flower, or if its pert leaves don't blush under the sun's caress, it
shan't be my fault or the sun's.

Take, then, my watered wine in the name of the Second Maccabaean, for here,
as he says, "will I make an end. And if I have done well, and as is
fitting the story, it is that which I desired: but if slenderly and
meanly, it is that which I could attain unto."

I have killed you at the first cast. I feel it. Has any city, save,
perhaps, Cairo, been so written out as Florence? I hear you querulous; you
raise your eyebrows; you sigh as you watch the tottering ash of your
second cigar. Mrs. Brown comes to tell you it is late. I agree with you
quickly. Florence has often been sketched before--putting Browning aside
with his astounding fresco-music--by Ruskin and George Eliot and Mr. Henry
James, to name only masters. But that is no reason why I should not try my
prentice hand. Florence alters not at all. Men do. My picture, poor as you
like, shall be my own. It is not their Florence or yours--and, remember, I
would strike at Tuscany through Florence, and throughout Tuscany keep my
eye in her beam,--but my own mellow kingcup of a town, the glowing heart
of the whole Arno basin, whose suave and weather-warmed grace I shall try
to catch and distil. But Mrs. Brown is right; it Is late: the huntsmen are
up in America, as your good kinsman has it, and I would never have you act
your own Antipodes. Addio.



I


EYE OF ITALY