard), an ecclesiastical
personage in purple stockings, attended by two priests, all of whom got
into a coach, the driver and footmen of which wore gold-laced cocked hats
and other splendors.

To-day I paid a short visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. I looked
long at a Madonna of Raphael's, the one which is usually kept in the