Nothing disperses small gazers like asking a few questions; on big ones it has a precisely opposite effect. And now I had another companion, a loquacious matron, who had two sons away in America. She eagerly inquired if I were American, and, on learning that I was English, her esteem for me diminished. Perhaps, however, I had heard of America, she added, with a benevolent smile. To these poor people the States are a sort of earthly paradise, teeming with golden possibilities-England merely a station on the way. I asked if her sons were figurinaj. At first they were, she said, now they had other employments. They were good lads, sent her money occasionally, and talked of returning soon. As to how they earned their living-well, they did earn it. They could not get their bread for nothing, even in America si sa. All this time the others of the party had been up in the campanile. This is not lofty, so the view is little more extended than from the loggia below. Hearing a voice raised in loud indignation, I glanced upward. I beheld a black and withered arm, easily recognizable as the property of our traveled cicerone, protruding from one of the embrasures, and vehemently sawing the air. I learned afterward that it was the subject of taxes which had aroused the old man's wrath. The government taxes are heavy enough, but the municipal dues are those that excite most discontent. Worst of all is the focatico, or hearthtax, paid by every head of a family, and which seems to be levied in a very arbitrary manner. The old fellow was still speaking of his wrongs when my friends came out of the tower. At a climax in his narrative he suddenly tore his cap from his head, and cast it far from him. That was a great relief to his feelings; he became calm, and the stout woman took up the doleful strain, and inveighed in her turn against the focatico. And now the vesper prayer was over, and the scanty congregation joined our crowd outside. From the shadowy arch of a side-door appeared a vision of age and infancy worthy of a painter's canvas. A haggard, bent, and withered crone, on whose wrinkled visage there yet lingered in some strange way traces of long-past beauty, came tottering down the step holding by the hand a plump darling of a baby boy, with laughing eyes, gleaming little teeth, and a thick crop of curly brown hair. The one was so feeble, the other so young, both trod so uncertainly, that it was hard to say which supported the other. Half leading, half led, withered feet and baby toes stumbled toward the loggia till they reached one of the dismal stones covering what was, till a year or two ago, the general grave-pit for Ghivizzano's dead. Here the poor creature VOL. VII.-3 sank down on her stiffened knees and mumbled out a prayer, perhaps for some long-lost love of her own, perhaps for the father of the sturdy babe clinging to her skirts, and to whose arm she still clung. Soon we placed a bit of money in the boy's little, grimy hand, and the grandmother-or great-grandmother-croaked out her thanks, and told us that Tonino could not talk, being not yet two years old. Certainly Tonino was a splendid little fellow, and his lips parted in an amiable, confiding smile as his fingers closed over his coin. His manly costume of trousers, braces, and shirt only gave fuller emphasis to his rounded, baby limbs. As the couple tottered away, the poor old woman in her feeble agedness looked as though her sole hold upon life was through that infant, whose strength lay all before him. The gloaming was almost over now, the chestnut-woods fast losing their color; so, hurriedly going down another narrow street and up a steep vineyard-path, we scrambled to the ruins of Castruccio's fortress, which are so thickly set about with trees and vines that nothing is to be seen when you get there. A fresh crowd of men, women, and children was in waiting to escort us to the town-gate. We asked one woman if she too had been in America. "No," she said with a sigh; adding, as she glanced around at her companions, “but we would all go directly if we could." And her companions nodded and echoed the wish. But who was this whom we suddenly caught sight of, sitting on the wall with folded arms outside the gate? Surely this respectable, blackcoated, straw-hatted man, with shaven cheeks and a gray goatee beneath his chin, could be no native of Ghivizzano! But, in spite of his transatlantic appearance, he was only a returned figurinaio. He began to talk to us immediately, and spoke of his travels. He knew English well, had sold plaster images in the States, sold fish at San Francisco, lived at Montevideo, and had been to all the East Indian Presidencies. Like all the rest, he spoke enthusiastically of America, but objected to the climate of the East Indies. Things had gone well with him, he said; he liked wandering about the world, and but for his family and his farm down there among the chestnuts he should be ready to go away again, to-morrow. There was plenty of business capacity in his keen old face; also, if his eyes did not belie him, a turn for sharp practice. In his way he was a praiser of past times. Those were the days for business, when he was young, he exclaimed, with an expressive flourish of his arms. Especially in California; there, indeed, one made money. Now-with a contemptuous movement of his under lip—now affari went