apparently modernized for domestic purposes. Among them U---- pointed
out Galileo's tower, whither she made an excursion the other day. It
looked lower than our own, but seemed to stand on a higher elevation. We
also saw the duke's villa, the Poggio, with a long avenue of cypresses
leading from it, as if a funeral were going forth. And having wasted
thus much of description on the landscape, I will finish with saying that
it lacked only water to be a very fine one. It is strange what a
difference the gleam of water makes, and how a scene awakens and comes to
life wherever it is visible. The landscape, moreover, gives the beholder
(at least, this beholder) a sense of oppressive sunshine and scanty
shade, and does not incite a longing to wander through it on foot, as a
really delightful landscape should. The vine, too, being cultivated in
so trim a manner, does not suggest that idea of luxuriant fertility,
which is the poetical notion of a vineyard. The olive-orchards have a
pale and unlovely hue. An English view would have been incomparably
richer in its never-fading green; and in my own country, the wooded hills
would have been more delightful than these peaks and ridges of dreary and
barren sunshine; and there would have been the bright eyes of half a
dozen little lakes, looking heavenward, within an extent like that of the
Val d' Arno.

By and by mamma's carriage came along the dusty road, and passed through
the iron gateway, which we had left open for her reception. We shouted
down to her and R-----, and they waved their handkerchiefs upward to us;
and, on my way down, I met R----- and the servant coming up through the
ghostly rooms.

The rest of the day we spent mostly in exploring the premises. The house
itself is of almost bewildering extent, insomuch that we might each of us
have a suite of rooms individually. I have established myself on the