polyglot flirting at carriage doors and windows,
most conveniently and amicably performed when
a dismounted cavalier is stationed on either side
of a carriage containing two fair dames. All
feel the absolute necessity of remaining in the
spot, where fashion has decreed that it is at that
hour essential to be found. So it often occurs
that thinly-clad belles, who have been yielding
to one or all of these temptations, may be seen
gathering handkerchiefs and scarfs closely around
delicate throats, while they are carried off through
the darkening avenues at a sharp trot. For our
Cascine, with all its unrivalled charms, has,
truth to tell, the reputation of being not wholly
salubrious during the first hour after sunset.
A light fleecy mist may at such times be
observed to settle down upon it, while Florence
and the neighbouring hills are as free from
damp as at mid-day. The bright emerald green
of the meadows hints that all the advantages of
different climates cannot be perfectly combined.
And it unfortunately happens in this, as in
some other cases, that the sanitary laws and
those of "la mode," taking no cognisance
whatever of each other's edicts, are apt to be
a little at variance on the subject of evening
drives to the Cascine.

But despite the habits of fashion the social life
of Florence is, perhaps, the least aristocratically
exclusive of any to be found in the cities of
Europe. There is even still deep down at
the bottom of the national character a foundation
of republican sentiment, surviving from
the grand old days when Florence was said to
be "the most republican of all republics,"
which very perceptibly modifies the manners and
ways of the people. "Nobili" and "Snobili"
are right classical Tuscan terms. Yet the
division signified by them is a more impassable
one on the banks of the Thames than on those
of the Arno. Accordingly, we have no Hyde
Park for the one class, and Victoria Park for the
other. Our beautiful Cascine serves for all. And
the working people of both races are quite as
alive to its charm, quite as fond of enjoying it,
quite as anxious to make themselves smart for the
occasion of doing so, and often—taking into
consideration the advantages imparted to a
Manchester cotton-print by a lithe figure, and the
disadvantages inflicted by a dowdy one on a
French muslin—quite as successful in achieving
that end.

But, although holidays are by no means such
rare things in Florence as they are in London,
still every day is not a holiday. Some are only
half-holidays. There are even a few which are
not holidays at all. And the snobile population,
for the most part, limits its Cascine gaieties
to those which are. Nor for that reason, it
is to be observed, do the non-working classes
at all take it into their heads that pleasure-
seeking becomes thereby "vulgar" on a holiday.
On the contrary, the same days which
witness the greatest concourse of plebeians
in all sorts of places of resort for the purpose
of recreation, witness also an increase of the
throng of patricians.

But there are certain days in the year when
the true cockney Florentine especially makes a
point of visiting the Cascine. It is in the
prime of the early summer, in May, that the
working world of Florence make their great
Cascine holiday. A "merenda," or luncheon
to be eaten in the southern meadow on the bank
of the Arno, is the great enjoyment looked
forward to, and the object, in many cases, of weeks
of previous careful saving and scraping.

It is one of the very rare occasions on which
eating and drinking enters into the plan of
popular Florentine holiday-making. But very
little out of the little that the working classes
can spend, or ought, beyond the bare necessaries
of life, goes on what we northerns especially
designate as creature-comforts. The theatre,
cigars, a drive in a hackney-coach, six inside, the
lottery, and dress, have all prior claims to the
stomach. In no community in Europe, probably,
is so large a proportion of the income of the
entire society spent in dress as in Florence. The
northern visitor, whose eye has been attracted
by a pretty face at the window of a humble
tenement, with its magnificent raven tresses
most artistically dressed, and a finely-shaped
bust encased in a snow-white and well-fitting
bodice, could never imagine, that the reason
why the fair one thus contented herself with
exhibiting half her pretty person at the window
instead of showing the whole of it among the
holiday crowd in the streets, consisted in the
dire impossibility of accomplishing a presentable
toilette for more than one half of herself.

In a fish-tail ends the form so fair above,

says Horace, speaking of a mermaid; and the
case in question is almost as distressing:

In a bedgown ends the form so fair above.

At all events, Laura Vanni, the daughter of
old Laudadio Vanni, the jeweller and goldsmith
on the Ponte Vecchio, was as good a girl as a
good man could wish to make a wife of, and as
good a daughter as her father could desire, and
very much better than he deserved. And yet
had it entered the old man's head to propose to
her that any portion of her habiliments should be
contrived with a view to disfiguring rather than
enhancing the advantages of face and figure with
which Nature had endowed her, it is probable
that an absurdity so monstrous in her eyes would
have made a rebel of her. That it should be
enjoined on her by any of the higher duties or
sanctions, that she should make herself appear
less beautiful than she might do, would have
been so new, so unheard-of, so utterly incomprehensible
to her, that it would have been a hopeless
task to introduce such an idea into her
brain.

Heaven knows her little toilette was simple
enough on the morning on which I wish to
present her to the reader, as she walked with her
father and a couple of other individuals, to