badly. Affari were at an end almost everywhere. We thought we had heard something like this before from men in other ranks of life. Then he gave us some information about Ghivizzano. It contained, he told us, fifty-seven families; nearly all had houses of their own, their pasture, their scrap of land. Few were exactly poor, none exactly rich. Wasn't he rich? Well, he had nothing to complain of; he might have been worse off. But the taxes were terrible, and the commune harassed them sadly. No-Ghivizzano was not a commune in itself, only a fraction of that of Coreglia, and one had to tramp all the way up in the hills there to pay the focatico, etc. Did all his fellow figurinaj come back with their pockets as full as his own? Certainly not; "one had to know how to do business"! The Ghivizzano men weren't as successful as some others. Did we see that village right away up there upon the hillside across the river? Well, that village had grown rich, positively rich, by the trade. The trade wasn't what it once was, when he was young-but what else could one do with all one's boys? And, indeed, with the swarms of tiny children that we had seen surging round the corners and overflowing the doorways of Ghivizzano, it was plain that many of these human figures would have to earn their bread by figures in plaster. II. ITALIAN MOVING. It is impossible to live long in any Italian city without being struck by the perpetual changes of habitation of all one's friends and acquaintances. With the exception of the local aristocracy, who generation after generation are born, live, and die in the same massive family mansions, no one seems to care to pass more than one or two years in the same house. And as for the small-fry of seamstresses, milliners, and workpeople of all kinds, once a year is hardly often enough to make a fresh list of their addresses. The great "flitting" days here in Florence are the 1st of November and the 1st of May; so, for a week or so before and after these dates, the streets are encumbered by vans, carts, and handbarrows, piled with miscellaneous articles of furniture-piled so high too, and so lightly secured, that it is marvelous how they escape ruin, or reach their haven unwrecked. Naturally, more people move in the spring than in autumn, when, what with rain, wind, and mud, it is difficult to avoid more or less damage to all your goods and chattels. In England a move is only under taken after long reflection and careful consideration of ways and means, for even the wealthy families shrink from rushing lightly into the expense and trouble inevitable to a change of abode. How, then, is it that here in Italy the very classes to whom expense is no trifling thing, and whose incomes are reckoned by francs, not pounds, are precisely those who are continually transferring their lares and penates to fresh quarters-now east, now west, to the north, or the south of the town? It can hardly be in search of comfort, for, even with plenty of money at your command, it takes a certain time to adapt yourself to a new home, and, with the probability of changing again within six or twelve months, it is hardly worth while to remedy its defects or fit your belongings to their new position. But, as a rule, Italians are ignorant of the first elements of material domestic comfort. The houses are made to be let, not to make their inmates comfortable; and when the builder of middle-class dwellings has placed the kitchen in convenient proximity to the dining-room-and generally to the entrance-door of your flat-he conceives that every requirement has been fulfilled. I am inclined to think that the continual "flitting" of people of small means, here in Florence, merely shows that most houses are so comfortless that it is seldom possible to change for the worse. And as people with a national disregard for comfort and home elegance care little for harmony between wall-papers and furniture, and seldom possess any carpets worth mentioning, few of the obstacles which-mere expense apart-surge up in the ordinary householder's mind at the idea of moving have much power over the Italian paterfamilias when he decides to give his landlord warning. Indeed, when his purse is low, a move is almost a measure of economy, owing to the prevailing Florentine method of rent-paying. As I have said, houses let from the 1st of May and the 1st of November, but this by no means implies that your rent only falls due at those dates. You positively have to pay it over eight months in advance, that is, about the middle of February or August, for the term beginning with the following May or November. Thus by giving notice and avoiding actually fixing another apartment bill a week or so before leaving his old one, the impecunious Florentine can stave off the evil day of payment at least two months. So, from this and other causes, it sometimes happens that you see one family tumbling into their new quarters the very day that its old occupants are tumbling out; and great are the confusion, turmoil, litter, bad language, and general mixing up of rickety possessions thereby occasioned. Yet after all there is little of the genuine anxiety or excitement manifested by northerners on simi nurse your baby, button your boots, and be generally depended upon for all manner of odd jobs. Not long ago an article appeared in a wellknown London paper containing