THE LOTTERY DREAMER.

CHAPTER I. THE MERENDA.

THE "Cascine," as all know well who have
done their Italy, are the delight of the "upper
ten" (hundred) at Florence. The word, which
is the plural form of Cascina, literally a cheese
meadow, may be rendered by our phrase, a dairy
farm. And the lovely spot in question was, in
fact, the Grand-Duke's dairy farm. There the
richest milk and the best butter were to be
had by all, who were willing to pay a higher
price than the ordinary market rate for those
luxuries, and who were also content to go
some mile or so beyond the city gate in search of
them. The past tense, indeed, need only be used
as regards the ownership. For I have not heard
that our Tuscan revolution in any wise disturbed
the cows at their pasture, or turned the milk
sour in the well-appointed dairy. So our "upper
ten" take their evening drives as usual; those
who think with Rousseau, that no dainties are
so delicious as dairy dainties, still find cream and
butter forthcoming in return for the accustomed
pauls, and the Cascine are still as beautiful as
ever, though no longer grand-ducal.

Few cities possess so delightful a public
pleasure-ground as our Florentine dairy-farm. For
driving, riding, walking, sitting, or lounging away
a summer hour in the deep shadow of a forest
glade, the Cascine are unrivalled.

Occupying a strip of ground immediately
outside the city gates, about three miles or so in
length, bounded on the south by the Arno, and
on the north by the little stream of the Mugnone,
which falls into the former river at the further
end of it, the enclosed space comprises every
variety of combination of meadow and
woodland. A well-kept walk along the bank of the
Arno, well fenced in from the winds sweeping
down from the Apennines to the north by a
magnificent high hedge of laurustinus, bay, and
arbutus, and commanding the most picturesque
peeps of the domes and towers of the city,
framed in openings among the forest trees, offers
as luxurious a winter's walk as can well be
imagined. Soft sandy alleys cut in the forest, and
appropriated especially to equestrians, present a
ground for a gallop that "Nimrod" himself would
have approved of. A good road around the whole
space, now skirting the greenest  coppice-
embowered meadows, now plunging amid thick
shady woods, and now again commanding a view
of that lower range of the Apennine which shuts
in the happy valley called after the Arno, makes
a rarely equalled drive. There is no describing,
without the aid of brush and palette and a right
skilful hand to use them, the exceeding beauty of
the view towards this mountain range, especially
about the hour of an autumnal sunset. Passing
over the strip of highly cultivated and rich
alluvial flat which forms the bottom of the
Valdarno, the eye is charmed with the extraordinary
multitude of villas, with their surrounding trees
and gardens, which stud the lower slopes of the
hills. These are the abounding evidences of the
luxury and wealth of the ante-ducal days of
Florence, which so struck Ariosto by their number
as to lead him to say, that if Florence could
gather them within her walls, she would be equal
to two such cities as Rome. Above these rises the
range of hills which, under the names of Monte
Morello, Monte Acuto, and the Mugello Hills,
forms the barrier of the Val d'Arno. At the
hour I have named they are all bathed in a
rose-coloured bloom, gradually deepening into
purple plum colour, as the short southern
twilight dies away; and then whitening into pale
ghosts of mountains, as the moon rises over the
slender tower of Fiesole on its saddle-backed hill
to the right, and far away in the same direction,
over the dark pine forests of Vallombrosa, the
sombre darkness of which sullenly refuses to
smile beneath the pale ray like every neighbour
hill around.

But before the last of these phantasmagoric
changes has taken place, the band that has been
playing among the rhododendron clumps in front
of the handsome range of buildings containing
all the dairy accommodation and appurtenances,
has finished the last favourite bit from Verdi's
last opera, and the last lingering carriage of
all the closely-packed crowd drawn up in
the open gravelled area between the building
and the band, has moved off towards the city.
'Tis the mode with the cosmopolite Florentine
"upper ten" to halt in the spot described,
after their drive for half an hour or so, before
returning to the city. Some like to listen to the
music, many enjoy the cool evening air blowing
down from the hills. Almost all love dearly the