imported when on his wedding tour to Rome some forty years before. I never tasted better vinegar.

To return, my host finds that he can make a fair profit on his Chianti by charging eighteen shillings a dozen for it delivered in London. At least this was so, but since Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has increased the duty on light drinking wines there is a different tale to tell. As regards the quality and character of the wine, although it cannot compete with high-class French clarets, it is very sound and agreeable to the palate. Above all, it is pure grape-juice and nothing else.

On the day of my visit some men, about four or five, were employed in the wine-cave washing the flasks with successive rinsings of soda, acid, and water hot and cold. This careful cleansing was preparatory to the wine being bottled for shipment, really bottled with corks, not with oil poured into the neck to exclude the air, and a piece of pink paper, according to the local custom. These flasks or fiaschi, which are very pretty, and half covered with reed netting, cost about a penny halfpenny apiece, but I noticed that a good percentage of them break in the washing. Hence the term "fiasco" used in our sense; or, to be quite accurate, it is derived from the breaking of a full wine-flask when lifted by the neck.

A supplementary product of the farm is olive oil, that is ground out by the help of an ox which walks round and round and drives a simple crushing-mill. The raw resulting oil is divided into three grades or qualities, of which the second is best for lamps, and the third mixed with water is used by the poor. This season the olive harvest was a very bad one, consequently oil is dear.

As regards the profit of such vineyards, my host seemed to be of opinion that a man of energy and intelligence, taking one year with another, in the absence of phylloxera, can make about ten per cent. upon the capital invested. Other experienced vine-growers, how

ever, told me that they consider this estimate too high. Then comes the question of the capital itself. Even in the case of a vineyard of moderate size I gather that the amount required is considerable. The farmer may begin on less, but if he wishes to earn a living out of his labour, it seems that he ought to be able to command about £5000.

The item of labour in the neighbourhood of Florence is not heavy, the men, who are docile and willing, being paid only about eight shillings a week. They decline, however, to work in wet weather, nor are they very strong, living as they do upon poor and insufficient food, and at times in their fireless hovels suffering severely from the cold.

The result of my investigations into the prospects of the Tuscan wine industry is that, on the whole, I should not recommend it to young men seeking new lands in which to farm. The capital required seems too considerable and the margin of profit too small. Moreover there is always the possibility of phylloxera to be reckoned with. Still, for those to whom considerations of health or other private reasons may make residence in a sunny climate under a foreign flag desirable, who at the same time do not wish or cannot afford to lead an idle life, the occupation would be excellent. To live beneath those sheltering hills, to feast the eyes upon that glorious view, to watch the vines put forth their tender leaves, to see the tiny clusters form and in autumn to gather the rich harvest all in the glow of a glorious sun-what more could be asked by the man of quiet, contemplative mind, who yet loves not to be idle? Or, at the least, what more is he likely to get in this hard world?

CHAPTER III

FIESOLE AND FLORENCE

ONE bitter night at moonrise I stood near to the highest point of the mountain of Fiesole and looked down upon the wide valley in whose lap lies Florence, far down across lines of solemn cypresses and grey groves of olives to the vast plain beneath. Cold and dead-coloured appeared old Fiesole, now that the sun had left it; cold, yet lovely, with a death-like loveliness, the vague and stretching landscape. And Florence herself, that great city, how small she seemed at this distance of some few miles! Her towering palaces of huge stones were but as huts, the vast dome of her cathedral as that of a village church. The landscape dominates and dwarfs her. The sweeping circle of black hills; that mighty mirror of the Arno flashing in the last ray of sunset-what is she compared to these? The ancient Etruscan studying that view from this very standpoint, can have felt no need of Florence to complete the scene, and were she rased now to the earth as in the middle days one of her rulers would have rased her, she would scarce be missedfrom here. In fact it is the old story. These hills and plains have borne the yoke of man almost from the beginning, and yet how faint its scar! The scratches which we make on Nature's face are very shallow and soon heal. That there is nothing permanent about man and his labours, is a truism which the consideration of such a scene as this brings home. Those thousand lamps that are now beginning to shine in the streets and windows of Florence far below, will only burn-till at dawn the light of lights arises.

In the winter season, at the time of approaching night, there is something very mysterious and melancholy about this Tuscan landscape. It looks so coldly solemn, so lifeless, while one by one the stars spring out in the blue depths above.

One meets a great many funerals in Florence, all of them after nightfall. Perhaps this may be accounted for by the influenza prevailing at the time of my stay, but as a people the Florentines seem to me to have a strange fancy for parading their sick and dead in public. At the least I have not noticed so many of these melancholy sights in other cities. Very common is it, as the visitor walks down some narrow street, to hear a measured tread behind, and look round to see the brethren of the Misericordia at their work of mercy. These are they who, drawn from every rank of society, for more than five centuries have laid out the dead, or carried the sick of Florence to where they might be succoured. Their very appearance indeed is ominous of death and sorrow; when they come upon the sight thus swiftly it even shocks.

Their robes are black from head to foot, covering the wearer, all but his hands and feet, so that nothing of him can be seen save perhaps his eyes as they glitter through the little openings in the hood. Six of them go together, three in front and three behind, and between them is the stretcher, also arched over with black cloth. These stretchers are apt to excite a somewhat morbid curiosity in the mind of the passer-by. Watching many of them I learned at last to know, by the way the crossed straps pressed upon the shoulders of the bearers, and the fashion in which these stepped and set their feet upon the ground, whether or no they were empty or laden; also by any little movements of the cover, or the lack of them, whether the occupant, if there should be one, was alive or dead.

From time to time the bell of the church sounds

the "misericordia," twice for an accident, thrice for a death. Thereon the brethren who are on duty, rise up at once wherever they may be, at dinner, at mass, in the theatre, or at their business, don their robes and go forth, not to come back until their task, whatever it proves, is done. As the first pair of them set their returning feet upon the threshold of the church they turn and give to those who follow, the ancient greeting, "May God reward you!" to receive back the salutation, " And you also!"

It is a worthy society and their work is holy, though perhaps the ambulances of a London hospital would do it better. Also here is no mere picturesque survival. One day while I stood for a few minutes near the Campanile I saw three parties of them come up to the door of the commonplace, green-shuttered house which is their habitation. Each company carried a stretcher, though whether these were empty or brought bodies thither to be coffined, I could not tell.

sense that

The ques-
Yet three

Who are the greatest men in the true have lived since the day of our Lord? tion is difficult if not impossible to answer. names leap to my mind, all of them as it chances connected with religion: Martin Luther, William the Silent, Savonarola. If these stars do not shine most bright among that heavenly host, I think that there are none more luminous, none at least that burn with a purer fire, none with one more immortal.

Of the three Savonarola has always fascinated me the most, perhaps because a man instinctively gives reverence to an abnegation and a nobility from which he feels that his own weakness would have locked him. We worship the crown of thorns we dare not wear. Savonarola was no pale-blooded monk, no mere shadow of a man, but one to whose ears the world had a siren voice. He could love and he could suffer, and finally take up his cross not because he had loved and suffered, not that its grinding weight might cause him to forget his worldly smarts, but