some very sweeping strictures upon Italian servants, which, though doubtless entirely unexaggerated, would have had greater value had the writer mentioned what part of Italy was the scene of her woful experiences. The Boot comprises so many different races, different degrees of civilization, that what is perfectly true of one part of the peninsula fails to give any correct view of another. For instance, in Florence, by no means famous for good servants, the present writer has never, during a residence of many years, had the ill luck to fall in with any such desperate "ne'er-do-wells" as those described in the paper on " Italian Servants versus English." There is one point which, it seems to me, English employers do not sufficiently take into account in dealing with their Italian servants lar occasions. The dramatic gestures, the pagan interjections that apparently mean so much, are for the most part mere conventional expressions and modes of speech. As a rule, no one is out of temper, no one in a hurry. Life is long and moving short, might well be the motto of the upholsterer and carpenter, who are the usual superintendents of these domestic changes. For the extent of their zeal is to get the beds you sleep in, the tables you eat on, transferred to the new house from the old within the hours of their working-day. Other things will right themselves naturally in course of time; these are the sole essentials, and your Florentine paterfamilias demands but little more. His children are reveling in the general disorganization of domestic matters, and if his wife be in despair, well, he can always slip off to his café out of hearing of her shrill grumblings. And-as many of my readers may know-the soft Italian tongue does not always issue very softly from the feminine-namely, that it is best to be content with modimouth. Then, as for the servants, they enjoy the upset almost as much as the children. Disorder is their natural element. Unlike English domestics, who object to doing anything but their own work, Italian servants throw into extra and abnormal labor all the zeal which they can seldom be persuaded to devote to their daily duties. To them it is a positive treat to go without their regular dinner for once in a way; a delightful variation to refresh themselves with slices of ham or sausage from the nearest shop, seated on a pile of bedding, or a case of crockery, and carrying on sportive conversation with gay young facchini (porters) and carpenters. And here let me say en passant that, although Italian maid-servants are but too commonly lazy, untidy, slipshod wenches, doing as little as they can, and only blossoming into energy on festa days, when leaving everything at sixes and sevens-they sally forth in gaudiest festival array, and although the best of them seldom accomplish more than half of the daily tasks of a British handmaiden, yet, an Italian man-servant is the very best in the world. He will do three times as much work as an English indoor-man, for here men are kept not for show, but for use, and English or American people wintering in Italy would spare themselves much annoyance by conforming to the customs of the country, and engaging men instead of women for kitchen and parlor work. For, if chosen intelligently, your Italian man-servant is a treasure. He may fail to lay the table with consummate elegance, certainly he will not keep your silver at its highest polish, but, besides his regular work, he will always be ready and willing to assist the other servants. He will make your beds if required, fying certain of their national characteristics, without wasting time and temper in vain endeavors to convert them into the well-trained, noiseless domestics of an English household. Taken at their worst, they have the qualities of their defects, and that is why they are so active and helpful in the (to them) delightful business of a change of house. Now, to give a good notion of a move conducted on the approved Florentine principle, it will be as well to relate my personal experiences while shifting our belongings from a noisy street on the south side of the Arno to our present lovely home on the sunny second floor of an historic palace with the finest garden in Florencea garden as yet untouched by the local modern mania for prim beds and rockwork, set about with noble trees, radiant with flowers, and musical with bird-voices and the splashing of fountains. The first question to be settled was whether to employ railway-vans, and thus effect an expeditious move regardless of breakages, or to confide entirely in my upholsterer and let him transfer our chattels in far slower but also far safer fashion. And, as everything had to be carried down the one hundred and two stairs of the old apartment and up the sixty-seven stairs of the new at the opposite end of the town, it seemed better to give up all idea of the reckless innovation of moving everything at once, and content one's self with easy-going, old-fashioned ways. Accordingly, my worthy upholsterer is summoned from his littery shop in Via Romana, where perpetual quilting of cotton counterpanes is carried on, and he is requested to name his price and say in how many days he can undertake to strip our rooms and put all things in order in the new home. His wrinkled, smiling visage, not unlike that of a benevolent frog, and which nature