Note (return) — DUMAS IN ITALY.

"It follows," continues M. Dumas, "from this commercial apathy, that at Florence you must seek after every thing you want. It never comes of itself—never presents itself before you;—everything there stays at home—rests in its own place. A foreigner who should remain only a month in the capital of Tuscany would carry away a very false idea of it. At first it seems impossible to procure the things the most indispensable, or those you do procure are bad; it is only after some time that you learn, and that not from the inhabitants, but from other foreigners who have resided there longer than yourself, where anything is to be got. At the end of six months you are still making discoveries of this sort; so that people generally quit Tuscany at the time they have learned to live there. It results from all this that every time you visit Florence you like it the better; if you should revisit it three or four times you would probably end by making of it a second country, and passing there the remainder of your lives."2