certainly designed for a comic actor rather than an upholsterer, instantly expands into a broader grin than usual. How long would he take? He shifted from one leg to the other, scratched his head, enjoyed the comic aspect of British haste, and finally committed himself to the opinion that all might be done in four or five days, provided the weather held up. We were in October, so continued fine weather was far from certain, but perhaps if we began at once, since the new apartment was already at our disposal, we might be settled before the autumn rains set in. So it was finally arranged that he should begin in a day or so, and that he was to provide the necessary carts and horses. This he undertook, twinkling more merrily than ever as he bade us farewell; and on the appointed morning we were aroused at a very early hour by the arrival of four men and a boy, and much creaking and banging, rustling of straw and clatter of crockery told us that the dismantling process had begun. This energy promised well, and already we imagined ourselves installed in our newly papered south rooms overlooking that bright garden, and we briskly rose and proceeded to the packing of books and dresses with a feeling that there was not a moment to be lost. Going out an hour or so later, we were in time to witness the starting of the first load. But where were the horses and wagons which imagination had shown us standing all this time beneath the archway at the bottom of our hundred and two steps? All that was to be seen was a moderate-sized hand-cart, easily propelled by two men. We were so to speak-about to be moved in a wheelbarrow! No wonder that that perfidious old man of the comic countenance had twinkled so merrily on being invested with the responsibility of choosing vans and horses! But we were already sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the land of our adoption to resign our selves to fate and the upholsterer, and hope for great results from small commencements. And for the first two days all went smoothly enough, and the cheery presence of Signor Giovanni the upholsterer at least gave animation to his men. As for the small boy, edict of banishment had to be pronounced against him. We had had misgivings of him from the first, and he soon justified them. With the reckless abandon of youth he had pounced upon a carefully packed basket of English crockery, and, choosing to imagine it empty, hoisted it upside down on his head. One instant, and the floor was scattered with fragments of sponge- and soap-dishes quite unmatchable at this distance from the Strand. Then a steady rain set in, and we shivered over a small fire in a curtainless, carpetless room, speculating as to whether the chairs and tables carried down stairs a couple of hours earlier had reached their destination before the storm broke. Only later did we ascertain that they had gone no farther than the archway. No oil-cloth was forthcoming to cover the contents of the cart, and the men, we were told, were too heated by their exertions to be able to venture through the streets in the rain! Florentines cherish the delusion that wet weather is so extraordinary an occurrence that no provision need be made against it. Even for pianos no covered carts are used; they are paraded through the town exhibiting their silk and varnish to all beholders, and merely fastened by leather straps to small trucks. So once more we had to resign ourselves to fate, and for a whole week the rain beat against our panes, and all that could be done was to hang pictures in the new home, arrange the few articles already there, and bid beaming Signor Giovanni (whose smiles began to seem fiendish) profit by the delay to complete necessary alterations of window-cornices and curtains. Complete! we little knew how far from completion all these things were. Only at the end of twelve miserable days were we able to surrender the keys of our old home, and bid good-by to our southern view, across closely-clustered roofs, of fair Bellosguardo and the ilex avenue of Poggio Imperiale— only at the end of four months did we see the last of carpenters and upholsterers in our new abode; for, as soon as we were encamped—I may not say settled-in the palace with the garden, our comic upholsterer deserted us, and went to beam elsewhere upon other people's carpets and curtains. The only result to be attained by stern messages and supplicating appeals was an occasional flying visit at the oddest hours from one or other of his sons. Coming home wearied out in the dark winter afternoons, and hoping for an interval of rest and solitude before dinner, we would be startled, on entering our bedroom, by a voice as from the skies, and behold the airy Beppo-the tasteful member of Signor Giovanni's family—perched on a ladder, putting up bed-curtains that had been in his hands for weeks. Another time, still later in the day, we found the stout Cesarewhose figure was so valuable in the stretching of carpets-nailing a forgotten trimming on our favorite arm-chair. A propos to carpets, the Anglo-Saxon mind has to abandon all accustomed grooves of thought with regard to these useful elements of comfort. In England—until Oriental rugs and Indian matting came in fashion-we had a fixed idea that they should be cut to fit the rooms for which they were intended. In Italy, on the contrary, it is considered great waste to cut off corners and edges. These can be turned under, you know, ready for use in case you have bigger rooms the next time you move. And so, always with an eye to future changes, your upholsterer can not see the necessity of fitting your carpets to your present floors. When you indignantly show him that all these hillocks and protuberances prevent your furniture from standing firmly against the walls, that every piece is toppling forward, you are smilingly asked to have patience. Then, in a twinkling, little wedges and chips of any sort of wood your carpenter may have left about are inserted beneath the tottering legs, and you are triumphantly begged to observe that all is now as it should be. And gradually you come to think so also, and renounce struggling against the inevitable, at least as regards the laying of carpets. is a thin, wiry man, with a sour mouth and selfasserting nose of the particular kind of retroussé which experience disposes me to regard as significant of the intensest conceit. This worthy has his merits: he is quick, active, and tolerably punctual, and if he would confine himself to his special business, and note down his measurements, he would be a very satisfactory carpenter and joiner. But, unfortunately, he is apt to consider himself a slighted genius, and thinks that he, and he alone, should have the supreme command in all that is going on. He had a severe attack of wounded pride on finding that wardrobes which he had made were, in the course of the move, taken down and put together again by the profane fingers of Signor Giovanni and his minions. He could have done it all in half the time, he said, without help from any one. This man's wife is a needlewoman, and, happening to want But on one point you must be inflexible, or a cradle trimmed in a particular fashion, we told madness might be the result. Florentine carpenters and cabinet-makers take measurements as accurately as can be desired, but they seldom conform to them, and I shudder to think of the time and energy required to have a curtain-cornice made to fit, and when it does fit to have it put up in a straight line. It is a very complicated proceeding. First of all, iron clamps have to be inserted in the wall, and, as neither upholsterer nor carpenter will undertake this job, you have to secure the attendance of an ironsmith with the clamps, and of a mason to fasten them to the wall. Then the carpenter has to prepare the wooden framework to which cornice and vallance are to be nailed. The mason can do his share of the performance independently; but, if you can not as semble upholsterer, carpenter, and smith at one and the same time, dire confusion follows. The clamps are too short, or the board too narrow, or the cornice too long. All preliminary flourishing of the foot-rule has been in vain if your trinity can not discuss the matter on the spot. And one day the carpenter is engaged, the next the upholsterer misses his appointment, the third no smith is forthcoming, and so on till you despair of ever seeing the pile of curtains in the corner hung up in their appointed places. When at last, after long delay, you are invited to come and see how elegantly they have been draped, you find, to your horror, that the whole erection is hopelessly crooked, that all must be done over again. But here so many harrowing recollections crowd upon my mind that it is best to turn to pleasanter subjects. This moving tale would be incomplete without some mention of another prominent character in it. Let me introduce my carpenter. He him to send us his wife to do it under our own superintendence. He promptly offered to trim the cradle himself, and I had to acknowledge a weak preference for needles and thread rather than hammer and nails before being allowed to obtain his wife's services. She came; but to my amazement her husband came too; and, as he bullied her into executing my orders according to his own peculiar interpretation of them, the result was not completely satisfactory. He, however, was highly delighted with the achievement, and confided to one of the servants that he knew that he could fit ladies' dresses far better than his wife. This man's burning desire is to be first fiddle on all occasions, and we have had to leave off engaging him as waiter on company nights, simply because he tries to usurp the reins of government, and, instead of helping our servants, orders them about in a totally absurd and exasperating manner. And now, having said so much of the troubles of our move, this paper may fittingly conclude with a description of the house in which they came to an end. Possibly we may have to move again some day, but meanwhile we consider ourselves settled, and love our picturesque abode in spite of its sundry defects. Then, too, it is an historic palace, for its owner and our landlord is the most noble Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, lineal descendant of him who met his death in the Hunger Tower of Pisa. Over the principal entrance is a huge coronet sculptured in stone, but close beside the gate by which we tenants enter is a marble slab recording that here, in the days of Savonarola, dwelt Bartolommeo Scala, Secretary to the Republic, and husband to a daughter of the house of Gherardesca. Pushing open this heavy gate, we find ourselves in a graveled court divided from the |